I recently visited Japan for the first time. I am not familiar with its politics, institutional systems, or ideological debates. Therefore, I don’t write this as an expert on Japanese culture or its social dynamics, but simply as a curious observer—a typical tourist—who, from a libertarian perspective shaped by the Austrian School of Economics, couldn’t help but be positively surprised by certain everyday behaviors that quietly embody principles deeply aligned with a philosophy of liberty. Specifically, three ideas stood out.
The first was the way consumers are treated. Upon entering any store, one is greeted with a respectful bow and a warm welcome. Upon leaving—even without having purchased anything—thanks are given again. This attitude is clearly not the result of regulation, but a genuine expression of respect for the person who, by their mere presence, legitimizes the existence of the business and, therefore, the efforts of the owner and employees.
This recurrent situation embodies the principle of consumer sovereignty, as Ludwig von Mises explains in Human Action(1949, Ch. XV, §4, p. 270), in the section titled The Sovereignty of the Consumers:
The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.
The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the land. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what Quantities.
Therefore, in Japan, the ethics of voluntary exchange are silently internalized, lived through daily business actions.
The second thing that stood out was the deep, almost instinctive respect for other people’s property. As typical tourists, we lost a valuable item in a public place—and to our surprise, it was still there hours later. While this is just one anecdote, it reflects what appears to be a broader cultural ethic. In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard emphasizes that private property is not just a political convenience but the moral cornerstone (the part that makes the system coherent) of libertarian philosophy. The entire ethical structure of the system depends on this principle. Any attempt to ground liberty in collective aims or utilitarian trade-offs dilutes its coherence. Libertarianism draws its coherence entirely from the principle of property rights.
In Japan, this moral norm does not seem to require legal codification—it is manifested in the simple act of not taking what does not belong to you. There appears to be an ethical, idiosyncratic structure that operates without the need for coercion because it is already embedded in social conduct.
Lastly—and perhaps most remarkably—is the overall atmosphere of non-aggression and quiet respect for personal space. On trains, no one talks on the phone. In public areas, people avoid pushing, interrupting, or intruding. It is a society that behaves as though it has internalized what Hans-Hermann Hoppe outlines in A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (1989, Ch. 7, p. 159): that the ethical and argumentative basis of an internally coherent social order is non-invasion. Hoppe writes:
Thus it can be stated that whenever a person claims that some statement can be justified, he at least implicitly assumes the fol-lowing norm to be justified: “Nobody has the right to uninvitedly aggress against the body of any other person and thus delimit or restrict anyone’s control over his own body.” This rule is implied in the concept of justification as argumentative justification. Justifying means justifying without having to rely on coercion. In fact, if one formulates the opposite of this rule, i.e., “everybody has the right to uninvitedly aggress against other people” (a rule, by the way, that would pass the formal test of the universalization principle!), then it is easy to see that this rule is not, and never could be, defended in argumentation. To do so would in fact have to presuppose the validity of precisely its opposite, i.e., the aforementioned principle of nonaggression.
In Japan, it seems that everyone simply pursues their own ends without coercively intruding on others.
This is not written to idealize Japan. Like every society, it has contradictions, rigidities, and bureaucratic structures. But what made the experience meaningful was discovering that there are cultures where key principles of the Austrian School of Economics and libertarian traditions are practiced daily: the supremacy of voluntary exchange, the inviolability of private property, and the ethic of not bothering others.
The statist law should not do by force what individuals can do for themselves through mutual respect and exchange. Japan, in a certain sense, shows us what respect can look like when it is learned rather than imposed. And in a majestic way, it seems that this order we speak of does not need to shout to be noticed. It is precisely its silence—this quiet, almost invisible order—that makes it so magnificent.
In short, it seemed evident to me that Japan has internalized a liberal culture as part of its national character.
