I impressed when I read this article of the interview of Yu Darvish.
Read the article: ダルビッシュ有が否定する日本の根性論。「根性論のないアメリカで、なぜ優秀な人材が生まれるのか」(REAL SPORTS) - Yahoo!ニュース
In the article, Yu describes that Japanese have feared to change anything and wanted to maintain everything. I think so too.
ダルビッシュ:変えるのが怖いんですよ、日本人は。基本的に変化をものすごく恐れる。現状を変えなければ、今の状態を維持できるわけですからね。
"Japanese fear to change anything. Japanese think that they are able to maintain the situation as of right now just by not changing anything."
I think almost all of Japanese are gotten education in the atmosphere: we have to be the same as another.
Do you know "Izime (いじめ)"? This means to bully someone. In Japan, it often occurs that a boy/girl is bullyed if he/she do something difference or to be different from others, especially in elementary or jurior high school. To be defferent is strange, not minority in Japan. I can delare that's false. If we were in the period of isolation, it might be all right because we didn't have to have changed.
We Japanese have to teach that it's OK to be defferent from others and we have to change the world to our children. We Japanese have to teach that we have to be uninhibited to children. The parson who try to challenge something new is not a foolish, but a cool.