I was watching a documentary the other night about modern Japan, and something caught my attention. A young woman in her early twenties was carefully wrapping a gift. Not with the usual tape and scissors, but with a square of fabric, folding it with these precise, deliberate movements I’d only ever seen my grandmother do. I didn’t think much of it until I started noticing it everywhere. A barista with a small bonsai tree on the counter, talking to it like a pet. A shopkeeper wearing a kimono jacket over jeans, the kind of casual mixing that would have seemed disrespectful a generation ago. A group of teenagers in a…