It's been my observation that Japanese culture appears to be more accepting of and comfortable with people putting on personas to suit a particular mileu than in the west.
In the West we strongly equate what a person is wearing and their behavior at that moment with their overall identity. It's been my observation that in Japan a person may put on a persona like one might put on a costume and it be perfectly acceptable.
There's exceptions of course but nothing is more disconcerting to me as a westerner, watching an interview with a Japanese Rock and Roller or Rapper, expecting them to have the FU attitude I'm used to seeing during the interview and instead see them behave with politeness, nicely bowing at the right moments and talking politely to everyone.
It's actually quite refreshing in a sense to see this and I think it can encourage experimentation as it prevents people from getting too wrapped up with a persona they are building right now and drop it and try something else that suits their fancy.
This could be due to the strong emphasis Western culture places on "integrity." This term originally comes from the same Latin root as "integer," which itself means "whole, entire." Having integrity implies that your private self and public self are one and the same.
Multicultural roots of Western culture may have made integrity an important signifier of trustworthiness. Even going back to Shakespeare, you saw the theme of split identities everywhere in Western literature, and most of Shakespeare's villains are noted for their two-facedness.
The modern day implication of that cultural legacy is our cult of authenticity. For a rap singer to be taken seriously by his peers, he has to be "real." The realness is a hard earned credibility by showing a singular identity, and not being perceived as the real thing for someone immersed in that culture would be the equivalent of "losing face" in Eastern cultures. Something akin to social isolation and even death.
Another, perhaps more relatable example, is something I often hear Americans say. It's said that in America you can be who you say you are. That is at the heart of the open society for which Americans are praised, and Americans take your word at face value, until you say or do something contrary to their expectations of your self-proclaimed "role."
So thinking over what I wrote, I think the reason why role-playing works in Japan and doesn't in America is because Americans have a culture of self-invention, a culture built on appearances, they also have a wariness about being taken in by people who change their appearances often.
It's been my observation that Japanese culture appears to be more accepting of and comfortable with people putting on personas to suit a particular mileu than in the west.
In the West we strongly equate what a person is wearing and their behavior at that moment with their overall identity. It's been my observation that in Japan a person may put on a persona like one might put on a costume and it be perfectly acceptable.
There's exceptions of course but nothing is more disconcerting to me as a westerner, watching an interview with a Japanese Rock and Roller or Rapper, expecting them to have the FU attitude I'm used to seeing during the interview and instead see them behave with politeness, nicely bowing at the right moments and talking politely to everyone.
It's actually quite refreshing in a sense to see this and I think it can encourage experimentation as it prevents people from getting too wrapped up with a persona they are building right now and drop it and try something else that suits their fancy.