Reddit reviews Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan

There is a very good book about a guy who did this. He worked overseas, came back with a western way of thinking, and started rocking the boat. They demoted him a bunch of times because as he called out his superiors, he told the stories each week in a popular newspaper. The book is an insane read that will have anyone who has put up with Japanese bureaucracy totally agreeing with his points.

Straightjacket Society review

Amazon link

After he published the book he was finally fired for a bullshit reason and died a few years later. The book became very popular in the 90s.

The late Japanese psychiatrist & former bureaucrat Masao Miyamoto's 1995 book Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan...

Or, his 1995 in the UK (probably the same one Japanese Embassy officials in the US threw a fit over earlier):

• "CASTRATION" - THE MAJOR GOAL OF JAPANESE EDUCATION, AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO GOVERNMENT DEREGULATION
  
  
• Mental Castration, the HIV Scandal, and the Japanese Bureaucracy
  
  

Straitjacket Society does a great job at illustrating Japanese work culture -- I'd recommend reading it if you can get your hands on a copy.

For those of you down voting me, you need to read more. Start with Straitjacket Society: An Insider's Irreverent View of Bureaucratic Japan by Dr. Masao Miyamoto a well-known, Yale educated psychiatrist.

"Miyamoto, a Tokyo-born psychiatrist who spent 10 years in the U.S. as a postdoctoral student at Yale and as a Cornell Medical College professor, returned to Japan in 1986 to join the Ministry of Health and Welfare. His years in the West ill-prepared him to accept Japanese group-think, which he perceives as an adolescent syndrome and a form of institutionalized masochism. He refused to sacrifice his personal life to it; chafed against the officially sanctioned gold-bricking that constituted much of his job; argued with his supervisors; and became isolated from his peers. Far worse, he shocked the bureaucracy by publicly criticizing it in articles and in this book, which was published in Japan this past September and became a bestseller. While Western observers have made similar criticisms of Japanese society, none have offered the same insider's detail and credentials. Miyamoto's account of his absurd experiences is streaked with outrage, but his descriptions of how laws are written, how budgets are made, how careers proceed and how workers behave contribute valuable social and psychological insights into Japanese society. " Following that you should be very motivated to learn even more so then check out The Anatomy of Dependence by Takeo Doi. Good luck.

Some food for thought:
1)
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4770018487/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_ja_JP=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A&qid=1497715637&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Straitjacket+society&dpPl=1&dpID=51W2BFZZGEL&ref=plSrch


2)
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/0809039435/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?__mk_ja_JP=%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A&qid=1497715742&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=alex+kerr&dpPl=1&dpID=512x9dkcRcL&ref=plSrch