I was curious and did a search for "the nail that stands out" and found an
interesting discussion from 2005 on a forum.
A sample:
Quote:
No one wants to be different here.
For example - my schools, like any other school in Japan, has sports clubs. These clubs run for two hours after school, and most teachers have a club they are responsible for. ...They may not go everyday (the kids are kind of self-dependent) but they certainly couldn't leave school until the club was finished. The clubs run on Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays as well. AND during summer vacation. I'd say the sports clubs alone makes school at least 30% harder than it should be.
NO ONE wants to do sports clubs everyday. The students get tired, and the teachers probably have better ways to spend their time. Talk to a student/teacher privately, and they will admit this.
But NO ONE will stand up and say "Y'know what? Sports clubs everyday sucks. Let's only do it three times a week." If someone did, every other teacher would beat him/her down, even though they agreed. Why? We can't possibly be, *gasp* different from everyone else! Even if the school did something radical and did change that, then the parents would end up complaining, even if they probably deep down agreed as well. And God forbid the PTA become angered.
So then the result is that everybody does sports clubs everyday, even though nobody likes it.
Resistance is futile.
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The OP in that thread is pointing out the notion that Japanese people expect change to be something that happens on it's own and there's no point in pushing for it. I think there's a lot of benefit in having social norms, but that kind of conformist conditioning sounds stifling. Of course, if that's all you know... how would you know?