The Japanese social value that causes government, business and individuals to give to each other is called "giri". Giri is a cultural value that does not map at all cleanly to a Western social value like obligation. "giri" means something like give-receive-membership-obligation-honor. The Japanese are eclectic, so they do give for other reasons, but not when it involves family, nation or other key social groups.
The social obligation to receive, and the obligation to gift in "giri" is very strong. A demand for giri comes not as a request to the giver from the receiver of the gift or service - this is too direct and weakens group cohesion. When the demand is expressed, it come's from the group head to and on behalf of everyone in the group, and it calls on the members to put their membership in that group above other needs. The person who does not give as obligated or receive as obligated is humiliated and dishonors the entire group, which does happen. The experience of giri permeates all Japanese relationships and groups.
The Japanese language marks group membership relationships in speech. So to speak and listen everyone is continually aware of which groups they are speaking in and out of, and also the groups' of the people they are speaking to. Class and the social level of group members are also marked in speech. Everyone in Japan is a member of many groups, which include family, school, work group, company, clan, and nation. People do become marginalized and lose group membership.
The Japanese prime minister's speech after the tsunami invoked publicly in the Japanese their membership of the national group, above others. In context, no Japanese considers themselves to be acting as individuals, outside a group, nor acting independently out of free will. In context of the tsunami, any gift or help is performed as an act of group membership, to increase membership cohesion of the groups.
Trying to apply Western cultural values or terms in order to understand Japanese behavior assumes that equivalent cultural values or memes can be found in the Japanese culture. This seems like a reasonable starting point, but after trying this for a century, Japan scholars, ethnographers and so on had made little progress using Western ideas to describe Japanese beliefs, and changed to other approaches to understanding Japanese culture. When we say that the cultural distance is great, we mean that the cultural values or memes in one culture do not have clear equivalent values or memes in the other culture. Trying to describe the Japanese in Western terms will no doubt continue. Using Western cultural terms to describe a distant culture is a bit like the problem of using the part names of a camel to describe a bicycle. What no camel's in Japan?
