I need to give this a reread.

I have an uneasy feeling that a lot of this succumbs to Orientalism of Japan as a lot of Barthes' analysis of signs tends to take a more positive (making it more exotic than it probably is) interpretation of Japanese practices while putting it on a pedestal. The Western, or Occidental, features tend toward the negative (depicted as hollow or imperfect). But, this is an outsider attempting to decipher Japan through semiotics, so this may be perfectly reasonable considering the nature of the attempt.