Many people from foreign countries often say, “Japanese people are very polite.” However, once they stay in the island country for a certain length of time, some may have different impressions about the people’s attitudes.

A trainee from a country in the Pacific is a case in point. He says he rarely received any replies from his neighbors when he greeted them on the street, just as he does in his own country, udring the first couple months of his stay in Japan. So he thought he should respect a foreign country’s culture and customs, and his happy-go-lucky attitude has faded, along with his habit of saying “Hello.”

Some Americans who live in Tokyo have gotten used to saying nothing when they push their way through crowded trains in the metropolitan area, though many would say “Excuse me” under similar circumstances back home. One says that he has just come to accept the Japanese social norm (as it seems to him).

Attitudes play important roles in public life and business situations. The problem is that these attitudes are not universal and can hardly be judged by certain standards. Japanese attitudes may matter to some people, not only guests from foreign countries but also resident Japanese, but not to others.

In this series we spotlight Japanese attitudes and their surroundings.

First in Series

Your Courage to Step Out of Your Comfortable Ethnocentrism is Tested

Tenri, Nara, Japan

By Yas Mamemachi

Professor Sumihara in his office (Photo by Yas Mamemachi)

ara, located in the western part of Japan, is the ancient capital of the country, which became prosperous before the central government body moved to Kyoto, located one-hour away by local train.

The city of Tenri, located in the northwest corner of Nara prefecture, is named after the local religious organization, Tenrikyo (www.tenrikyo.or.jp), established in the mid-19th century. No other city in Japan is named after a religious organization.

Tenri University, a private institution managed by the religious organization, is proud of its long tradition of studies in international culture ever since schools of Korean, Indonesian (Malay), and Chinese languages were established 80-some years ago. Professor Noriya Sumihara, who has a PhD in philosophy from New York University, is the Director of the International Center for Regional Studies at the university.

The professor has been working in the field of corporate and business anthropology, which is the study of office cultures and/or corporate staffers’ value systems, both of which strongly affect business, from an anthropological viewpoint.

Many Japanese companies have become multinational and multicultural in recent years. However, the attitudes, including greetings, in the office environment are judged within the scope of “Japanese ethnocentric viewpoints,” says Professor Sumihara.

He takes what he learned in his on-site study at a Japanese firm in Vietnam as a case in point. In the Japanese firm the exchange of greetings among the staffers are positively encouraged, just as they are in Japan.

As members of the company, the Vietnamese workers have accepted such recommendations without any doubts or complaints. It sounds as if everything were fine.

However, as his field study continued, the professor learned that some Japanese managers have complained about the Vietnamese workers’ behavior in terms of greetings, saying that they simply nod to others, including Japanese, when exchanging greetings, with no “Hello” or “Hi”. These complaints confuse the Vietnamese workers, making them wonder what the Japanese are expecting them to do.

According to Sumihara’s studies, the main cause of this trouble was very simple. In exchanging greetings, the Vietnamese customarily nod to others while many Japanese people tend to nod while saying some words, such as “Hello” and “How have you been?”

“We have our ethnocentric viewpoint and they have theirs. In order to develop intercultural understandings, we need to explain our viewpoint and so do they. That might have been already well known, however, it is easy to slip out of our/their mind and what sounds too obvious to us or them really needs to be explained,” says Sumihara.

“See no evil-hear no evil” attitude

Based on his research, one of the top three complaints which American employees have in Japanese companies in the United States is a particular office layout that many Japanese firms utilize without any consideration. In this layout, desks face with other workers’ desks. This exemplifies another case.

“In my research, many American workers say that they feel that the colleagues sitting in front of them are always watching them, and it is not easy to ignore the eye of the counterparts,” says Sumihara. “The ‘see no evil-hear no evil’ attitude, which is required in this particular office layout, might not be easy for them.”

For many Japanese, the “see no evil-hear no evil” attitude is “common.” In old Japanese houses privacy is protected only by the “see no evil-hear no evil” attitude, since most rooms are separated by noren (short split curtains made of cotton) or fusuma (sliding doors made of paper), so that you often unintentionally see events and hear stories in other rooms.

These days most Japanese houses and apartments have rooms separated by walls, just like in Europe and the US. However, many Japanese residences are smaller in size compared to those in other industrial countries, so the attitude has never faded away, he explains.

“The important thing,” says Sumihara, “is that we not only explain our viewpoints but also try to understand those of the counterparts. A term paper written by one of his international students from China is suggestive in this point.”

“It does not matter whether or not her observation about the Japanese attitude is right,” says Sumihara. The point is that the Chinese student has the courage to step out from her comfortable ethnocentrism and find a new and positive viewpoint in the Japanese culture.”

This type of courage is critically important when considering attitudes and intercultural understandings in the development of globalization, he adds.