Japan is Losing an Essential Cultural Asset

The entire world can’t seem to get enough of Japan. It regularly appears in top-ten lists of desirable tourism destinations. Its food, be it high-end sushi or a Styrofoam cup of instant ramen noodles, is literally on the tip of humanity’s tongue. But what people really want is the culture. As one of the oldest nations on the planet, Japan’s culture is vast. From the latest anime film to the skill of making sake—a recent addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list —Japan’s distinctiveness is a never ending source of universal fascination.

Despite this rich background, Japan may be in danger of losing one of its most important cultural elements: the avoidance of meiwaku. Roughly translated, meiwaku is that sense of being bothersome to others. But it’s more than a personal feeling in Japan. Important aspects of Japanese society are built upon conflict avoidance and face-saving tactics. Avoiding meiwaku—making sure that you don’t force someone else into an uncomfortable situation due to your actions—is a vital social lubricant. Variations of this trait even appear in Japan’s national constitution (Article 13), where the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be the supreme consideration when crafting new laws, but only “to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare.” That is, so long as it doesn’t cause meiwaku. Social harmony is at the center of Japanese society, and an awareness of meiwaku is a key pillar holding it up.

Eschewing meiwaku is linked to conscientiousness, one of the core human character traits. Some people are innately thoughtful, but in the nurturing environment of Japanese culture, where roles and expectations are part of the national psyche, conscientiousness becomes an expanding and self-reinforcing social reality. In this setting, every human interaction brings with it the understanding that you shouldn’t be a pain in the neck to others.

Japanese Politeness Can be Shocking

This dynamic can be jarring to outsiders. I once visited a medical clinic that handled a variety of services, including soothing the common cold. One woman who appeared to be approaching eighty suffered from a persistent cough. There in the waiting room, she did a good job trying to reign in her hacks; I barely even noticed she was ill. But when she finished her procedures and was departing the clinic, she turned around to the assembled infirm, bowed deeply, and said sumimasen (“I’m sorry”) before making her exit. In her mind, she caused an inordinate amount of trouble to others, and therefore felt compelled to apologize for her imposition on everyone else. I had a similar encounter on a city bus, where another elderly Japanese lady begged pardon from the other passengers due to her slow gait as she left the vehicle.

These examples may feel like overkill, but they speak to an understanding about how you treat others in Japan. Or, at least they used to. Meiwaku is on the rise, even in this land of deference. It turns out that this is a worldwide trend. According to an August 2025 Financial Times article titled “The Troubling Decline in Conscientiousness” (and in a summary from outside the FT paywall), there has been a significant drop in the expression of trait conscientiousness since 2014, especially in those under the age of forty. This coincides with an increase in neuroticism and a drop in extroversion. That is, youngsters are becoming more insular and self-concerned, and less inclined to consider their impact on others. The article singles out excessive cell phone use as a prime catalyst for this transformation.

Seeing Meiwaku in Action is Worse

Take Gym Bro as a key example, my name for a twentysomething who hangs out at my local sports club. He is completely oblivious to his surroundings thanks to his smartphone, a device which could just as well be a hypnotist in disguise. From the moment Gym Bro enters the facility, his eyes never disengage from whatever drivel is playing on the screen. Ready to pump iron, he plops down on one of the exercise machines, but decides instead to watch his screen some more, legs splayed in any and all directions. Eventually, he builds up the courage to lift the weights, yet miraculously his eyes still never escape from the on-screen action. After a half-dozen reps, he releases the handles, the heavy plates returning to earth with a thud, easily detectable by Japan’s sensitive system of earthquake monitors. His sinews slightly stretched, he opts to stay put at the machine, lest he miss one second of must-see entertainment.

He isn’t the only one behaving this way. Gym Bros apparently abound, to the point where the club needed to attach a a stern admonition to each contraption: “Warning of Unnecessary Cell Phone Use! This facility has only one machine of this type. Thank you for your help in not monopolizing the machine.”

My muscles were starting to atrophy, so I begged Gym Bro to let me use that station. He condescended to allow me a workout, but only after assuring me that he was planning to use that specific machine for a mere thirty minutes. I quickly did my set and moved on. But here’s the thing: Despite being his elder and in line with club policies, I felt guilty about asking him if I could cut in. That is meiwaku. It forces others (me in this case) to lower and embarrass themselves, or worse, to tuck tail and run from any conflict that could arise.

Chaos in Coffee Shops

Even if you overlook muscleheads, Japanese society is changing, becoming more meiwaku-ish, especially in the younger generation. You see it at coffee shops, the peaceful kind with smooth jazz BGM and bookworms. In that tranquil atmosphere, a gaggle of women will suddenly burst through the doors, ignore decorum, and force their raucous gossiping into the lives of all other customers.

You see it on trains here in the metropolis, where able-bodied youngsters bound into the priority-seating area so they can manspread in ear-bud-enabled surround sound, blissfully unaware of the frail octogenarian they passed up to get there.

You see it on sidewalks and train platforms, where human automatons meander through crowds, barely conscious of the world due to some important matter on their phones. In their minds, they are doing it right, since they have yet to collide into others or fall onto a train track. It never crosses their minds that they have already forced dozens—perhaps thousands—of other people to escape their zombie march.

It sounds like I am just some old guy angry at “kids these days.” But since my first visit to Japan in the early 1990s, I have witnessed a dramatic change in how citizens interact with each other. It is as if the air, which all Japanese are supposedly able to read with ease, has been republished. Gym Bro is literally not on the same page as those from earlier generations. Despite being a foreigner, I might be closer culturally to middle-aged Japanese residents than those who were weaned here with easy access to Internet media.

I am reminded of the early 1990s Japanese pop song “Ito” (糸, “Thread”), by Nakajima Miyuki. The lyrics describe interactions between individuals as the crossing of threads in a tapestry. But people like Gym Bro exist as points, not threads, their societal interactions unable to generate the same quality of woven allure found in Japan’s long history. If meiwaku becomes the norm here, the tightly bound social conditions that draw the world’s gaze toward Japan may begin to unravel.

[Image Credits: Sabel Blanco/Pixels]