It’s not that they’re not Japanese enough. It’s that they’re too Japanese for their own good.

What I mean by that is that Japan is a very conservative, stratified, traditional culture. If you are X, then you must Y. Always.

If you are a man, you must have a proper job, and if you are high-ranking you must have a wife as well to carry on the family name. If you are a woman, you must marry before 25, and become a homemaker, as having a job is ‘man’s work’ and caring for the house is ‘woman’s work’.

(The reverse, with the man staying home, or even more outlandish, the woman staying single and having a career, is just not done, as the English would say. The few who do so are treated much like oddities in a circus sideshow.)

If you are high-ranking, you must have this kind of job. You must have these interests (usually calligraphy for men and a properly traditional instrument for women). If you are lower rank, then you have this kind of job. And you are to always consider your family/clan and their interests above your own.

And so on and so forth.

They are a very old culture, and every action, every position, is steeped in centuries of tradition. It makes for a strong framework, which is both good and bad. The way they tend to see it, things have always been ‘this way’, and to have them be any other way is simply unthinkable. Many of them literally can’t get their heads around the idea that things might be better different.

And that creates enormous social pressure to conform. ‘The nail that stands tallest is the one pounded down.’ Often people are punished more for rocking the boat than for causing actual problems, hence things like the major issue with women being groped on public transport. Sure, the men are sexually harassing them. But the women inevitably are the ones that get in more trouble for speaking up.

And because of the pressure to conform, those who can’t—such as failing to get into the ‘proper school’—feel like they have transgressed so badly that there is no other option but to counter the shame they brought to their families by killing themselves.

I don’t think that’s how I would put it, the not Japanese enough, nor put self harm in a positive light…

Anyway, examples:

High stakes testing throughout schooling. A lot of your path is decided before you can reasonably be expected to be responsible for it. The first minute of this is a bit more poetic about it https://youtu.be/P07rqHQ35hU

Work culture. There’s a word in Japanese that means death from overwork. Bosses can be really shitty. Leaving a job is a big deal. (This could be too much for a kid because this shitty life is what they’re working so hard toward)

Bullying and conformity. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Individual expression is becoming easier, but it’s still pretty difficult, especially at school and work.

Loneliness. There’s a concept of the true self vs the public self. It’s more difficult to connect when you’re always masking.

The only one i know about myself is the intense pressure put on students. You ever watch an anime where a kid just sleeps through class? That is semi accepted because they are expected to have spent most of the night studying independently or at a cram school.

Or it used to be that way anyway, it’s been a long time since i looked into the culture of Japan so that might have changed for the better or worse at some point.