[maxsanic]

I think this "conscientious" culture is really just herd conformity at the end of the day. While most Asian cultures are indeed more collective compared to the Europeans / Americans that that tend to focus on individual rights, the Japanese really bring this to a new level.

However the key thing is from what we can see now, this unique Japanese conformity seems to cause more harm than benefits. The society has stagnated, become extremely risk adverse and nobody wants to do anything for fear of sticking out. When I lease with my Japanese business partners / colleagues, they are extremely reluctant to do anything outside SOP and just feed any problem into the bureaucratic grinder for months and years without output.

If that's the end game, I would say no thank you. Sure, Singaporeans are definitely not as "civilized" in terms of social behavior compared to the Japs, but at least we still have people doing all sorts of "xiaodaiji" and haven't slide into social lethargy yet.