Yup. It’s interesting to see not only what a foreign culture is, but the interpretation of the culture by people not from there. You see it from people who haven’t been in the country, from visitor and long term residents as well as from natives.
I first lived in Japan from 1981 to 1983 as a Mormon missionary. Looking back, it was not only interesting to see another culture, but also had badly the missionaries didn’t understand that culture. How they (we) were looking at it from our own biases, and completely missed the mark on so many explanations.
You can see it from long-term residents as well. Not everyone who lives in a foreign country really gets it. If fact, plenty of what expatriate residents tell each other is simply not true.
It’s sort of like the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus type books which contain some truths while being trivial and simplistic at the same time.
I really dived into studying Japanese society and psychology, especially in the late 80s and 90s when I was there for my first real job in that country. Japan was just on the top of the world before the bubble burst in 1990, although we didn’t see it immediately.
Starting in 1999, I set up the branch office of a US manufacturer. That was a decade-long exercise in educating the US headquarters about Japanese business culture and debating about / fighting over what were key differences which required changed to US policies and which ones we could expect the customers to adapt to the US.
I can still vividly recall the blank faces on the VPs’ faces as I would attempt to explain why doing it the US way would simply not work for a particular policy.
Misconceptions run both ways. Japanese really didn’t understand America either.
Wife and I recently watched Hafu, a documentary about the struggles of mixed-race people (half-Japanese, half not-Japanese) growing up and/or living in Japan (“hafu” is the Japanese version of the English word “half”). There are lots of good things about Japan, but their requirements for being accepted as Japanese - and the social consequences for failing to meet those requirements - are harsh. It’s becoming more of an issue lately as mixed-race Japanese citizens are becoming more common, and occasionally presents a bit of a dilemma when a person with one Japanese parent excels on the world stage, e.g. Naomi Osaka. Is she to be regarded as fully Japanese, or is she not? If she is, then Japan can claim her as a cultural ambassador, but then that also compels some measure of recognition for other, less-famous “hafu” as being fully Japanese.
“An American thinks long-term planning means three months. An European, two years. A Japanese thinks five years is cutting it a bit short.”
Bit of a joke, bit of an exaggeration, but definitely different.
Names and greetings. It’s not just the “family name is first, or second” thing; how to address people can be an issue whenever two different cultures meet.
I’m curious because this is one of those saying that you hear repeatedly, but I didn’t really find any substance to it.
About the only thing may be publicly held companies because US ones tend to look at quarterly profits, but that’s only a limited case. Japanese companies tend to be less dependent on quarterly sales figures but they have their own problems.
On an individual level, small companies, private companies, governments and other organizations then they definitely are not any better focused on long term.
In fact governments really suck at long term planning.