I don't know about ALL of Japan, but in Tokyo, pedestrians frequently ignore red lights and seeing cars with green lights waiting while a large group of jaywalkers is crossing in front of them is not an uncommon sight.
In Osaka, crossers formed a queue at the don't walk signal and crossed in an orderly fashion as soon as they got a walk -- not a moment before.
They knew that as soon as the auto traffic got a green, it would go full bore and seemingly not stop for anyone or anything.
Quite different from my time in Boston where the optimal strategy is to ignore the walk signal and cross when there was a significant gap in traffic -- because it's likely that several cars would attempt to make a turn while the walk signal was on, blowing your chance to cross anyway.
You might be talking about the intersection of Boylston and Tremont (if you went to a school by the common you know this light well). As a pedestrian it's a shitty light because of those drivers you're describing, as a driver it's a shitty intersection because the only time you can make the left turn is while pedestrians have the walk light, and that intersection is always so jam packed with people that you can wait multiple lights and still not be able to get through unless you're driving into the throngs of people. Boston is the worst place I've ever driven, in part because of the design of the streets and in part because of the god awful drivers.
That said, it's funny how much the culture of crossing illegally varies country to country and city to city. Having lived in a few northern cities and a few southern cities in the US, attitudes vary wildly. Where I currently live, people are very skittish about crosswalks in general and will usually wait for cars to go by, even if they have the right of way in the crossing. I would guess these behaviors are so culturally engrained that laws wouldn't make much of a difference.
I'm talking about many such intersections throughout Boston Metro, including the one you mentioned. The Boylston-Tremont intersection has the nice feature that walk signals appear in both directions at once, which I interpreted as license to cross diagonally.
Fun fact about that intersection vs many intersections. Most intersections around Boston will give pedestrians the walk light automatically on a cycle, and the "push to walk" buttons don't actually affect the cycle. At that intersection, you do need to press them to get the walk cycle. I once stood there for several cycles thinking how clever I was for knowing that the walk sign goes on automatically, staring at someone else across the intersection who was also standing there thinking how clever they were knowing that walk signs go on automatically before we both realized we were idiots and finally hit the walk button.
