Paradise of the Weak or Hell for the Strong
According to Mr. Masahiko Fujiwara, a prominent mathematician and author, Portuguese resemble Japanese.
It is partly because they sometimes candidly confess their own weakness or whine about tough situations to their friends and acquaintances.
On the contrary, Americans never admit their weakness. Americans are expected to be strong. For an American to be portrayed as a wimp is fatal.
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America is a very unique country (especially intensified by existence of African American Christians). But, the issue is whether its uniqueness has advantage to mankind.
If being tougher and stronger than anybody else is the only goal for Americans, they cannot represent mankind.
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In 1543 when Japan was in the age of civil wars, a Portuguese ship drifted down to a southern island of Japan. It was when a matchlock gun was officially introduced into Japan.
At the end of the 16th century, Japan became the largest producer country of matchlock guns as well as iron products in the world (which seems not to be taught in any school in the world today).
Its guns had the highest quality in the world at the time. Japanese matchlock guns were exported even to Ottoman Turks. In addition, a samurai envoy was sent to Vatican in those days though as a result of a factional fight among samurai clans within Japan.
But, when and after the Tokugawa samurai regime closed the nation in 1639 in order to prevent influx of Christianity into Japan, development of guns in Japan was halted.
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When Japan opened the nation again in 1853, it had to face Americans but not Portuguese. And, no Western countries used matchlock guns. They had advanced fire arms.
So, Japanese sometimes candidly confessed their own weakness or whined about tough situations to their friends and acquaintances, while building up militarily one of the strongest countries (such as the U.S., Germany, and the U.K.) in the world before WWII.
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Yes, Japanese are weak. (The samurai class accounted for only 5% of all the Japanese when the last samurai regime collapsed in 1868.) But, being weak means neither having no courage nor accepting unconvincing defeat.
Conversely, if Japanese are strong, they should have systematically planned to gain the hegemony in the world. Historically, Japan had no such a national scheme even to Asia.
The issue is that there are weaker people in the world than Japanese are.
Can Americans truly and fairly help them?
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If you alone are strong among weak Japanese (especially in terms of self-assertiveness and the way of enjoying life), you would be completely neglected in this island country.
(Living in an island country with high population density can be a hell for a person with personality suitable for continental environment.)
You have to learn to be weak so as to be liked by weak Japanese if you want to democratically succeed in this unique country.
But, it is not difficult, since mankind is a weak creature originally.
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Conversely, Japan's strength as a group can be explained in the above way, too.
Being weak individually and also as a group cannot be a wise policy at all. We need samurai leaders sometimes.
(Nonetheless, if you are very beautifully strong, you can be loved by Japanese. Japanese love the beautiful more than sophisticated weakness, as a matter of course. And, I love very much such, too.)
"...He Will Not Break Off a Bent Reed, Nor Put Out a Flickering Lamp..."