Regarding Japanese societal ills: From what I've read about the country, I strongly suspect that the root issue behind all of them is that Japan has modernized far too rapidly for its own good over the last 150 years. Its technological level and population density is that of Tönnies' Gesellschaft, but the prevailing mindset belongs to a Gemeinschaft, and those two just don't get along. In many ways (but not all!), modern Japanese society is very similar to that of Victorian Britain 150 years ago: rich yet overworked, self-repressed yet oversexed, and obsessed with youthful beauty. The aforementioned poor state of mental care in Japan is also eerily similar to the infamous Victorian "madhouses".
Also interesting is the political divide in the country- despite general assumptions that the Japanese population is wildly conservative, polls have established that they're actually quite liberal and support issues like same-sex marriage, worker's rights, income equality and so forth. It's just that the average Japanese citizen isn't politically active- they've got way too much (over)work on their plate to devote time to reading up on political campaigns, let alone participating in them, and probably also don't want to cope with the social stigma of being seen as ' radical'. I watched this video in which a person interviewed Japanese women on their views about ' feminism', and the vast majority didn't know what the word meant (amusingly, one thought it referred to lesbian relationships). On further inquiry, the interviewer found that most women in Japan had feminism-adjacent views, but lacked the drive or political knowledge to mobilize powerful campaigns. The hyper-politicized culture of the West that makes political conversations commonplace and renders it impossible to live without a defined view doesn't exist in Japan- if anything, political nonalignment and apathy is the norm there, and the focus is much more on living one's own life in a suitably dutiful/unobtrusive way. The incredibly low voter turnout in recent elections and the general lack of overt to references to political issues in Japanese pop culture reinforce this- neither the NEETs and nor the salarymen are really driven to care about specific societal issues, and especially not those relating to minorities.
Content creators in Japanese media might promote messages like 'Discrimination is bad' all the time, but they're always set in societies so fantastic that any degree of real-world applicability gets rendered moot, and Japan thus remains thoroughly xenophobic while idolizing shows like FMA and most of Ghibli's output. Anti-capitalism dwells at the heart of much of Japanese cyberpunk and has characterized some of its most iconic franchises, but the country's economy itself is relentlessly capitalist (peddling gacha games with predatory gambling and lootbox mechanics to kids and younger audiences ought to be illegal, but instead, there's more of 'em coming out each year with zero restrictions on wallet-squeezing drop rates, even when measures to cut down on lootboxes have been taken in the EU). This odd, yawning gap between the seeming optimism and brightness of Japanese media and the cruel realities of its society can also be seen in the nation's immense dearth of any kind of social or political satire (at least in manga/anime). You get shows like Konosuba or SSSS Gridman that poke fun at NEET culture or promote messages of not living in fantasy worlds, but they're often just lip-service, wrapped up in packages sold with internet-breaking waifus who mint figurines by the millions for stay-at-home collectors (and I think I've already mentioned how this dates back to Gundam and Evangelion in another one of our conversations).
The vast majority of idol shows would much rather market fluffy, ecstatic high-school girls to audiences instead of exploring how mercilessly exploitative the industry is, the vast majority of isekai shows would much rather show hardcore 'gamers' being rewarded for their achievements in alternate worlds instead of telling them that their behavior might be self-destructive, and we've already explored how most shonen shows get mental health horribly wrong. Heck, I've heard that Japanese studio execs often don't allow shows that are too explicitly subversive or satirical to air in the first place, and the same goes for manga publishers. From the earliest point of their careers, content creators are told to play it safe, to focus on materialism and pretty character designs and moe rather than any deeper messaging. The reason why the handfuls of manga about queer and trans folks still being published in Japan come off as 'preachy' to Western readers is because authors writing for Japanese audiences quite literally need to educate them about these issues from scratch, to tell them that these people exist, because the level of political awareness about anything but the most mainstream groups is nonexistent.
Japan today is a mildly nightmarish society precisely because it takes the two prime ends of the labour cycle, work and recreation, and hones each of them to symbiotic efficiency. Workers in black companies and high-pressure positions toil their brains out, putting in hours of overtime that they legally don't need to in order to prevent being ostracized by co-workers, and then wearily stagger home to consume streams of wish-fulfilling, pandering content utterly devoid of social messaging or subversive themes, designed for the sole purpose of injecting serotonin and dopamine into their brains so they can pick themselves off the couch next morning and repeat the cycle anew. That's also why gacha games are so popular in Japan despite getting criticized in the Western community for repetitive and simple gameplay, plastic characters, patchwork plots and terrible rates- your average Japanese salaryman doesn't have the time to boot up the old PS4 and question humanity with Nier Automata. He pulls his smartphone out on the train for a login bonus, does some grinding in the breaks between shifts, invests the vast majority of his disposable income in rolling, feels a rush of validation when he gets a character, and actually feels like he's indulging in the closest thing to a real relationship when an anime girl flutters her eyelids and tells him she loves him, because he has worked for this harder than he has at any other relationship in his joyless, regimented life.
The majority of Japanese don't want literary masterpieces, and are fine with generic, 'safe' content as long as it's reliable and gives them an emotional drip-feed. They love SOL because their own lives are so utterly, tragically devoid of it. And the fact that they reinvest their hard-won gains into the products of corporations with work cultures every bit as toxic as the ones that oppress them ensures that the cycle will never break, because all the prospective rebels have had their spirit crushed by the labor cycle. It's Marx's worst nightmare, and since the nation's political system is dominated by a bunch of privileged, conservative old men who will never be voted out by an exhausted and apathetic populace drowning in false consciousness, the future looks pretty bleak. And in retrospect, all those catchy, inspirational 'Work hard and you can do anything!~" messages from every corner of Japanese pop culture become a whole lot more sinister when you apply 'em to corporate culture. After the fascination's faded, you look underneath and see the rot. To put it simply, Japan in the 21st century is a borderline-dystopian nightmare (though the West's honestly not too far behind).
