Ruth Benedict, in her classic if controversial 1946 anthropological study of Japan, concluded that Japanese morality was governed by shame while that of Americans was regulated by guilt. Individual Americans were, of course, prone to shame and Japanese could “react as strongly as any Puritan to a private accumulation of guilt”. But, as a rule, Americans’ code of conduct was policed by a private conscience while that of the Japanese was governed by fear of public shaming.

What, then, would Benedict have made of recent events when a trader working for Japan’s Mizuho Securities accidentally tapped a disastrous order into his computer? Instead of selling one share for Y610,000 (€4,400), he mistakenly offloaded 610,000 shares at a bargain-basement Y1 each.