ABSTRACT
The chapter sets out to better understand the manner in which Japanese people administer and manage their lives within the safe sanctums of their homeland. This is seen to be a way of appreciating who and how the Japanese are, if preferably left to themselves (and if this is possible in these overwhelmingly panoptic and heady days of globalization), before they take leave of Japan’s watery shores to venture forth overseas. Nihonjinron or tenets of Japaneseness is seen to function among Japanese people as a powerful influence on thought and behavior. The internally oriented trajectories of nihonjinron are seen too to operate self-referentially in situations where Japanese people find themselves having to adapt to life in non-Japanese environments. The challenge of this latter hurdle remains true notwithstanding the fact that Japan’s putative identity as a monocultural nation has lately had to cope with changes to do with immigration and the presence of (and a degree of reliance on) foreigners on Japanese soil. An important aspect of Japanese worldview is seen capturable within an uchi and soto (inside-versus-outside) dialectic, useful for understanding ways in which life phenomena are specified and apprehended spatially, even or especially in non-Japanese situations like Singapore’s.
