Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies

It's insane how successful Japan is in spite of their corporate inefficiencies.

It's fascinating and makes me want to know more about how the culture works.

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".

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)