One great thing about living in Japan is the consideration, or omoiyari, people here commonly show for others. My newspaper delivery guy climbs the 25 steps to my front door and deposits a copy of The Japan Times in my mailbox every morning, rain or shine. His colleagues in the U.S. — my home country — might toss the paper from a moving vehicle in the general direction of a customer's front yard. Both are just doing their jobs, but my guy considerately spares me effort (and exercise), at no profit to himself.

Jishuku, often translated as "self-restraint," can also be framed as an expression of consideration. When Emperor Hirohito was dying of terminal cancer in 1988, many journalists knew the truth, but the story did not run on the front pages of Japan's major newspapers. It could be argued that the purpose of this media jishuku was to spare not only the Emperor himself, but the Imperial Family and the Japanese people in general from shock and distress.

But jishuku has come to have another, more troubling meaning: self-censorship. Following the Emperor Hirohito's death on Jan. 7, 1989, normal TV programming was suspended for days in favor of eulogistic documentaries and reverential news shows, while businesses closed and events were canceled by the thousands. I thought at the time it was uncanny — as though the postwar period, with its Occupation-supported freedom of expression, never happened.