E-Books →Duty and Sentiment How Culture Shapes Thinking and Behavior in Japan and the West

The wide-ranging scope of the book takes in marital life, education, sports, business, and culture in modern Japanese society. Why, for instance, does linguistic heterogeneity generally have negative effects on FIFA rankings of national soccer teams, and what does this have to do with the difficulty of technology transfer among businesses in multilingual countries? Why was the demand for the filmBohemian Rhapsody,about the British rock group Queen, so high in Japan? How do Kazuo Ishiguro's novels resemble scenarios related to Japan's long-term public finance prospects? How does the depiction of contemporary life compared with "the old days" in the films of Yasujiro Ozu provide a cautionary tale for aging societies today? How are older people with grandchildren more likely to accept tax increases to support future generations? And how is the Japanese government actively drawing on behavioral economics to appeal to public sentiment to contain the spread of COVID-19.
These and a multitude of other questions are tackled by the backpacker who entered academia to become an economist and who now goes on a journey to find the answers. Readers can take the trip with him under his expert guidance, as he artfully combines sentiment, duty, and economic analysis.