This is spot on. There's a reason that people's last name comes before their first over there. It's a low trust society where the only thing that matters is your clan.

Last name first has nothing to do with trust. Japan is one of the highest-trust societies in the world (see crime stats) and last name comes first. I live in China and have lived 13 years in Japan so I know what I am talking about.

The order of the last name shows the importance of your family over yourself. Family is far more important over there because it better shields you from society, while simultaneously contributing to the ills of society, i.e. too much self interest vs concern for the whole society; leading to a very difficult to break circular pattern of corruption.

Yes Japan is very different from China if not most of Asia. It's also not hard to see that Japan probably adopted the naming order since they also adopted the Chinese writing system.

I'm Chinese. I was born in Asia and I still routinely visit and keep in touch with my family over there.

To be clear, I'm not saying every Chinese person in China is like this, nor am I saying that it will always be like this. Looking at both HK and Taiwan, things will eventually change for the better in the long term; especially when you consider the long term effects of the one child policy. However (speaking to fellow Chinese people) what I'm describing is real and there's no use in ignoring it, and I feel that there's value in helping people, who aren't of Asian, Hispanic, or Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, etc...) background; to understand it.

The family name lineage is definitely important in Japan as well. Just look at all the Japanese companies named after their founder's family names e.g. Toyota (Toyoda), Mazda (Matsuda), Honda. Also, their main form of religion, Shinto, is basically the worship of ancestors.

It's just a signal of a collectivist society.

One reaction people might have to this is 'ugh China'. Another one might be 'ugh rich people'. Article reminded me of the Brazilian banker who ran over a bunch of cyclists a few years ago.

The way that's described seems like a society/culture of sociopaths..

You can find people with that mentality in any American city. Sociopaths are pretty evenly distributed across the human population. It's just that here the incentives are different. And there, money and connections are an absolute get out of jail free card.

That said, I'm surprised there isn't a greater culture of vengeance killings over issues like this.

... Committed with vehicles and which involve running the person over four times, making sure to get out of the vehicle to steer your car tire over their skull ...

Been living in Vietnam for the last five years. It's the same way here. Maybe it's the Chinese influence?

Not the Chinese influence, the Communist one. That said the morality or lack of same shown by some Chinese or Vietnamese people is far closer to the historical norm for humans than that shown by individuals in societies with rule of law. In pre state societies on average 15% of men died violently and morality was something that applied to the ingroup, not the outgroup.

For further reading on this I can highly recommend Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...

You sure that in Vietnam that there are hit-to-kill incidents?

I thought that thing is exclusive to China. Or at least like that, since I have a few people who got hit by vehicles but only injured, drivers don't even tries to finish off.

I was referring to the comment that family loyalties seem to be all that really count, not specifically traffic accidents.

Family loyalty seems to be a Asian-centric trait, especially in Chinese.

No wonder Vietnam have that similarity since they have been influenced by China for 1000 year.