Ok so this may not be the majority, but I have seen this kind of behavior from Japanese people personally. An example I can think of when someone I know wanted a Japanese person to help them reading a novel. They basically wanted a native to help with any grammar/vocab points, etc. The Japanese person really wanted to make sure that the book was purchased legally (the person I knew obv pirated the book and just lied about it). Another example I can think of is Japanese game streamers will always mute the stream if they are playing a game section where a copyrighted song is played because they fear Japanese copyright laws (e.g. playing Kingdom Hearts but muting during the opening theme). I’ve also been to a small Japanese library/bookstore where I was maybe 15 minutes past the closing time but they were having some sort of group activity in there, so all the staff were still there. I bought some books, so they had no problem with that, but when I wanted to check out some books, the lady told me “come back during the hours we’re open.” In my mind I was like “yeah but you’re all still here and it’s not like you’ve closed anything down.”

To be fair I’ve also seen this sort of rule-following in a few Chinese ppl I’ve interacted with (Chinese ppl in China not in the west).

But then again I’ve also seen Japanese ppl that don’t really give a fuck and will stream whatever on Discord, and plenty of Chinese people pirate the shit out of things so I don’t know the numbers here.

And it goes without saying that the most annoying rule-followers are the LIBS that inhabit the top tiers of western society.