It's not fair that one girl gets to play Snow White, Japanese parents pressured teachers, so the school decided to modify the play slightly: 25 Snow Whites, no dwarfs and no wicked witch!
Actually, the "25 Snow Whites" play is part of a new trend of hyper-aggressive parentings in Japan and may signal a transformation in the basic character of a Japanese society:
Across Japan teachers are reporting an astonishing change in the character of parents, who, after decades of respectful silence, have become a super-aggressive army of complainers. The problem is that nobody can decide whether this is a good thing or not. Japan's mass media has opted to demonise them: a lavish television drama starting next month will present the monster parents as a vile symptom of a society that has lost all respect for its traditions and decorum. [...]
Within the category of monster parent Professor Morotomi identifies the most potent strain: the “teacher hunters”, who conspire in small groups to ensure that a particular teacher is dismissed. Occasionally, he said, this involves physically mobbing their victim at the school gates and screaming abuse until a letter of resignation is signed on the spot.
“The monsters are created in family restaurants and coffee shops — places where the mothers meet each other to talk and relax,” said Professor Morotomi. “Simple chats spiral into ‘emergency meetings'... the conversation becomes more emotional and radical and suddenly what began as a simple complaint becomes a monsterised army of parents.” The sudden switch marks what many believe is the symptom of deeper social troubles at the heart of Japan, a transformation that took root during Japan's long economic downturn of the 1990s and whose effects have only now erupted.
That's probably debatable. Especially the "voluntarily" part. If McDonald's restaurants spring up all over Iraq, will you still be sticking to the "voluntarily" argument?
As far as how it relates to this story, I don't know if it's really American influence at all. I thought Japan had a highly competitive society anyway. This is just taken to the extreme: parents competing to make their child #1 (even if everyone else's child is also #1).
There are plenty of toxic cross-cultural influences out there. The greatest forced proliferation of Western culture came via the sword and the gun and thanks to the Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese and English empires.
So before you start complaining about how horrid America's influence is, I remind you that America's influence in the world is largely voluntarily cultural; nobody's forcing McDonald's on anyone.
All these countries had perfectly reasonable cultures until America starting infecting the rest of the world with it's putrid influence!
I don't know about you, but sometimes I wake up in the morning and scream, "Why me!? Why was I born AMERICAN!?