First-time visitors to Japan are amazed by the extraordinary cleanliness everywhere.
Students sit in class, with backpacks on their desks, seemingly ready to jump up and run home after a long school day (seven 50-minute lessons). But they have to listen attentively to the teacher, who is telling them about plans for the next day.
And finally – the traditional closing announcement: “Okay, today’s cleaning order. Rows one and two clean the classroom. Rows three and four – the hallway and stairs. Row five – the toilets.”
Groans are heard from those in the fifth row, but everyone stands up, grabs mops, rags, and buckets from the closet at the back of the classroom, and scatters to their assigned areas, including the toilets. This happens in all Japanese schools, every day.
As BBC notes, in Japan you quickly get used to living in cleanliness. But here you won’t find any trash cans on the streets or street sweepers. Why is this country so clean?
The answer is simple: the residents keep it that way. “For all 12 years of school, from elementary to high school, cleaning is part of the daily schedule,” says Maiko Awane, deputy director of the Tokyo office of the Hiroshima Prefectural Government. “And at home, parents also teach us that it’s very bad not to keep your room and your things clean and tidy.”
Incorporating this element of public awareness into the curriculum helps children develop responsibility for everything around them. Who would want to dirty and damage a school they clean themselves every day?
When arriving at school, students leave their shoes in lockers and change into sneakers. At home, people leave their outdoor shoes at the entrance. Repairmen who come to fix something take off their shoes and walk around the apartment in socks. As children grow up, their area of responsibility for cleanliness expands – first to the neighborhood, then to the city and the whole country.
Even Japanese football fans are cleanliness enthusiasts, as they proved during the World Cups in Brazil (2014) and Russia (2018), astonishing the world by picking up all their trash at the stadium after the match. Japanese football players also left their locker rooms in perfect order. “What an example for other teams!” wrote FIFA coordinator Priscilla Janssens on Twitter.
“We Japanese are very concerned about how we appear in the eyes of others,” explains Awane. “We don’t want to be thought of as people who lack the education or upbringing to clean up after themselves.”
The same happens at Japanese music festivals. At the Fuji Rock Festival, the oldest and largest in Japan, fans carry all their trash until they find a trash bin. Smokers are asked to bring their own ashtrays and “refrain from smoking where smoke may bother others,” the festival website says. Can you imagine that at the famous Woodstock festival in 1969, held in rain, mud, and unsanitary conditions?
You see examples of social responsibility in the daily lives of Japanese people. For instance, around 8 a.m., office workers and store staff clean the streets in front of their workplaces. Children voluntarily participate in monthly neighborhood cleanups, collecting trash on streets near the school. In residential areas, cleaning is a regular event, although there is usually almost nothing to clean.
Even banknotes come out of ATMs crisp and clean, like a freshly starched shirt. Nevertheless, money tends to collect dirt, so in Japan you are never handed a bill directly. In stores, hotels, and even taxis, you will see a small tray on which money is placed.
They also take into account invisible dirt – bacteria and germs. When a Japanese person catches a cold or flu, they wear a medical mask to avoid infecting others. This reduces the spread of viruses during seasonal epidemics and saves money on medical services and reduces losses from missed workdays.
How did the Japanese become such cleanliness enthusiasts? This is clearly not something new, as even in 1600, the navigator Will Adams, the first Englishman to set foot on Japanese soil, encountered it. Giles Milton, in his biography of Adams, “Samurai William,” notes that “the aristocracy were scrupulously clean,” sewers and toilets were in exemplary order, and bathhouses were fragrant with aromas, while the streets of English cities at that time “were often overflowing with excrement.”
The Japanese were horrified that Europeans neglected personal hygiene. This concern can be partly explained by practical considerations. In Japan’s hot, humid climate, food spoils quickly, bacteria multiply, and viruses spread. So following hygiene rules benefits health.
But the full explanation lies deeper. Cleanliness is an important concept in Buddhism, which came to Japan from China and Korea between the 6th and 8th centuries. And in Zen Buddhism, which entered Japan from China in the 12th-13th centuries, daily tasks such as preparing food and cleaning are considered spiritual exercises akin to meditation.
In “The Book of Tea” by Okakura Kakuzo, a classic work on the tea ceremony and its underlying Zen philosophy, the author writes that in the tea room, “...everything is absolutely clean. Not a speck of dust in the darkest corner. Because if a speck of dust is found, then the host is not a tea master.”
This was written in 1906, but it holds true today. Before the start of a ceremony at the Seifukan tea house in Hiroshima, you will see the tea master’s assistant in a kimono on all fours literally dabbing the tatami mats on the floor with sticky tape made of brown paper, thus picking up the tiniest speck of dust.
Why then are not all Buddhist countries as zealous about cleanliness? The reason may be that long before Buddhism, Japan had its own religion – Shinto (Shinto, "the way of the gods"), at the heart of which lies purity and which to this day is the foundation of Japanese identity. In the West, it is sometimes said that cleanliness is next to godliness. In Shinto, it is godliness itself. So Buddhist cleanliness fell on soil prepared by Shinto – the Japanese were already practicing it.
An important concept in Shinto is kegare (impurity, defilement), as opposed to purity. Examples of kegare can be many things – from death and illness to any unpleasant thing. To avoid kegare, frequent purification rituals are needed. "If a person suffers from kegare, it can bring harm to the whole society," explains Noriaki Ikeda, an assistant Shinto priest at Hiroshima's Kanda Shrine. "So practicing cleanliness is vitally important. It purifies you and helps avert disasters for the whole society. That's why Japan is a very clean country."
Such concern for others is quite understandable in the context of, say, contagious diseases. But it also works on a more prosaic level – for example, cleaning up after yourself. As Awane says, "We Japanese believe that we should not burden others with our laziness and unwillingness to clean up after ourselves."
Examples of ritual purification are encountered every day. Before entering a Shinto shrine, worshippers wash their hands and rinse their mouths with water from a stone basin at the entrance.
Many Japanese bring their new car to a shrine so that a priest can purify it. He uses a feather wand called an "onusa" and waves it over the car. Then he opens the doors, hood and trunk to purify the car inside. The priest also uses the onusa for purifying people and for purifying the land on which a new building is to be constructed.
If you live in Japan, you quickly get used to such a clean lifestyle. You stop blowing your nose in public, you start using hand sanitizer that shops and offices provide for customers and clients. You learn to sort your household trash into 10 categories to help with proper recycling. And soon, as Will Adams noted as early as the beginning of the 17th century, you notice that the quality of your life has improved.
Then, when you return to your homeland, you experience shock at the sight of barbarians sneezing and coughing right in your face. Or entering your home in dirty shoes. Which is unthinkable in Japan.
But there is still hope. After all, Pokémon, sushi and camera phones didn't conquer the world overnight either.