Chapotraphouse

We've bickered?

No, I've bickered and you've had better things to do, which is fine.

Ok. But in the UK Thatcher said there is no society and they've actively worked towards the goal of not having one through ultra individualism.

Fun fact: That's not quite her assertion, because she also said that families are real as well as individuals and should be part of these organizing principles. I guess Thatcher is a familial collectivist! (Really it was her pandering to traditionalists as a compromise to her atomizing agenda, of course)

Whereas I am quite certain that the view of fitting into society

Yes, but I think that you will find that a) what "fitting into society" means can be dramatically different even within the same conceptual domain from place to place, and b) which domains "fitting into society" is used as a justification for varies from place to place and is indeed used in countries like America in several contexts (ones where it is convenient to capitalism). a) is the main reason for my criticism, because it makes "collectivism" a difficult term to make useful generalizations about.

You can see this by comparing Japan against other "collectivist" societies, like East Germany, where there is quite a lot of difference in their understandings of what fitting into society means.

Also, capitalist westerners talk a big game about nonconformity but it just isn't true most of the time, not unless you're rich, and then it proves that you're better than everyone else. The biggest element of genuine individualism is that you are meant to regard other workers with apathy or contempt, but you're still supposed to be a cog in the machine if you can't swing being a Captain of Industry. And socially, well, I think most of the userbase knows better than I do that nonconformity is met with actual violence in some places (though on a much smaller scale this has affected even me, too).

and not being an individual

No, this just isn't true. There are points of social discipline that they may have that we don't, but that's not the same as not being an individual. This is like what liberals say about communist states (though I am of course not insinuating that you have an agenda or contempt in saying this like liberals do).

but moderating yourself for the sake of everyone is different over in Japan. That's what I'm getting at.

Yes, though this is just a slightly more specific phrasing of "fitting in."

These are not like the black jobs in Japan. The black jobs in Japan have very real emotional, and verbal abuse involved in them. They are at the very extremes of what we call workplace bullying in the UK.

When I said "abusive" before I was including verbal abuse, and even the example around quitting that I gave is a form of emotional abuse, but more importantly it is absolutely true that there are many shitty jobs here in the states where the boss/manager will disparage you, make insinuations, guilt trip you and so on. It's well-known that there are people who will basically use your desperation to make you a punching bag.

As an aside, I think it might be worth giving further consideration to how, in the Japanese context, it is more of a professional expectation to stay at one company for your career in many office jobs, which can make changing jobs much harder because you're typically not who the hiring staff are looking for. We can call this "collectivism" if you want, but this particular aspect is not generally a constraint stemming from the employee's values.