I’m a believer in the broken window theory. Basically, if you are in a neighborhood, city, region or country that looks downtrodden, crime/depression will go up.
Japan is the opposite – everywhere you go from trains to vending machines to advertisements there are cute and happy characters. Cute/happy characters are everywhere and TV shows are often very positive.
So why does Japan have a higher than average suicide rate and why is depression higher in Japan than in many other countries?