Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Jan ken poi! That’s the BEST way to solve com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems! (great series of pictures!).

Just jok­ing…

Per­haps just the fact that you are ask­ing the ques­tion points to the heart of the prob­lem of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in Japan. Too often peo­ple in Japan per­cieve every­thing as “US and “THEM”, as if peo­ple in other coun­tries or cul­tures are inher­ently dif­fer­ent from the Japan­ese. There are even spe­cial terms which pro­voke the dif­fer­ences, like “Ware­ware nihon-jin, or even the implied dif­fer­ence in atti­tude when speak­ing either “Nihon” or “Nip­pon”. For any non=Japanese who can under­stand the nuances between such words, imme­di­ately a bar­rier is erected, which causes non-Japanese to get defen­sive and causes the Japan­ese to back away an keep quiet.

While it is under­stand­able that Japan, his­tor­i­cally, has only just entered the dia­logue with the entire world. com­pared with cul­tures like India or Eng­land or Amer­ica, which have been inter­act­ing with peo­ples around the world for cen­turies, there is also some­thing in the Japan­ese peo­ple them­selves that pre­vents them from learn­ing how to open up. Part of it is mod­esty (though at times a false mod­esty) and part of it is sim­ply fear.

Japan­ese need to get out of the coun­try more and inter­act with other peo­ple, from when they are young (like you did). This doesn’t mean trav­el­ing to Italy to go shop­ping; that is only a fab­ri­cated impres­sion of what Italy or other places are about. Japan­ese need to talk with and befriend non-Japanese so they can under­stand intrin­si­cally and vis­cer­ally who and what peo­ple in other places are. Read­ing about them in books or pre­tend­ing to under­stand another cul­ture sim­ply by its food or music does noth­ing to help peo­ple actu­ally learn how to com­mu­ni­cate. That can only be done by actu­ally talk­ing to other peo­ple and learn­ing not to be afraid of them. Being afraid grows out of igno­rance and it is this lack of under­stand­ing on the Japan­ese part that makes them afraid.

PS…I also wanted to say, how­ever, that on the whole, Japan­ese make FAR greater effort to under­stand and relate to peo­ple in the rest of the world than, let’s say Amer­i­cans do. Just the fact that Amer­i­cans in inter­na­tional com­pa­nies here in Japan nearly always expect their Japan­ese employ­ees to speak Eng­lish, but almost never make an effort to learn Japan­ese shows very clearly just how self-centered these peo­ple are. You would think that man­agers in Amer­ica would require their Japan-based Amer­i­can work­ers to learn Japan­ese, if sim­ply for bet­ter com­pany pro­duc­tiv­ity, but no, almost all my Japan­ese stu­dents in my classes com­plain about how hard it is for them to com­mu­ni­cate with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts because every­thing has to be done in Eng­lish. How stu­pid and unfair of the Americans.

Hi Fujiko… I’ve been feel­ing bad about my last com­ment, say­ing such strong words to you about Amer­i­cans. I don’t know, though I don’t hate Amer­i­cans, I am very angry these days at a lot of them. Just before I posted my com­ment to you I had been try­ing to find news on TV about the demon­stra­tions in Eng­land… but found almost noth­ing. More time was spent on the trial of Michael Jack­son. It’s one of the biggest world events, very impor­tant, but some­how the Amer­i­can media man­ages to con­trol what we see (influ­enc­ing orga­ni­za­tions like NHK, of course). It is very disheartening.

Any­way, I am sorry if I have offended you. I just have strong views some­times. I don’t mean any harm.

Hope you are hav­ing a nice week­end (^J^)v

Wow, Miguel, three thor­ough com­ments in a row! I appre­ci­ate the time you take to com­mu­ni­cate your views with me!

Don’t worry. I am not offended. It’s kind of you to explain your thoughts. As for your com­ments on Amer­i­cans, I know how some of them can be, espe­cially when these peo­ple end up in Asia. Some­how, some peo­ple gets con­fused about their own achieve­ments and some­one else’s achieve­ments. McDon­alds, Star­bucks, Gap, Nike, a whole slew of them are suc­cess­ful glob­ally now, because some Amer­i­cans gave great efforts to do what they believed in, and work for suc­cess were car­ried out by many tal­ented hard work­ing peo­ple. Some­how, some Amer­i­cans act like it was they who did it all.

I see such traits in some peo­ple work­ing for well known brand com­pa­nies too.

You men­tioned that it would help a lot of Japan­ese if they talk and be-friend non-Japanese. I think the same applies to Amer­i­cans too. Good per­cent­age of them never trav­elled out­side of US, never talk­ing or be-firending non-Americans. I should know. After liv­ing in US con­sec­u­tively for 18-years, I was so Amer­i­can­ized, I never felt the need to travel out­side of US. I never had the desire to talk to non-Americans. Actu­ally, if my job didn’t require me to work with Ger­man, Dutch, British, Thai, Aus­tralian, Indian in very inti­mate way, I don’t think it would ever occured to me that I would need to even think about other cul­ture and the state of the world.

So actu­ally, I was an epit­ome of “stu­pid and unfair Amer­i­can” to many Japan­ese I was work­ing with for many years. Now that I am a bit more edu­cated, maybe I should think about what all this means.

Great food for thought! Thanks, Miguel!