Is Google Streeview un-Japanese?

Thanks to KT for emailing me this link to a Slashdot post about the unease that Google Streetview is apparently causing in Japan. Global Voices has the full text (with English translation) of a letter written by blogger Hisamu Oguchi, in which he explains what it is about Streetview that offends the Japanese sensibility. Some excerpts:

The residential roads of Japan's urban areas are a part of people's living space, and it is impolite to photograph a stranger's other people's living spaces.
In the United States, and particularly in the case of people living on the west coast, the boundary line between private space and public space, both in terms of actual ownership and in terms of the way people think, is in the boundary line between the public road and privately-held land. In fact, I think that you all will agree that your home's garden, which faces the street, actually feels itself more like a public space, and that not keeping your front yard tidy ruins the look of the community, right?
For people living in urban areas in Japan, though, the situation is quite the opposite. The residential street in front of a house, the so-called “alleyway” (roji/路地), feels more like a part of one's own living space, like a part of the yard. In urban areas in Japan, sweeping the road in front of one's home, sprinkling water over it, shoveling snow off it, these are all considered to be the responsibility of the resident. Wandering around the older parts of the city, you'll see evidence of this way of thinking in the potted plants and little storage rooms crowded out [onto the street].
...
To have one's own living space exposed to the whole world without ever having been asked about it beforehand, this however really makes me uncomfortable. It ignores our “right [to demand that] you leave us alone”, and comes off as nothing short of “evil”.

The comments are quite interesting, as well:

I must admit, this particular reaction to Google Maps puzzles me. It reads very much as if the writer actually believes that Street View (and the general excess of detail on Google Maps in general) is fully accepted in other nations, where it is culturally more acceptable... The real revelation here, as far as I’m concerned, is the implicit assumption that Japan is fundamentally culturally different from the rest of the world... In summary, I fully agree with the complaints here about Google Maps, but find the cultural arguments superfluous and distracting. Enough people from a wide enough variety of locales have levied these same complaints that there’s no real need to taint them with divisive red herrings like “Japan is a unique culture unlike any other on Earth” or “America is culturally imperialistic”.

Don’t want to get into an argument here, but I do take issue with your casting aside the world’s cultures as so many different “ways”. It may not be easy to define, but there is certainly a “Japanese way” whether or not every single Japanese person adheres to it is a different issue. And I tend to think that that is a good thing personally.

@Julian Stoev: “There is no Japanese way. There is also no American way, BTW.”

Wonderfully said. The letter by Osamu Higuchi posted here, like nearly all entries in the “culturally opposite ways of thinking” category, is a bunch of assertion backed by NO PROOF. Concerned people everywhere in the world have pointed out his same privacy concerns about Google Street View. While millions more around the world – including in Japan! – aren’t concerned enough to say a word. Where’s the difference? Show me EMPIRICALLY.

As a resident of Japan for over 20 years, I get so tired of “we’re so different” claims backed by nothing more than the speaker’s desperate wish for it to be true. (Unfortunately, I fear that other people will pick up on Higuchi’s blather and shout “me too!”, just because it scratches that itch for “cultural difference” posturing. )

I am always intrigued by "culture deniers," people who claim that cultural differences aren't real or are so minimal they should be ignored. For the most part, this sentiment comes from a very Western, egalitarian mindset: we are all people, we are all equal, our differences don't matter, let's not talk about them. But differences are real and carry meaning. While there are many constants across the globe (and being uncomfortable about Streetview may well be one of them!) I would also add that people can arrive to the same conclusion through different paths, in this case object to Streetview for different reasons.

Guess I hit a nerve... or was that the Potomac?

When I blogged about some of the factors that lead 20-somethings to choose living in the District or in NOVA, I thought I was just adding an interculturalist perspective to a pretty well-established fact - that people do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, including deciding where to live based on what kind of environment feels "right." In turn, those feelings can be based on cultural preferences formed in childhood that can be difficult to break. I've lived in apartments for most of my life, and to this day I intensely dislike being alone in a single-family home, especially at night, and even more so if there's a thunderstorm. I also know lots of people who cannot bring themselves to think of an apartment or condo as a real home, because a real home to them is a single-family home with a yard and a driveway. There's nothing wrong with either perspective, in fact it adds to the richness of life.
So why are so many people commenting on that, and primarily arguing for why their residential choice is the best, more rational one? I'm sure the mention on DCBlogs had something to do with it, but I doubt that's the whole story. It's a very concrete topic, for one. Additionally, intercultural studies as an academic discipline tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Political correctness is all about what unites us, whereas interculturalism by necessity looks at the less-obvious things that divide us. For that reason it's tempting to sweep it all under the rug - if you ignore it long enough, maybe it will go away! But talking about differences is the only way to reach across them. So keep on commenting and challenging us to refine our arguments, just keep it polite. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.