These brief examples reveal that culture is centrally important to the ways in which health, illness, medicine, and biotechnology are understood and accepted. Japan is an interesting place for exploring such cultural differences. Japan is a highly productive, educated, wealthy, and technologized society; its economy is the second largest in the world. And yet many fundamental ideas about human development, the boundaries of the self, the nature of death, the line between human and non-human, appear to be construed fundamentally differently. The Japanese have embraced Western social thought and technology with enthusiasm, but historically there has been a strong sense that these would need to be modified to fit with received social values.