inside of it and the Japanese tend to center their life around one ofthem, usually the workplace one, all of them are part of a broader group of theJapanese nation. The Japanese get their sense of belonging and meaning from thegroup, and also feel responsibility for other members actions. For example, inthe rare cases where a gaijin has acamera or cellphone stolen and has been seen being robed or reported the casein his college or workplace, he will probably be surprised by random Japanesewho might not even know him giving him new cameras or cellphones. The robbermight be despicable and/or an outcast, but still being Japanese, law-abidingfolks will still feel a sense of responsibility for what happened. While the reasons for this verystrong sense of community comes from evolutionary reasons, where the harshnessof the environment and the Ice Ages killed those who were less co-operative orwere outcasts because of antisocial behavior, Mr. Taylor tries to offer morecultural and environment only explanations. The author at the time was more ofa classic Liberal, now being very much aware of the genetic differences betweenpopulations that result in a different bell curve of intelligence and behaviorbetween peoples. The Japanese have a very weeksense of individuality. Even the traditional Japanese house architecture thatdoes not block rooms with solid walls and doors, but instead with screens or slidingpaper doors helps to suppress individualism as there is no consistently privateplace in the house. In fact, the word privacy does not even exist inJapanese. This strong sense of groupidentity where peoples lives usually spin around one central group makes theJapanese fundamentally different from Americans in their living preferences:while the majority of Americans prefer single family homes and live in thesuburbs, sometimes even in rural areas by choice, the Japanese prefer to stayclose to each other in big, overcrowded cities. There is significant unusedspace just outside the major cities, however, most Japanese would feel lonelyand isolated from their group in these situations. The Japanese companies are wellknown for their family like atmosphere. This is deliberate, as the Japaneseseem to be only able to work their best in very close communities that functionlike families, the nakama, or virtualblood relationships. It is for that purpose that when hired, the companiesusually have a ceremony for their new men where parents often attend andsymbolically transfer their responsibility as parents to the company, where thesupervisor-subordinate relationship very closely resembles a father and sonrelationship. Many companies make their new hires do some intense groupactivity together for weeks or months, sometimes even real military drills inthe Japanese Self-Defense Forces before they actually start their work in orderto create strong bonds and family like relationship between employees. One interesting key differencebetween the Japanese and Europeans is the way they look at morality: whitesbelieve in an universal moral code, principles and ethics that everyoneabides or should abide to. That is probably why Christianity took a hold on theWest and the logical conclusion of egalitarianism and individualism.Christianity with its universalist world view of individual salvation and oneall-mighty God created the idea of individual in the west and gave birth to aculture