/jp/ - Otaku Culture

City hires etiquette squad to shame commuters guilty of chin-ups and golf swings

A young woman applies her makeup, pouting into a handheld mirror as she adds the finishing touches to her lips. In the next seat, a young businessman bellows into his mobile phone, and across the aisle, a middle-aged "salaryman" executes chin-ups on an overhead handrail, blissfully unaware that his overcoat is brushing the legs of the woman seated in front of him.

A montage of life on a Tokyo commuter train this week - and proof that the Japanese, supposedly the most courteous people on Earth, are forgetting their manners. Decrying the decline in standards of public behaviour is a favourite pastime the world over, but in Japan the handwringing is not confined to stuffy social commentators.

A new survey by the Asahi Shimbun daily found that nine out of 10 Japanese believe manners have deteriorated to critical levels - a trend that in recent times has prompted requests for MPs to refrain from texting during debates, and for broadsheet readers to fold their newspapers on rush-hour trains.

As they witness a rising incidence of "carriage rage" and other displays of un-Japanese conduct, many Japanese are wondering what has become of a society in which just about every social interaction was governed by a time-honoured code of conduct.

Japan is, after all, a place where business cards are exchanged with both hands and accompanied by a bow of appropriate depth; where a simple "Excuse me" can be delivered using one of several expressions; where blowing one's nose at the table is near-unforgivable; and where people over a certain age conclude phone calls with a respectful bow to their unseen interlocutor.

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