Nevrilicious Scans
joined Jun 5, 2015
That's the thing. While Japan is very advanced and almost utopia-like in many aspect, it doesn't mean the country doesn't have some serious issues, that while it most likely works on them, it doesn't mean changes are happening at any reasonable pace. First of all Japanese have the toxic culture of pride and honor and shaming your family or group is considered to be the worst thing that could possibly happen. Why do you think even if NEETs exist in other countries, unique problems like hikikomoris manifested in Japan? 40 years old people that could be hiding in their rooms for decades, because their parents prefer to give them food and keep on hiding them rather than risking asking for help and expose the family "secret" and shame to anyone else? That's where the "doing it alone" mainly comes from, because nobody is allowed to see your weakness. That's also why Japanese people care so much about rumors.
It's similar thing with bullying and teachers. It's not that someone being bullied doesn't trust teachers. It's that teachers often know about bullying and don't do anything, because it's better for school as a whole. Kids are stressed by pressure they're put under with high expectations for them to spend all their teen lives studying in order to get to best school possible and after graduating spend rest of their life working 60+ hours a week for 1 company until they die from overworking old age. It's more beneficial to sacrifice 1 person for the good of rest of the class than trying to do something about it. Also even in case teacher would want to do something about it, going to police or something is a big no-no, because if they get involved and/or media hears about it, the school's reputation would be ruined.
And about mental health. As in most countries, most people how no real idea how mental health works and there's a lot of stigma around admitting having mental illness or going to therapy, so most people actively avoid doing so. But especially in Japan the issue is that most of their mental institutions simply suck ass. It's very common there to just describe meds for patient and hope it'll fix everything. You'll be lucky if you have anyone actually wanting to listen and talk to you, especially while taking your story seriously. So while it's true that manga about character with issues going through therapy wouldn't be the most exciting, so authors ignore that options completely, there's actually truth in fiction there that Japan's health care is simply terrible in that regard.
