Understanding Japan

by slig • 13 years ago

37 14 13 years ago

Paul_S2• 13 years ago

Title should be "Love letter to Japan". Bit one sided. Honestly, I don't travel much as a tourist but I'm a serial immigrant and romanticising countries has gotten old pretty fast. The only generalisation about people living in some country you can make is the language they are likely to speak and sometimes the religion they believe but things like being honest, hard working, self-sacrificing is rather far fetched and either naive (romanticising) or dishonest (advertising).

barry-cotter2• 13 years ago

Aye, making cultural generalisations is as absurd as saying Swedes are inclined to be taller than Siclians or that men are generally stronger than women. It's almost as ridiculous as thinking that there's a difference in how much trust you can put in the assurances of a Japanese and Chinese company in their home countries. Just like all people, all cultures are exactly the same.

Paul_S2• 13 years ago

I think you missed the point because you list physical appearance and other factors for which there exists statistical data proving it. I'm not saying statistics don't exist, I'm saying the author's generalisations go too far. There are statistics about corruption you can compare between Japan and China. What you can't say is that Chinese are liars and Japanese are honourable.

"Just like all people, all cultures are exactly the same."

It's hard to read through your stream of sarcasm but I think you're building a strawman there. I'm not saying everyone is the same, I'm saying everyone is different and you get nice people in every country just like you can meet utter arseholes anywhere. And really, that's the bit that matters because their height or skin colour and other things you can get handy stats for are largely irrelevant.

microcolonel• 13 years ago

What BS.

(my shortest ever response on HN)

krapp• 13 years ago

This seems more like a brief rundown of fetishes of Japanese culture for Western CEOs than anything which helps me "understand" Japan.

Goladus• 13 years ago

What someone really thinks is “honne”, but what they actually express is “tatemae”. In Western countries we could call it hypocrisy, but in Japan knowing how to express tatemae and honne at the right time is considered a virtue.

In western countries, words related to the difference between what you really think and what you say are politeness, tact, courtesy, negotiation, and rhetoric. And others, of course, you should get the idea.

Hypocrisy is really something different. Hypocrisy means espousing a self-serving double-standard. It means advocating one thing while practicing the opposite for personal gain.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

Sorry to pile on (and I usually enjoy Sivers' writing) but...

I've met a large number of Japanese people here in San Diego (people who grew up in Japan but came here on student visas), and one thing I've learned from them is that almost all of the conventional wisdoms about Japanese culture (like those stated in this article) are mostly a combination between out-of-date and just fully romanticized notions mixed with a tiny bit of reality. Roughly the equivalent of writing a guide about fitting into American culture that is based on what someone saw in 1950s TV shows.

jrs99• 13 years ago

He's clearly put a LOT of research into this and knows what he's talking about. For example, I do agree with him that everyone in Japan has a job.

One of my friends is Japanese and doesn't really have a job and lives in Internet Cafes. But it's definitely because he's been Americanized. For example his name is Kenji, but we called him Ken when he was in the US.

jmadsen• 13 years ago

Ditto. The 10% or so I found to be "true" would probably be considered polite manners anywhere else in the world.

Important to note the author does not seem to have ever set foot in Japan (unless that is hidden somewhere outside of his bio), and is adapting this from a book he read

a_bonobo• 13 years ago

You're spot-on, this practice of summarizing a "romantic Japan" that doesn't really exist has a name: Nihonjinron. There's a lot of complete bollocks to be found in Western literature that falls under this term (even though it started out as a Japanese thing). Even Oscar Wilde made fun of this trend:

Oscar Wilde has argued that supposed aspects of Japanese culture widely reported in the West take on a life of their own as orientalist clichés long after the phenomena in question have disappeared from the socio-cultural landscape, saying "The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron#Quotes

brenschluss• 13 years ago

<< Understanding America >>

If three American people are talking together, and a fourth one joins the conversation, he will gregariously interrupt the conversation to talk about himself. Why?

In America, everything is about individualism. People are supposed to be different from each other. Everybody may not have a job, but people understand it as 'The American Dream', just one of the ways in which people dream of being more different by being successful. As a result, not everybody has money to live, but this is understood as a necessary sacrifice. American individualism means that people love guns and are okay with each other having guns. Often times this means that people will live apart from each other in the country in large mansions and in seeming happiness. People also live together in large interesting cities, like New York or San Francisco, but when they do so, they make a point to appear different from each other. How have they achieved this?

To understand the American way, you must understand a few concepts that are deeply rooted into the culture.

< Cowboy role model >

The Cowboy adhered to a way of life, ethics, rules, and a code that spread to all branches of society, and even today affects the way the American thinks.

- The Horse offered the Cowboy a sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

- The Frontier taught them to be ruthless and self-motivated.

- The Town taught them diversity and how to interact with many different kinds of people, including bartenders, sherrifs, outlaws, townspeople, and other cowboys.

- Justice, and honor are central. Toughness, manliness, concealed emotion, independence, and resourcefulness are important key values.

Though the cowboy no longer exists, this way of viewing life is ever-present in society. Students quit school early to seek independent projects they call 'Entrepreneurs'. Workers within a company see each other as opposing cowboys. The American is independent, performance-oriented, and mercenary at work. He/She tries to improve themselves every day and to move from company to company, just as the cowboy galloped across different terrains in their time.

socrates1998• 13 years ago

In Japan, there are homeless people, organized crime, corrupt corporations, a nuclear disaster, and a very high suicide rate.

He makes a common mistake when people first visit or spend time in Japan, they are amazed by all the things he talks about it.

On the surface Japan is amazing and can be overwhelmingly impressive, but he needs to spend more than just superficial time there.

minikomi• 13 years ago

May I suggest trying to get anything done at a local ward office?

Understanding Japan

Related Stories