Conservative Japan: 6 Ways the Country Falls Behind the Times

This week, Suntory CEO Takeshi Niinami was forced to resign after a police probe was announced. His shocking crime? Ordering CBD oil supplements, which are banned under conservative Japan’s absurdly strict anti-drug laws. Japan outlaws all forms of marijuana, even harmless hemp extracts that lack psychoactive ingredients. Let’s look at the new development, and six ways Japan is too conservative for its own good!

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Many would say that Japan is too conservative about drugs

Suntory CEO Resigns After CBD Oil Suppliment Scandal

Takeshi Niinami is one of Japan’s most respected businessmen. He helped the Suntory beverage giant more than double its sales since assuming the role of CEO. He was the man behind Suntory’s purchase of Jim Beam, and he’s why you see signs advertising Jim Beam highballs in every izakaya in Japan these days. A graduate of Stanford, he’s fluent in English, and was one of Japan’s most celebrated executives. Until, that is, he ordered some CBD oil to help him get over his jet lag from his frequent trips abroad.

Takeshi Niinami In Trouble For Importing CBD Oil

The police intercepted the CBD oil, which is illegal under Japan’s draconian drug laws. As a result, Mr. Niinami felt compelled to step down from his role as CEO of Suntory. He has passed the role on to Nobuhiro Torii, the grandson of the company’s founder. (And yes, the name Suntory comes from reversing “Torii-san.”)

Japan has adopted a zero-tolerance stance against a wide range of substances, including some considered harmless or even medicinal in other countries. Everything from marijuana to amphetamines to cocaine is totally banned. Many prescription drugs that are common in the West are also on the list. If you happen to take ADHD medicine like Ritalin or Adderall, don’t bring them to Japan!

A clip from the On Your Mark music video, directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Drug Arrests in Conservative Japan Lead to Public Shaming

While getting in hot water with police over illegal drugs would be a problem for anyone, the bigger issue is the way society (including the entertainment world) reacts to any official action being taken by police. Some examples in the anime world:

Idol singer Noriko Sakai (who sang the openings for Gunbuster and Video Girl Ai) got busted for abuse of stimulants. Police tested her “Nori-pee” (heh) and the results came back positive, ending her career overnight.
ASKA, half of the singing duo behind the amazing Hayao Miyazaki-directed On Your Mark music video, was caught with illegal stimulant drugs. As a result, the Blu-ray for the video got yanked from an upcoming Studio Ghibli boxed set, though they released it to fans a few months later.
If you wondered what happened to voice actress Ai Takabe from Kill Me Baby, she got arrested for cocaine possession. She was immediately dropped by her talent agency, and live-action and anime works she starred in were pulled from broadcast or distribution.

Amuro couldn’t keep his beam saber in its sheath

Marital Infidelity Can End Your Career, Too

Another subject Japan is prickly about is marital infidelity. Which is kind of funny, because Japan isn’t a Christian nation in any way. Yet they will shun any famous person who gets caught stepping out with someone who isn’t their designated spouse.

Many anime-related personalities have been caught in relationships outside their marriages, including Tatsuhisa Suzuki, husband of famous singer LiSA. And Mob Psycho and Jojo voice actor Takahiro Sakurai.

But the most infamous case of a legendary voice actor getting busted for cheating was Tooru Furuya, who voiced Amuro Ray from Gundam, Sabo from One Piece, Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, plus — and I counted — 127 other credited roles. It came out that the famous seiyu had been in an extramarital relationship with a fan 37 years younger than him for four years. Hopefully, he’ll be able to return to voice work after taking a time-out to reflect on what he did.

Conservative Japan has a cultural hang-up about marital infidelity

It’s hard to understand Japan’s unique (?) social hangup when it comes to marital infidelity. The Japanese word for adultery is 不倫 furin, literally meaning “immoral.” Cheating on a partner you’re not yet married to is called 浮気 uwaki, literally “floating attention,” which will also earn you the ire of the media and the public, but on a lesser scale.

Adultery used to be a criminal offense in Japan, called 姦通罪 kantsuuzai, which (conveniently) only applied to married women or their partners in infidelity, never cheating husbands. Japan removed this law from the books in 1947. Interestingly, female infidelity was illegal in South Korea up til 2015.

What happened to the announcer who committed the ‘crime’ of owning a box of condoms? Read this post next!

Zom100 — Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Japan’s Productivity Is Lower than Latvia’s

Productivity is a measure of useful work everyone does each hour, and being an entrepreneur, it’s something I think about quite a lot. While Japan is famous for working many hours, productivity is quite low.

The top 5 nations in terms of hourly labor productivity are Ireland, Norway, the US, Germany, and France. Japan is way down the list, at #23, sandwiched between Latvia and Slovakia despite working its employees to death. (Which isn’t really accurate, but that’s the meme everyone is familar with.)

Why is Japan so unproductive despite working long hours? Underinvestment in technology, an aging workforce, a lack of startup culture and extreme risk aversion are partial reasons. If you were a 50-year-old manager at a company, would you make the bold decisions needed to change what needed changing at your company? Or just keep your head down and coast until retirement?

Work and productivity aren’t everything, of course. Japan is proof positive that a country can peak in terms of population and economic output and still be an extremely happy place to live. For ordinary people, the real wealth shows up in good food, reliable trains, and safe streets.

Censorship Meme | Japan Is Too Conservative

Censorship of Pornography

Despite being a “superpower” when it comes to erotic manga, anime, and live-action JAV, Japan requires censorship for 18+ media in ways that are frustrating to Westerners.

The origin of this censorship goes back to a 1907 law that bans the distribution of “obscene materials.” The law never defined exactly what “obscene” was, but over time, the idea that pubic hair and genitals should never be shown directly became standardized. Around 1991, publishers took the bold move of releasing photobooks showing “hair nude,” insisting that artistic expression should not be illegal. When police didn’t break down their doors, pubic hair could finally be depicted, but only in still photographs.

So it’s okay to portray a boy licking his sister’s armpits when they run out of salt, but not the normal anatomical bits you and I were born with.

Japan’s cultural quirk over censoring normal sexual imagery is quite amusing, considering the country has had a long history of shunga (“spring pictures”), extremely pornographic ukiyo-e art, dating back four centuries. In addition to coining the word manga (“whimsical pictures”), Hokusai introduced the world to “tentacle porn” with his famous 1814 painting, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. We owe this man so much!

Japan has a hang-up about tattoos (Horimiya)

Tattoos and Piercings in Japan

I love attending summer anime conventions because I can observe how American society is changing from year to year. Around the late 1990s, I noticed that the fans coming by our booth had really embraced tattoos and body piercings in a big way.

But here in conservative Japan, these things are not always seen in a positive light. Many establishments such as public baths will have a sign up saying, “No tattoos.” This is ostensibly to keep scary yakuza gangsters out of family-friendly hot spring baths — though if they want to go in, who’s really going to stop them? — but unfortunately, normal people get caught in another one of conservative Japan’s weird social hang-ups. (If you want to visit Japan but have some body ink, happily there are plenty of tattoo-friendly options.)

Japanese are also conservative about investing

Japanese Hoard Cash Rather Than Invest

I’ll never forget when I told my old-fashioned mother-in-law that I was going to start an online anime shop. She said, “Oh no! You’re going to go bankrupt for sure.” I had to laugh: at 28, I knew that if J-List failed, I’d have plenty of time to regroup and start something new. Why fear taking a little risk, especially with something as awesome as the Internet at my fingertips?

But in conservative Japan, people tend to be extremely risk averse, scared of starting new businesses out of fear of failure. They often feel the same way about investing their money, usually preferring to save their cash in a bank where it will earn them 0.13% in interest. In 2025, the average Japanese household has around 25 million yen held in cash, currently US$168,000. Though as it becomes clear Japan’s pension system won’t do the job for most citizens, the governement has been trying to force its citizens to embrace investing more and more.

Thanks for reading this blog post about the many ways in which Japan is too conservative for its own good. What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comments below.

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