Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies

It works by having it beaten into for you several decades of your childhood that you don't speak up, you put the groups first, and appearances trump reality.

I don't necessarily think it's any better or any worse than western culture. My perspective is "it just has different failure modes".

Yes, a large part of why Japanese society appears (and in fact performs) so perfect is because of an absolute fear of shame.

From the moment you are born you are taught to care about what and how others think and feel about you and your conduct. If it's not your social peers, it's the literal Sun ("Otentou-sama") looking down upon you and judging your every single moment. If you shame yourself, you also bring shame upon your family and your ancestors both living and dead.

To be clear: This does work, and most Japanese are happy to serve society rather than feel compelled to do so at threat of cancellation. There are also benefits for the compliant, namely in the form of social safety nets both legal and social to ensure a minimum standard of living.

Japanese expats are a particular bunch, they left Japan because they couldn't stand the shaming and strict adherence to social codes. A kind of "you can't fire me if I quit" response.

Agreed and I would add to the list the ungodly amount of hours they work. I know per hour they might not be as productive (or simply held back by antiquated processes within their companies) but they seem to make up for it in part by working so much overtime.

That isn't really what I meant, and yeah, I was ambiguous. When you have a culture where people can't tell the boss things he doesn't want to hear -- of which resignation is an example -- how do companies expect to get honest feedback? How do they detect problems earlier in the process? Etc.

Cultures are never just dysfunctional; there are usually a complicated set of compensations that makes the dysfunction more bearable. I'm curious how that works.

They don't want feedback. They want you to listen and obey. It doesn't actually matter if things are wrong, so long as in the moment the boss thinks they aren't, then to him they aren't since appearances trump reality. The boss would prefer you didn't disturb that. The result is sometimes things just blow up spectacularly later on down the track but "shou ga nai".

The compensation that makes the dysfunction more bearable is the culture of "gaman" which is deeply, deeply ingrained from a young age. It's normal for them to just suck it up and tolerate shit they don't like. It's a way of life. For everything thing else there is "shou ga nai" which often translates to "it can't be helped" and many Westerners think it's just Japanese people giving up too easily and don't really get it, but it comes from the Buddhist philosophy of accepting things as they are.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaman_(term)

That doesn't explain anything, though. If they don't get feedback, shouldn't it make their businesses less effective?

Hence their stagnant economy.