The recent Japanese devastation has shone a spotlight on the country’s apparently unique social structure.
Unlike many other circumstances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the misfortune — and this has greatly impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and further sympathy from the world.

As can be imagined, articles have made an appearance attempting to reveal the phenomenon of people who continue to be law-abiding citizens despite being deprived of not just creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are stuffed to capacity together with the personal household safes of persons which have washed back to land or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog stuck under rubble, neglecting to leave!

Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people note that the country is a wealthy one, a technologically advanced one, and one that is perhaps uniquely homogenous one of many leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Of course household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least remaining unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no motivation to loot and riot when the country all together offers so many resources to provide succor.

Others remember that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are witnessed simply because they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that isn’t what a Japanese person does, plain and simple.
This side of the discussion notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims continue to suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.