Cleanliness is... mostly downstream of storefronts and the like picking shit up _all the time_.
Indeed, it’s the same in Singapore.
Despite the law and order reputation of Singapore, plenty of people regularly break laws there, including littering.
All you need to do is get off the tourist strips and you can walk down park paths with plenty of trash strewn everywhere.
What people don’t see is the army of foreign labor who is constantly picking this trash up.
The government is good at enforcement - if an area has problems with trash cameras get put up along with signs warning of the consequences, but if the cleaning staff were to disappear overnight it wouldn’t take more than 24 hours for Singapore to look quite untidy.
In terms of Western countries like the US, cleanliness does come down to an operations issue. Cleaners don’t come often enough, trash cans aren’t emptied enough and littering enforcement is weak. But it’s certainly possible to make the US as clean as Japan with surprisingly little increase in effort.
I lived in Singapore previously and currently living in Japan for the past 5 years. Japan is not like Singapore - yes you're right Singapore is a mostly government enforced society including the artificial cleanliness but Japan is not. Cleanliness in Japan is cultural, people in Japan truly care about cleanliness and it's "common sense" to them and you do not see "plenty of trash strewn about" in non-touristy areas of Japan. (Of course Japan is not some perfect society and there are places that are dirty)
If you think there's not plenty of trash strewn about, you need to spend more time out at night or down back alleys. Once the booze starts flowing or the kitchens get too busy, plenty of waste starts appearing. You're less likely to see a bunch somewhere like Meguro than you are Shibuya, but you don't exactly need to go hunting to find overfilled trashcans where people have given up and just leave stuff beside them, trash bags left out overnight besides the back door to the restaurant kitchen, etc.
(And for anyone not aware, Tokyo is a place where the entrances to plenty of places are down these back alleys - it's not just the service entrance/back doors down there. )
I mean you can just go to the streets in Shibuya at night, loads of people leave their cans wherever. Or if you head out to random small towns in Saitama and see residential spots with plenty of garbage. And you can get into the pathological stuff like gomi-yashiki but that gets into a whole other thing.
Or (the one that's so odd to me given most stations have trash cans) random drinks and the like above the urinals in lots of stations. Plenty of posters asking the dudes to please please please please please please please not leave trash there. Like I get wanting to get rid of evidence or something but they have trash cans right there!
I am not going to comment much on Singapore because I had not seen much random trash, I just really dislike cultural essentialism about cleanliness, because there's still clearly a good amount of people who are just totally not aligned with that. The cleanliness is a result of society doing things despite there being bad actors in the system!
Seems most people in this thread are on roughly the same page, but here's an anecdote to give you an idea of why people are specifically comparing to the west:
Just today I was walking home from Nakameguro station in Tokyo and saw an orphaned protein bar wrapper on the street. I was shocked, it was the first time I'd noticed obvious trash (most likely not intentionally littered) on this street in years.
While living in Manhattan last year, I grew accustomed to holding my nose when walking past actual piles of garbage strewn about the street. This is not figurative as most people have used this phrase throughout this thread—You simply leave your rotting garbage on the street for trucks to pick up (obviously stray trash would get picked up by the wind and tossed into the air, descending upon Manhattan en masse). Only starting last November did they start using actual trash bins.
There was even a day when I saw multiple public garbage cans lit on fire and kicked into the street (in Chelsea, a fairly nice Manhattan neighborhood). Could you possibly imagine that happening anywhere in Tokyo? It would be news coverage for a week.
For all the nuance and exceptions one has to go out of their way to find when talking about trash in places like Tokyo and Singapore, it's unbelievably ages ahead of New York City, the richest city in the world.
A big part of the problem in Manhattan is that most places don't have alleys. There is nowhere for the trash to be left except on the sidewalk.
Some cities have the trash trucks drive around playing music, ice cream truck style, and you are required to bring your trash out to the truck. Logistically that would probably work in Manhattan. Politically I don't think you would ever be able to get it done.
Most places in the US don’t have alleys. The problem isn’t the alleys, it’s the trash cans. Most modern US cities have cans that can be lifted by the truck, and then emptied. NYC, on the other hand, insists on just leaving everything in flimsy bags, open to the rats.
Most places don't have a mostly continuous street wall with little/no setback from the public street/sidewalk.
Part of the problem in Manhattan has been that many buildings really do not have any place they could store those sorts of bins, or at least not in the quantity of them that they need for their trash output.
Manhattan isn't unique — and as far as I've heard, they've recently copied systems in use in Madrid (bins in parking spaces) and London (wheelie bins) to solve the problem.
Trash fires are definitely a rare occurrence in Tokyo, the bigger chaos generation is some bird poking at a trash bag and causing stuff to fly all over.
Though apparently there are about 50 trash truck fires a year? Mostly from batteries in the trash of course…
Indeed, it’s the same in Singapore.
Despite the law and order reputation of Singapore, plenty of people regularly break laws there, including littering.
All you need to do is get off the tourist strips and you can walk down park paths with plenty of trash strewn everywhere.
What people don’t see is the army of foreign labor who is constantly picking this trash up.
The government is good at enforcement - if an area has problems with trash cameras get put up along with signs warning of the consequences, but if the cleaning staff were to disappear overnight it wouldn’t take more than 24 hours for Singapore to look quite untidy.
In terms of Western countries like the US, cleanliness does come down to an operations issue. Cleaners don’t come often enough, trash cans aren’t emptied enough and littering enforcement is weak. But it’s certainly possible to make the US as clean as Japan with surprisingly little increase in effort.