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The high-trust Japanese society as a form of public infrastructure, built at the cost of individual freedom.
Three Pillars of Japan's Social Contract:
1. Cultural Homogeneity: Shared background creates an internalized moral OS, ensuring predictability and safety (e.g. unguarded property). The trade-off is the exclusion of outsiders from this trust network.
2. Maywaku (Internalized Restraint): Prioritizes collective harmony (WAA) over individual liberty, leading to immaculate public order but also suppressing self-expression, causing overwork, and discouraging dissent.
3. Galapagos Syndrome (Strategic Isolation): Fosters unique craftsmanship (Monozukuri) and an alternative modernity but results in global incompatibility and can lead to internal standards conflicting with practical realities.

Claims Japan has built a society where trust functions as public infrastructure, but at the price of significant individual freedom. This system is supported by three pillars: cultural homogeneity and collective identity, internalized social restraint known as Maywaku, and strategic isolationism, or the Galapagos syndrome. The logic for cultural homogeneity is that a shared background leads to a deeply internalized moral operating system, simplifying social interaction and ensuring adherence to unwritten rules, which makes society predictable and secure, as illustrated by unguarded public property. However, this homogeneity also creates an invisible barrier for outsiders, as the safety is a benefit of a group one cannot fully join. Historically, this trust is rooted in collective economic structures like Tano-Mashiko, which fostered deep local mutual accountability and contributed to low crime rates through community-based self-policing. This represents a trade-off, sacrificing individual freedom for a predictable, low-crime society. The logic for Maywaku is that it is an internalized social governor, ensuring collective social harmony (WAA) takes precedence over individual liberty that might inconvenience others. This involves constant psychological labor to maintain social equilibrium, leading to active maintenance of public order and a reverse broken windows theory where immaculate upkeep suppresses impulses to deface. This self-control is evident in daily life, from managing noise in public to holding onto litter. In the workplace, fear of Maywaku drives overwork and discourages taking time off, and the consensus-building process of Nemo-washi prioritizes emotional security over speed. The ultimate cost is the suppression of the individual self, leading to unaddressed stress and a reluctance to report problems to avoid disrupting the status quo. The logic for the Galapagos syndrome is that Japan's strategic isolation in technology, economics, and culture leads to products and systems evolving for a specific domestic market, becoming highly specialized but incompatible globally, as seen with old cell phones or banking infrastructure. However, this isolation also provides space for an alternative modernity, prioritizing craftsmanship (Monozukuri) and longevity over relentless growth, as exemplified by specialized repair businesses. This obsession with craftsmanship also underpins the manufacturing excellence of large corporations, allowing long-term R&D. Conversely, this fixation on principle over practicality can lead to issues like quality testing scandals, where internal perfection standards exceed practical global requirements, causing problems even when products are safe. Historically, this isolationism is rooted in the Sakoku policy, a strategic framework for selective engagement to ensure domestic stability.