It is said that Japanese society is inhospitable to individualism (kojinshugi), with the most vocal anti-individualists being conservative educators and politicians; though some of them might defend individualism if it means "economic self-reliance."

Things were different a century ago. Then individualism was a byword for Japan's reforming intelligentsia, inspired by pioneering modernizer Yukichi Fukuzawa's proclamation of "national independence through personal independence."

So the early 20th-century philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, wrote that "it is only when individuals in society fully engage in action and express their natural talent that society progresses." Like other intellectuals, he found his individualist heroes in the plays of the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen.