Language often provides clues to intrinsic characteristics of its native speaker’s culture. In the case of Japanese, perhaps a good way to illustrate this is the popular term shouganai, which essentially means “that’s life” or “nothing can be done about it.” This term is commonly applied, with seemingly a certain degree of indifference, to company decisions and policies, and rules that could have been made by a superior, even if it’s a rule or policy that seems to the individual to be unjust, ineffective, ultimately hindering etc. Of course there are benefits to this way of thinking, group harmony being the main goal in Japan's case, and thus progress and growth resulting from cooperation. Modern Japan is a very capitalist society, and company employees maintain a high level of loyalty to their company and its hierarchy order to survive against other companies doing the same things. Perhaps we have to look at the fact that you have over 135 million people living together, by majority, in the compact cities. Competition is high, and strategies for increasing maximum production and profit are necessary for a company to financially survive in such an environment. Unfortunately, this mentality leads to overwork and plenty of stress and exhaustion for many employees (also known commonly as a salary men, though the work world certainly encompasses women as well).
