The youth revolution

s June 9 turned into June 10, crowds kept surging toward the Hachiko area west of Shibuya station. Shibuya has long been a boisterous focal point for Tokyo youth, but this was something else. Japan had just won their Group H match against Russia, and Tokyo was celebrating as if the World Cup was theirs. The honking horns and chants drowned out the megaphones of the massively outnumbered police. Yet, by the standards of most countries, an extraordinary level of order prevailed. The huge crowd was content to take over the intersection, leaping and cavorting, only when the pedestrian lights were green. A change to red, a few police whistles, and the multitude moved politely to the side. That cultural ambivalence—setting youthful exuberance against an obedience toward elders and authority—is being played out elsewhere in Japanese society, notably in the world of cell biology. Younger scientists are demanding, and in some cases receiving, more autonomy at an earlier stage of their careers. Yet, just as the crowds in Shibuya are unlikely to match past celebrations in Rome or Rio de Janeiro, it seems that Japanese science is under no threat, any time soon, of becoming another United States.