Japan's Flirtation with Alcohol Prohibition

[@UnseenJapan]

Thanks for tuning in for this one! A lot of research went into it - hope everyone enjoys it! More coming soon.

[@LonelyDistance]

Y'all knocked it out of the park with this one, especially with all of the 外国人 ads 😂

[@noahoskow4551]

The wonderful thing is just how many of those ads there were to choose from. Could easily do a whole video just on foreign celebrities appearing in Japanese alcohol advertising.

[@henryd6163]

Thank you for making such thought provoking content. I always wondered why my coworkers here in japan love to drink all the time.

[@UnseenJapan]

Thanks for watching! Drinking culture can indeed be pretty hard to avoid over here.

[@vfholloway8667]

Love this channel, the videos are so high quality! Really interesting details about Japan I never even thought to research

[@noahoskow4551]

Thanks! Glad we can keep bringing up topics people hadn't previously considered - when I read a paragraph about the attempt to bring prohibition to Japan in "Japanese Drinks," it immediately raised my curiosity. Until then, the idea of Japanese teetotlers wanting their own Prohibition had never even crossed my mind.

[@rustomkanishka]

Working with Japanese students and the like made me realise that they have institutionalised drinking, the way the Brits do. Their culture is exceedingly polite and is based in losing face. So the guy bowing and saying 'hai' to you might be wishing your grandma's corpse is munched on by the family pet, but he'd still be polite. Drinking means everyone lets down their hair a bit and chills out, lowers the stress level in the room, and it might just be possible to get some honest reactions out of someone. It also helps when you have a karaoke machine around, because even if you're braying like a donkey you don't tell your boss how you really feel. It also seems to be ritualised in older folks, where not drinking was rude, like boomer era tech workers. Anyway, had they actually gone down the path of prohibition they'd have just made the Yakuza stronger than it already is and nobody needs that. I'll add that before and during world war 2 the Japanese government did float a program to rehabilitate opium addicts, making them productive memebers of the wartime economy. The program did really well in occupied China. They cured opium addiction with crystal meth. They also tried introducing Walter White's finest to their sphere of influence during world war 2 and it was probably a bad idea.

[@sshrdlu]

kirrin laga biro kudasai

[@UnseenJapan]

何、持っているの！？