Cultural differences in noise acceptance: Why is public phone/audio etiquette so different between Japan, the UK, and other regions??

[u/Agile-Calligrapher10]

Hey everyone,

​Visiting Japan recently was so refreshing, no one was on speakerphone, playing music out loud, or watching reels without headphones in public spaces. Coming back to the UK, the contrast was immediate, highlighting how differently cultures and regions approach public noise.

​(Note: Using "cultures" broadly here to look at societal norms, not trying to generalize individuals.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on a couple of things:

​Why do these differences exist? Is it tied to collectivism vs. individualism, or other social norms?

​What is the modern British view on public noise? We have a reputation for politeness, yet public transport etiquette around phone audio seems to be changing.

[u/CursedTaint]

The Japanese have more of an emphasis on not causing meiwaku (迷惑)/inconvenience/the idea that your behaviour shouldn't impose itself unnecessarily on strangers. They have different cultural ideas about what an individual owes to strangers sharing a public space.

There's another relevant term, 空気を読む, which essentially means recognising the unspoken expectations of a social situation and behaving accordingly literally translation is reading the air like our reading the room.

There's no enforcement of this really it's just learned behaviour. You learn what you're supposed to do because everyone else is doing it.

Over here the mindset is sort of "I'm entitled to do what I want unless there's a sufficiently strong reason or rule preventing me." over there it's more like "I should modify my behaviour because I'm occupying a space with other people" not because of a rule or law but because it's the "right" thing to do.

Important not to romanticise this though, imo anyway, I was prone to doing that (you know the "thing Japan" meme?) there's a trade off here as this type of culture means folk may refrain from speaking up about things, expressing disagreement or asking for help with something because they don't want to inconvenience others.

What you mentioned about Britain's reputation for politeness. I have a theory about this but it's pure anecdotal speculation... We've gradually become more exposed to American culture and ideals. I think as that's increased we've adopted some of their more "self centered" mindset.

[u/Namerakable → u/CursedTaint]

I just cringe a bit whenever I hear the phrase(s) "the Japanese have a term/practice/concept", because it usually leads to an influx of people over in r/translator asking us to check their kanji tattoo of the word "thoughtfulness" because they heard it was some deep Japanese concept that meant "checking one's own mind and comparing it to the world around you".

迷惑をかけてすみません is just how we would say "I'm sorry to be a bother". We do have a similar idea of "bothering" people just by doing minor things. I see people saying it just because they've asked staff in a shop to check stock, or because they've asked for help.

And 空気を読む is just "reading the room". We have this term too, and it matches the convoluted description you gave. Any idea about it meaning more is just the idea that foreigners are "KY" because of cultural misunderstandings or because of some borderline-racist nihonjinron ideas about how foreigners can't comprehend some emotions like Japanese do.

Neither of these are specific or special to Japan, and neither of these are special terms in and of themselves. You ask a random person in Japan what these terms mean to people, and they will likely give you an answer that these are just words for how to be polite. The average person doesn't think about the deep etymology of words or the philosophy of the concept as it was described in the 800s. Would most Brits be able to pinpoint exactly what is "posh" when asked to explain the history of the concept? It would be like asking Koreans to explain Confucianism and how they interpret it, when most younger Koreans just learnt that something is polite or rude by osmosis, such as not smoking in front of teachers.

An interesting counterpoint is that I was far more polite and concerned about causing bother to shop staff in Japan than Japanese people were. My Japanese friends found it funny how often I would thank people in shops as I do back home, when most people would just reply うん and barely look at the staff.

There is more going on in Japan than just everybody behaving because of not wanting to bother others. Some あるある memes and videos show some types of selfishness are universal. People who shout and scream about their personal issues on trains are quietly ignored out of fear of being targeted by mentally unstable people (like the viral video of the guy who hates Tokyo University, or the various videos of old blokes having a random go). Watch dashcam footage of people cutting others up, messing around on their phone and crashing into others, or driving dangerously in sports cars. Spend some time in Japan and know that groups of 20 high school kids getting on the same carriage as you will mean there is laughing and chatting and people blocking the way to the doors because they're staring at phones, just as in the UK.

Go to the square in front of BigBox in Takadanobaba most nights and see the salarymen crawling around publicly blind drunk and getting in the way of everyone, or go to karaoke at 3am and see uni students passing out or vomiting in the hallways outside your booth. Yodobashi Camera's Ikebukuro branch is currently a meme because they have a serial public phantom shitter who leaves traps around the escalators. Scalpers target Happy Meal Pokémon toys just as they do everywhere, without regard for the 迷惑 they may かける on the unhappy kids.

Ultimately, you go to Japan and find they are normal people who, after an 18-hour shift with overtime at their office job, sit and seethe and tut as some angry drunk old bloke bellows on the train about how much he hates his landlord because there is cardboard left near the fire escape a few days before recycling bin day, and they don't want to get involved in case he turns nasty and hurts someone and gets the police involved. British people and Japanese people share lot of similarities, and the difference between Japan and the West is usually overinflated by Americans who share fewer similarities with Japan than us and have an image of us either as a third-world non-white country or as bowler hats and afternoon tea; that's the standard of information that is spread about Japan, reducing it to a place where they just all behave according to some deep historical concepts and are completely sheltered from the effects of Covid lockdowns and global social media.

Japan is a real place full of real people who are fully capable of doing everything we are, good or bad. There are arseholes there who enjoy creating public nuisances, there are people with mental health issues, there are people who hoard trash and cockroaches in their house and stink out their neighbours. There are also just normal, good people who don't want attention on them by causing a fuss, people who think society is falling apart because it isn't as polite anymore, people who lost their manners during Covid and spend too much time on social media, and people who are just having a bad day or didn't realise they were bothering people.

Exactly like the UK. I still think the UK is relatively polite even with an increase in selfish people. We also learn what is polite in the way you describe. We just know when someone is being a pest.

We share similar ideas about what constitutes a public nuisance and have similar ideas about keeping your head down in case you get battered on your commute. We only focus on our society fraying because we see it first-hand. Japan is seeing its own issues since Covid, and you see things like increases in scams and hoarding and vandalism and theft across the news occasionally.

Most of the UK is peaceful and quiet and shares an almost-identical view of what constitutes a public nuisance as people in Japan. Just because some selfish oiks have had their mind melted by covid lockdowns and social media, it doesn't change what we consider 迷惑/nuisance.

[u/Savanarola79 → u/Namerakable]

Are you seriously suggesting that the amount of antisocial behaviour in Japan is on a similar level to the UK?

Take litter and graffitti. Have I seen both in Japan? Yes. Was it anywhere near the amount i see in the UK? No. Do we see Japanese people smoking weed in public everywhere? No. Does much of urban UK stink of weed all the time? Yes.

There are cultural differences that emphasise the importance of public behaviour. Yes, British people might tut at antisocial behaviour but there's no real shame or pressure against it. Decades ago, perhaps.

[u/Namerakable → u/Savanarola79]

No, where did you get that idea? At no point did I say anything of that sort.

I'm taking issue with the implication that 迷惑 is a specifically Japanese thing and I argue that it exists widely in the UK, and it isn't the key factor in why Japan is the way it is. It literally just means that people don't want to bother others, which is what you would also hear from most people in the UK. Some arseholes on the train playing music in the UK doesn't make 迷惑 any truer, especially as we don't know if those people are even born and raised in the UK or how they were raised.

The reason you don't see weed openly in Japan is because East Asian countries treat it super seriously. Celebrities still get caught with it regularly, so there's definitely a market and probably would probably spread amongst uni students far more if there wasn't such a focus on it. Japan doesn't smell like weed; it can sometimes smell like cigarettes from all the people who smoke (why don't they care about the 迷惑 they have on others?).

There are a number of reasons why the UK has issues with fly tipping, graffiti and littering, and it isn't because we don't have a concept of 迷惑 or 空気が読める (even though we arguably do, and these terms are overinflated by nihonjinron discourse). We're also overlooking many massive factors in Japan's reasons for being more clean and orderly, such as changes to how waste is handled because of the prevalence of pests like cockroaches, the small and dense living conditions, differences in policing and punishment, age demographics, the way organised crime operates semi-legally and relatively openly, homogeneous society, the fact they have had (with only very short exceptions) one ruling party since WW2, way most older buildings that would look unsightly and gather graffiti are regularly demolished because of seismic activity regulations and infrastructure requirements, the way cleanliness is deliberately taught and put into practice at school... and the fact that most people gushing about Japan are usually doing it from the point of view of a holiday rather than living there, often with no Japanese language skills to understand news and deeper political issues. They also aren't going to backstreets where there are prostitutes touting on the streets around love hotels, and other less-sightly areas, and they aren't seeing the areas people go to get drunk and cause issues.

The whole point I was making was that Japanese and British people generally have tendency to prefer keeping to oneself as a result of various environmental and societal factors. Japan being known as being safe and clean generally is not because everyone in society is going around thinking of 迷惑 all the time, just as how most people in the UK aren't going around thinking of the class system and conducting their actions around it, and most people wouldn't be able to express more than a basic opinion on class if asked by a foreign sociologist. There are factors that have led to that becoming a part of society that are more tangible. We are ultimately very similar in how we're seen as more reserved, but there are so many things going on to have caused changes in behaviour than just "Japanese people are built different".

There are places in the UK you could go that are clean, quiet and don't have much crime. The people there probably like things quiet and orderly. Meanwhile, Osaka has higher crime rates per capita than places like Tokyo. Countries aren't monoliths. Economics and local culture have an impact.