An interesting and thought-provoking post. You sound very upbeat and kind.
Tokyo is a city, and to a large extent Japan is a country, where people with handicaps both mental and physical are hidden from society in far to many instances. My wife has worked at a handicapped kids school for 20+years and she constantly laments this shortcoming of society here. It is a shameful truth about Japan that people who need a little more understanding are not even allowed by their parents to venture out of a very limited life. There is currently a huge, and I mean massive, push on to incorporate these children into schools with kids born with all there chromosome pairs in order. It is as if Japan has finally realized that the ability to hold a glass of water or raise a head is not the definition of person. Still miles from where they should be but it is an issue of awareness at least now.
As for getting up to give a seat to someone that is not a silver seat, I agree from my own cultural perspective of chivalry and kindness it should be done, but here it is not the same culture and we cannot expect them to believe that any more than they can expect Catholics to stop believing some guy turned water into wine. When in Rome, respect the Roman culture.
I would have to say though that your assumption that because an individual's needs are greater than another's that society should make allowances for them at a subway ride level is completely off base. In terms of care, access, oh absolutely, but in terms of a person with greater needs having chosen the subway, no, not on a bet.
People who need more space are not entitled to it because they need it. People who need more space need to work within the parameters laid out. It sucks that there is not a system in place to accommodate each and every person's individual needs, but the system functions for the vast majority of people as it is. It is a system designed for the many not the few. If a person with a child needs more space, take a bus or a taxi or ride the train when there is likely more room. This is not what you may wish to hear but they are the options. It is what it is and no amount of wishing the world would spin just for a given person will make it do so.
But I am not right and neither are you.
What you call common sense of polite in your culture, I might call selfish and imposing in another. Your statement of " They should be accommodated." is the flawed point of view. Not because of what it says, but because it seeks to impose a set of values held by one person on another.
You see the fact is, if we want to discuss actual facts, that I can come up with anecdote after anecdote to show the kindness of strangers where you might point out the opposite. Neither one of us would be proving a thing by doing so however. Your experience is yours, mine is mine, but one thing we can both agree on is that Canada and Japan are very different places, YYZ and TYO are vastly different in composition, religious morality background, culture, etc., etc., etc. My message is accept the differences and do not try and impose your own values on another place. It may be that they find you equally out of line you know
well have to agree to disagree on the right to special treatment and that's fine with me...
but that is a debate that we have in Canada all the time and is litigated here much like it is litigated in other countries all the time. here we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Codes that constitutionally and legislatively recognizes equal treatment (not just of the disabled, but women and many others) and that does not mean equal treatment....but goes well beyond that. Canada has a dirty human rights record also but I think we are generally going in the right direction...albeit at times regress as others do.
that said, when it comes to equality, in many respects, I don't agree when in Rome. I don't agree with the way women are treated in oppressed countries around the world. I certainly am not going to keep my mouth shut about it.
that said, your entitled to your views. I am sure your wife knows things first hand and far better than I ever will specifically as to the disabled in Japan...or the "obstacles" as I believe the world literally translates to.
either way, I am glad I don't live in Japan where children like my child would be very poor off I would think given the current society views....and they are not that well off here. I would feel even more concerned about what to do when I am dead if I lived in Japan....and this is only based on some very limited travel there and conversations with a local with a disabled child.
either way, Japan has, by its own recent legislative enactments, recognized its failures to accommodate those with disabilities. I recall it was only recently they even legislated the idea of "reasonable accommodation"....
I am certainly not getting on my high horse about Canada since we are by no means any sort of model out there.
that thing that i wonder about also, is whether we were subject to stigma by being the parents of a disabled child? I'm not sure.
I think if I lived there we would be stigmatized....even as a bengoshi...although I would only be able to be a gaikokuhō jimu bengoshi...I would probably be stigmatized anyway.
but if I get looked at upon as a rude and imposing gaijin for suggesting societies most vulnerable have a right to be accommodated and a right to differential treatment and reasonable accomodation up to undue hardship....so be it.
if it has taken japan this long to wrap its head around the disabled, how long will it take for them to accept immigration? I mean, that is unless they can figure out how to deal with their population decline...although ironically, that would mean more kids and probably more social activism to be accommodated in a system that does not...but that is another debate that japan will have to have and I will get to visit the country without needing to grapple with the same.