"The nail that sticks up gets hammered down!"
Most visitors to Japan end up bludgeoned with this weighty axiom early on during their stay. Sharp notions of group-centered society and the awesome pressures to conform get pounded deep into the psyche, and before long the typical observer believes most Japanese would rather be anything but different.
Yet is this timeworn maxim still in effect? For these days Japanese culture seems to have quite a few nails sticking up and out at all angles imaginable, with very few heads on guard for hammers.