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First: Happy New year and あけましておめでとう！

Next: Do Japanese people say shouganai more often than Westerners emit the equivalent? I'm not looking to argue for the heck of it; I think you'd find a lot of agreement for your statement. But it's precisely the sort of thing I want to know for a fact, and not take as an assumption. Has someone, somehow, made a measurement of such a thing? Are people influenced in what they hear by the common pre-existing belief that shouganai is uttered with great frequency? Do people commonly fail to hear the English equivalent because it's spoken in so many forms, rather than via one easily-identifiable phrase? 

More importantly, even if shouganai is uttered with unusual frequency, does that mean anything? Here we brush up against one of the most pervasive flaws in culturology, as I see it: the assumption that every action, word, proverb, etc. is revealing of deep insights into culture. I'm not saying that that can't be the case, but let me offer one off-the-top-of-the-head counterexample: English speakers run around greeting each other with a non-stop barrage of "How are you?". Should we take this as some insight into the deep concern that English speakers show for each other's well-being? Or should we see this – more correctly, in my opinion – as a phrase that just happens to be the standardized thing to say? I offer that the same question applies equally to shouganai, should it actually prove to be a particularly common expression.

As for relative political apathy in Japan: Again, maybe that's a verifiable reality; I think you'll find lots of agreeing voices. Though I wonder how many people in the West are truly politically engaged, as opposed to just sitting in front of a TV muttering at the national news. I don't know. But I think it's safe to say that in many other areas of life in Japan, people are very proactive and non-passive – as I noted, world-class levels of economic, technological, and lifestyle development are a grand example. On balance, I think you can find a combination of passiveness and non-passiveness in Japan... which, unless some qualitative difference can be shown, is an equal (if simple) overview of humanity everywhere.

So in summary, I have no refutation of anything you say, which may all be quite spot-on. I'm just taking it as one possibility, while leaving my mind open to more and more evidence.

Thanks for the thoughts!