And insularity means Italy and Japan are conservative in the most basic senses: how communities resist change or families have an instinct to sock away money. Neither the Japanese nor Italians, in general, jump jobs if they can help it. There are strong expectations, increasingly resisted but still deeply felt, for trades to pass down generations. Such conservatism provides protections, even as it makes one vulnerable in times of change.
The quest for perfection can be obsessive, yielding some of the countries' greatest glories: knife blades, cameras, cultured pearls, kaiseki cuisine and Kabuki, to name a few in Japan; handcrafted shirts, the perfect noodle, Ferraris, furniture and Barbarescos, among others in Italy. In both cultures, there is little distinction between craftsmanship and art.
But perfection can be stifling. It can make people miss the big picture and lead to baffling mistakes. It fosters clannishness. It can crush the spirit of all but the strongest, who might emerge from years of apprenticeship, doing the same task relentlessly, with the confidence to innovate and explore.
While a brotherhood of craft has value, it is also a collusive force that rises from seas, fields and workshops and wraps its tentacles around political power centers - Nagatacho in Japan, Montecitorio in Italy. The cult of perfection may also not be the best way to run a 21st-century economy, fostering what economists call low productivity.
Provincialism informs race issues. Italy is one of the few western democracies in which a senator could compare a black cabinet minister to an orangutan and get away with it. In Japan, cabinet ministers are almost Berlusconian in their talent for giving offense - a finance minister last year offered his wisdom on constitutional reform by suggesting that Japan could learn a lot from the Nazis on that front. Both nations are notorious for electing mediocre personalities, so one should be too shocked. More surprising is how ordinary people can utter strikingly racist comments while overwhelming foreigners with kindness.
Both countries need immigrants to invigorate the economy. Instead, Italy and Japan remain two of the hardest countries to obtain citizenship without a blood link.
In Japan, big business and the government erect a fortress blocking foreign takeovers, and private equity is a particularly evil word among the Japanese - although such attitudes may be changing. In Italy a thicket of Byzantine regulation - which even Italians admit to not understanding - is a major deterrent for foreign companies to set up business.
Family and respect for elders, the heart of provincial life, make life a grande bellezza in both countries. But these are also problems. Old people block the young from fulfilling dreams by sitting on wealth and power. The young live with parents until well into adulthood, with ambition too often gently smothered in a pillow of love.
Both Japan and Italy have problems, but so many of these can also make these countries so appealing.
Take productivity. There is a beauty in rolling into a Japanese gasoline station to find oneself swarmed by attendants who greet, wipe and pamper while another fills the tank. In Italy, one buys a scontrino at the caffè, hands the slip to the barman, who makes the coffee and instructs another busy colleague to fetch a cornetto. Both are textbook examples of inefficiency, and no law makes Japanese and Italians perpetuate them, yet they are part of the poetry of life. Both countries may or may not be better off without such services. But don't ask this free-market globalist who finds himself happiest and most at home in Italy and Japan.
