Back in the “good” ol days we had exile.
Bring back exile.

Perhaps a better question is why aren’t more people shunned. There are some good answers already, but I’ll throw in another reason that seems to come up sometimes.

The US is highly polarized on a lot of issues. If one can frame their shunning as one of those wedge issues, they can probably get enough people to rally around them that they escape accountability.

“I’m being deplatformed because of racism against white people!”

“We have freedom of speech in this country, so if you take everything in the Constitution absolutely literally like I do, it’s obvious I should be able to spew whatever bullshit I want. You don’t hate the Constitution and the founding fathers, do you?”

You mean like how our cults work?

It’s not something you do, it’s something that society is. Japan has a long cultural history of a few things that are absolutely foreign to Western culture (not just the USA, but Canada, Great Britain, Australia, most of western Europe, etc.)

Even in a high-stakes game of consumer-capitalism, Japan has a sense of ethics that just isn’t present elsewhere. A CEO might pull the same shady shit in Japan as they would in the US, but if they’re caught, they still mostly take responsibility - resigning in disgrace, rather than “resigning” to another company with a fat bonus, which is what we see elsewhere. I mean, three years ago McDonalds actually made news for clawing back a $105M severance package from their disgraced ex-CEO, who was having an affair with several of his employees. The fact of the matter is that he initially got the package, no matter what he did.

Likewise, there is an expectation of acceptable behaviour in Japan. There are all sorts of circumstances where a blind eye is turned, but they’re oddly strict - and sketchy behaviour outside of that is considered reprehensible.

So can we? Maybe in theory, but we’d have to revamp our culture - and in a direction opposite to the trajectory it’s currently on.

An important thing to know is that all cultures have practices that involve shunning people, and that they are all applied to people who did nothing wrong and are not applied to people with enough connections or wealth. Some bad things that are almost universally punished but with differences in severity are being pregnant out of wedlock, not being a member of the dominant religion, being LGBTQ+, and speaking against other cultural norms. Exactly who is shunned does vary, but Japan’s is also pretty terribly implemented.

Almost everywhere the main coubter to shunning is connections and/or wealth. Royalty, high level politicians, people like Epstein, etc. are able to get away with stuff until they piss off the wrong people and lose their connections. Some may even make it to their graves without ever being punished.

The main people that suffer from being ostracized in practice are oppressed minorities. It is never fairly applied, even if some places do a slightly better job of mostly targeting the people who deserve it.

Just my two cents, but I think there’s something to this. There was a time in the US when, as a kid, if you did something odd or questionable, you’d get called out—and if it was bad enough, maybe even shamed by your peers. Sure, it wasn’t perfect and could be taken too far, but overall, it helped shape people into more self-aware adults.

Somewhere in the late ’90s, this started fading out. Suddenly, everyone was ‘special’ and ‘living their best life.’ You couldn’t mention weight or bad behavior without backlash. Teachers became scapegoats for entitled parents. And now, here we are—half the country can’t make informed decisions, can’t have a productive discussion, and drives like traffic laws are optional.

I have a much simpler explanation. It’s because the united states is twenty six times bigger than japan.

In the United States, you can literally fuck off to the other side of the continent if if you piss off the people where you live. If your neighbors can remember you and hold a grudge, then they can ostracize you. In Japan, the cities are close enough to each other that there will be professional connections all over the place and you will not be able to escape your reputation.

Same reason, bad cops in the US can just go to a new precinct.

Have you heard of ‘cancelling’? It seems a pretty similar concept. Either way, I’m not sure we should shun people for expressing their honest opinions, that will just make them hide their opinions. We should instead try to respectfully convince them otherwise.

That happens a lot. Read about cancel culture. Or people shunned by their relatives due to religious beliefs. Also happens to people who are LGBT+. I’d say it’s a regular thing in western culture, too.

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, huh?

Terrible Americans who we’ve shunned include:

Jeffrey Epstein

Harvey Weinstein

Charles Manson

Edit: I asked ChatGPT for more examples:

Bernie Madoff

Ted Bundy

Bill Cosby (debatable, he has his defenders)

Aaron Burr

Charles Ponzi

Benedict Arnold

John Wilkes Booth

Elizabeth Holmes

Jared Fogle (lol)

Martin Shkreli

Jeffrey Dahmer

Terrible Japanese people who weren’t shunned:

Hirohito

Shiro Ishii, Other 731 leaders

Nobusuke Kishi

Issei Sagawa

Shoko Asawara

A number of Yakuza leaders

Takeshi Kitano

Junya Sano

Because money can buy your way out of a lot of problems.

Those without money are more like to get 20 year to lifetime sentences.

That concept doesnt exist so that the affluent and powerful can leverage their positions to get whatever they want whenever they want. If they had to worry about taboos, or being ostracized, they couldn’t get everything they wanted. So we’ve been conditioned a shameless society.

They are shunned by a lot of people. Where do you think all the online hate comes from? Americans have just been so radicalized that a good chunk of them don’t care anymore. It’s not a majority, but enough to make a difference in politics. As seen by the elections that just took place.