For people to become mature, they need to balance their feelings of self-respect with a coolheaded recognition of the need to see oneself in relative terms. These days, there seems to be a tendency among some Japanese to give up this balance and push forward their sentiments of self-esteem.

The modesty that regards impudent self-advertisement as shameful must have been among Japan's traditional values. But nationalists who loudly call for respect of tradition are succumbing to narcissism more frequently than other groups.

An NHK chairman who tries to justify the World War II "comfort women" system by saying that other countries did the same during wartime, and a member of the public broadcaster's board of governors who denies Japan's wartime aggression with his revisionist view of history, symbolize such the spirit of the times.