The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Orderly disaster response in Japan

CNN examines Japanese cultural roots to explain how Japanese people have acted after Friday's earthquake:

“Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting,’" said Gregory Pflugfelder, director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community,” he said.

To Merry White, an anthropology professor at Boston University who studies Japanese culture, the real question is why looting and disorder exist in American society. She attributes it largely to social alienation and class gaps.

The article takes these points as givens. Does anyone know if these assertions are true?

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