Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

Chinese, Japanese, and the Americans

Spent some time this evening doing a little email catch up, which included over 150 emails from the NBR Japan Forum mailing list. I really should just use their website. Anyhow, randomly picking mails I happened upon this rather interesting perspective on how the Japanese differ from Chinese and Americans. In particular:

Both Chinese and Americans are avid networkers and rapidly form workable, if normally shallow, relationships with strangers. Both display cultural arrogance that takes the form of believing that to be what I am (Chinese or American) is simply what every human being aspires to be. Both can point to histories that involve assimilating strangers and turning them into us. Japanese do the opposite on all three counts. Relationships take longer to form (the upside being that, so long as they are properly maintained, they tend to be more durable). Japanese cultural arrogance is tribal, the belief that without the blood you can never be one of us. Japanese history tends to emphasize the ethnic homogeneity of the Japanese people (even if critical strands of ethnography and history tell a different story).

As someone who has lived in Japan[1] for cumulatively 1/2 his life, I find this a fairly succinct way of putting it. The tribal arrogance is evidenced on an international scale, and the relationship explanation is perhaps a reason why my circle of Japanese friends is so much smaller in camparison to my western circle — the longer time-investment required to establish levels of trust were difficult for me as I moved around so much (although it is also true that my environment during my youth in Japan had few Japanese natives). I also find that those who I do consider as “Japanese friends” have spent some number of years overseas (mostly in America), even though conversations are most always held in their native tongue. This rules out language as being a negative factor…

[1] Albeit Tokyo, arguably as representative of Japan as Manhattan is of America.