Working on my international presence has made me confront a simple question.
Why is it so hard for Japanese people to stand on their own axis?
And why do I, born and raised in this culture, seem to deviate so much from it?
Collective Harmony Over Personal Judgment
Japan is a highly homogeneous society where people are trained to prioritize reading the room, maintaining harmony, avoiding friction, and minimizing discomfort.
Saying “I choose this” carries unusual weight.
It is not just a decision but a potential disturbance.
People wait, watch the group, and move only after others do.
This is not laziness but a deeply rooted survival strategy.
Freedom Feels Dangerous When Responsibility Is Heavy
In Japan, choosing something for yourself means inheriting all consequences:
why you chose it, whether it is appropriate, whether it causes trouble, and whether you can bear full responsibility.
Responsibility is culturally dense, so freedom begins to feel dangerous.
The safest path becomes not deciding, not standing out, and simply flowing with the current.
Choice Paralysis as a Cultural Default
Give a Japanese person more options and paradoxically they lose the ability to act.
Freedom leads to responsibility, responsibility to fear, and fear to delay.
A loop that traps many people for life.
I used to be caught in that loop too, until depression forced me to face the cost of not having an axis.
Without your own axis, you collapse under pressure and your values evaporate.
My temperament deviates from the Japanese standard for clear reasons: a rebellious streak, an aversion to unspoken rules, collapse and reconstruction during depression, and the raw awareness that if I do not stand on my own feet, I will break.
My unevenness, my dekoboko, is not aesthetic.
It is a survival mechanism.
Traits that seem too sharp in Japan are often seen as clarity abroad.
Japan is a stunning paradox: a society so safe and orderly that individuality becomes structurally discouraged.
A culture so smooth that any unevenness becomes instantly visible.
Super Dekoboko stands precisely in that contrast.
This piece is not a manifesto but a memo to my future self.
A snapshot of how I read the world now and how these cultural frictions fold naturally into my work.
Sometimes you need to record the rough edges before time polishes them away.