Japanology Backward

Since I began my study of English more than fifty years have passed. And I have found the difference of mentalities between the Japanese people and Western people. The Japanese are very strongly individualistic while the western people are generally very group-oriented.  I am going to show you how much they are so by proving you with some examples.

When you get up in the morning, you eat breakfast.  On the table you can find your chopsticks, your rice bowl.  If you don’t find yours there, you surely ask for them. Suppose you are eating breakfast in a western family, there is no such things as (        )’s pair of knife and fork or (       )’s plate. This is because Japanese people have so a strong individuality that they cannot get satisfied with other’s tableware.  Western people are so weak in the character that they don’t care about whose dishes they are using.

After breakfast you turn on TV and watch The TV news. The announcer might say, “I am going to present you…”  Yes, for example, the personal pronoun for the first person singular is just “I”. Nothing more.  On the contrary in Japanese we say, WATASHI, WATAKUSHI, BOKU, ORE, WASHI, ATAI, SESSHA…almost endless.  Again the Japanese people are very strongly individualistic that they are not satisfied with just one persona pronoun, “I”.

On TV, you may see sports news. Just think about it. Japanese traditional sports are almost always non-team. Judo, Kendo, Sumo, Karate, Aikido and so on. On the contrary in western countries almost all popular sports are team sports, such as soccer, rugby, cricket, basketball, baseball, American football, volleyball and others. Again there we have to admit the Japanese like to be individualistic.

On your war to the office, you might see an old shrine, where an old man worships the god enshrined there holding his hands prayerwise. Yes, the Japanese people have a very strong personality so they can celebrate the god face-to-face by himself.  What about the western people? They go to church and pray and sing a choir in group. I am very sorry to say that their personality and character is not strong enough to stand fact-to-face with the god there.

Some other examples: Japanese specialty in sensitivity, WABI and SABI. You can see very easily they are perfectly the thing in each individual mind. It is next to impossible to experience WABI in a sightseeing tour group.

What about Japan’s national heroes? Without any exception all of them are just one person, not a group: MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, ISHIKAWA GOEMON, SUGATA SANSHIRO, GEKKOU KAMEN, ASTRO BOY…again this is almost endless.

On the contrary in the western countries the famous heroes are: Sherlock Holms and Dr. Watson, Robin Hood and his company, D’Artagnan and the three Musketeers, Snow White and Seven dwarfs, Santa Claus and his reindeers, Harry potter and Hermione. They are always act in a group, not individually.

I have given you enough evidence to show that the Japanese are very individualistic people while the western people are very group-oriented.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I have said so far is just nothing but a joke. Of course you know that. But isn’t it what we always do when we meet people from different culture or different countries?  We tend to say, the Japanese are…, the Americans are…, and the Germans are…. This kind of generalization is sometimes very useful but sometimes very harmful, because we are likely to OVER-generalize our one or two personal experiences. This might very often lead to miscommunication.

So let’s be courageous enough to meet people face-to-face, not through our over-simplified images, but through the contact with them as they really are.