The Purpose of Inconvenience
Silly rules can be small taxes we pay to avoid large problems later
After my friend returned from his two-week trip to Japan, I asked him about his experience. “What was the best thing? What was the worst thing?” As often in life, the pros and cons he mentioned went hand in hand: “Tokyo is one of the top three cleanest places I’ve ever been, but there are no trash cans anywhere, and that’s annoying.”
It’s true. While most big cities reduce trash cans at some point — usually after terrorist attacks where bombs and the like are hidden in them — most also eventually bring them back. But not Tokyo. After a 1995 gas attack that hurt at least 1,000 people, the Eastern metropolis binned bins, and they haven’t returned in numbers since.
Surprisingly, the lack of trash disposal opportunities never turned into a big problem. Over a quarter century later, Tokyo is still bin-less, yet also still clean. Why? Culture. In Japan, cleanliness is more than a duty. It’s a value. From school children having to clean up the classroom to store workers partaking in monthly cleaning initiatives to the elderly volunteering to keep the streets tidy, the Japanese learn self-reliance around cleaning early on and then embody it throughout their entire lives — and that’s not something that ends when a few trash cans disappear.
