Modern Japanese society is closer to 1950s America than it is Meiji or Edo Japanese. Occupation had a profound impact on them and still does to this day.
In fact, I’d posit that the reason why the “West” views Japan with such fascination is because it’s looking into an alternate history. “What if the hippies and postmodernists lost in the 1960s?” A lot of the cultural values Japan exhibits can be found in old PSA videos and newsreel footage of 1950s and early 1960s USA. Then they skipped straight into 1980s yuppie consumerism, spedrun straight into a financial crisis and then skipped straight into the smartphone era.
It truly is a different place but not for reasons of deep history (bushido is a 19th century invention, Sushi as we consume it is only as old as modern refrigeration, Tokyo metro used to be a dirty noisy place).
AFAICT, the Hippies lost in America too, or worse: they turned into people who completely supported the values they professed to abhor when they were hippies.
In fact, I’d posit that the reason why the “West” views Japan with such fascination is because it’s looking into an alternate history. “What if the hippies and postmodernists lost in the 1960s?” A lot of the cultural values Japan exhibits can be found in old PSA videos and newsreel footage of 1950s and early 1960s USA. Then they skipped straight into 1980s yuppie consumerism, spedrun straight into a financial crisis and then skipped straight into the smartphone era.
It truly is a different place but not for reasons of deep history (bushido is a 19th century invention, Sushi as we consume it is only as old as modern refrigeration, Tokyo metro used to be a dirty noisy place).