When I lived in Tokyo I used to remember the trains being filled with drunks sleeping it off on their commute home, so it's not anything British I'd say.
Alcohol consumption in Japan: different culture, different rules
Dave Milne
Tokyo
When darkness falls and blinking neon brightens the often drab cities and towns of Japan, white-collar workers crowd into tiny bars — there are 15 000 in Tokyo alone — and unwind by sipping Suntory Gold whisky and water at $15 a shot. Tradesmen and labourers head for "standbars" and gulp down plastic cups of shochu, cheaper distilled spirits dispensed from vending machines. And although there is little absenteeism in Japan due to drinking, the country's doctors are worried — problem drinkers numbered 3 million at the last tally.
Japan's thirst has continued unabated long after the economic twilight fell on the Land of the Rising Sun. "There is no question that alcoholism is increasing in Japan," says Dr. Hiorakai Kono, former director of the National Institute of Alcoholism in Tokyo. "What astonishes us is the size of the problem."
Problem drinking cuts across all levels of society, according to the latest study by the Leisure Development Research Centre in Tokyo. Sixty percent of problem drinkers are salaried businessmen who claim that getting drunk with clients or coworkers is part of their job and a mark of company loyalty. To refuse a drink from the boss is a terrible insult that can damage a career. And although alcohol consumption is now decreasing in most industrialized countries, it has quadrupled in Japan since 1960.
Drinking is not a moral issue here, since there is no religious prohibition against alcohol consumption, and the temperance movement has never had an impact. And unlike many Westerners, the Japanese don't regard alcohol as a drug.
Traditionally, there has been an indulgent attitude toward those who drink too much — and for good reason. In a tightly knit society where concealing emotions and frustrations is a highly developed and necessary part of maintaining "consensus," getting drunk is a socially sanctioned safety valve. "Alcohol here plays the role of psychiatry in the West," says Charles Pomeroy, former president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan and a Tokyo resident for 45 years. "I think the country would explode without
it."
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/167/4/388
It's definitely true that Japanese "salarymen" have to go drinking with their colleagues / clients several evenings / week, and that alcohol serves as a valve.
Lived in Helsinki some years too, and Scandinavians there and in Stockholm where we also partied quite a bit can drink like crazy too, we Germans like our beer and wine here, etc.
