Cold-Hearted Society: Social Systems and the Observation of Insensitivity

Contemporary Japan is frequently described as a cold-hearted society. The emblematic case is the jiko sekinin (self-responsibility) discourse: when two Japanese civilians were taken hostage by the Islamic State in 2015, a significant portion of public commentary blamed the victims rather than expressing solidarity. This chapter argues that cold-heartedness is not a moral condition of individuals but a description produced by social systems. The chapter proceeds in three steps. First, drawing on the concept of social system as observer, it establishes that what appears as societal indifference is better understood as observational insensitivity: social systems whose code repertoire is inadequate to the complexity of their environment. Second, it introduces the notion of desiring desiring—the reflexive structure of recognition-seeking in late modern society—to show that the warm/cold code used to diagnose cold-heartedness is itself structurally productive of the gap it laments. Third, it analyzes the jiko sekinin discourse as a deviation-amplifying process in which a cliché, repeatedly circulated through traditional and social media in a mutual escalation dynamic, polarizes public opinion and renders categories of suffering structurally invisible. The chapter concludes that cold-heartedness is not a moral failure to be deplored but a circuit problem to be analyzed.