The Japanese were described as secretive, narrow-minded egoists with no moral code or international outlook, and may be secretly developing nuclear weapons, in an analysis of the country's psyche written by Britain's departing ambassador to Tokyo in 1972.
Sir John Pilcher wrote in a letter to Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, dated June 8, 1972, that because Japan emphasizes following formal rules of behavior above all else -- something he refers to as the "form" -- the Japanese lack a moral code. This, he said, is accentuated when Japanese go abroad.
When Japanese leave the formality of Japan and travel overseas, they are "utterly at sea," Pilcher said, adding that Japanese people's basic instincts take over when they are not guided by formal rules.
"Thus the bad man restrained in Japan by form with a sense of shame, but no inkling of sin, behaves abroad unabashedly badly," Pilcher wrote. "The good man may, of course, exhibit laudably his virtue.