Coping with Economic Problems through Understanding Cultural Differences

 by Hidetada Maezawa

1. We tend to hear a lot of concern being voiced about economic affairs between Japan and Europe. However, it might be worth asking ourselves where the economic friction between the two emanate from?

First, I would like to quote the British poet Rudyard Kipling who said, "East is East and West is West," and he is well known for that expression. To go a little further, I believe the meaning was that the Orient and the Occident are essentially different and that they cannot fuse together. The background to this statement of Rudyard Kipling was the height of imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and there was this extreme sense of superiority of the white vis-a-vis the coloured people – superiority of the Occident versus the Orient. Of course, it is different today and I don't think the words of this poet would apply any longer. But I believe that there are many people in Japan as well as in Europe who feel that whenever friction arises between Japan and Europe, Japan and Europe can never find common ground.

 

2. I suspect that there must be some cultural factors beneath this. There are differences in culture, customs and conventions between Japan and Europe which would be reflected in the form of economic problems. I'm not saying that differences in culture, customs and conventions by themselves would cause problems but, rather, that problems arise because we are not fully aware of those differences. The Japanese often say that Europeans are Europeans and tend to bundle together diverse European cultures – Belgian, French, Dutch, etc. But the Belgians have their own culture, customs and conventions that differ from French and other Europeans and I don't think there is really what you might call a "European." The Japanese may well not understand why people in country A would prefer Japanese cars whereas people in country В hate them.

 

3. Many Europeans often remark that they feel Japan to be a very different country, probably because they look at Japan on the basis of their own cultural values. Let us consider services, and, for this purpose, let us take petrol stations as an example. That is the place where you refuel, but in Japan, it is quite normal for the worker at the petrol station to polish your car as well as clean the ashtray and so on, whereas you never see this in Europe. In Japan, people consider that the services provided at the petrol station would include, as a matter of course, cleaning the car as well.

In West Germany, it is considered that shortening working hours would actually serve to protect the workers. Speaking of working hours, in Europe when the closing time of a supermarket is 6.30 pm, it doesn't mean that you can go into the supermarket shortly before 6.30 and do your shopping. 6.30 is the time when the workers at the supermarket leave, so 30 minutes before, they already are very busy getting ready to get back home. In Japan, even after the closing time, the store clerks still attend to clients, and if shoppers are still around, they stay to meet their needs.

 

4. Let me talk about my experience in Europe. I lived in Paris for three years. As a journalist, I am very busy all day and would hardly have time to go out shopping together with my family, except on Sundays. But on that day, department stores are closed, so are boutiques. This means that, in Europe, protection of the worker supersedes the protection of the consumer. It's the other way round in Japan. There lies a clear difference between the basic philosophy of Japanese and European societies. We tend to forget the differences between our cultures, customs and conventions. Since we are all humans beings, people tend to believe that the behaviour patterns must be the same. But there are gaps, and serious gaps, in reality.

 

5. A Japanese saying goes, "Different places, different things" – in other words – in different places, you face different customs and conventions. The Japanese tend to forget this. Not just the Japanese, people in general tend to forget this. As a result, we tend to face criticism from Europe that European products don't sell in Japan because of peculiar Japanese business practices and so on. The Japanese would criticize Europeans for not working on Sundays and I believe that the trade imbalance between Japan and Europe would not be resolved easily because we do not take the necessary approach in shedding light on cultural and social differences. There are many other comments I would wish to make, but my conclusion is that trade friction is, after all, a matter of culture. I referred to the expression by Rudyard Kipling about East and West, but he also says that if two strong men hold hands, there would be no East and West, and borders and tribes and states would disappear.

 

About the author: Hidetada Maezawa was born in 1905. She graduated from Waseda University. She formerly served as Special Correspondent in Paris.

from A Symposium on Culture and Society “Japan and Europe: Changing Contexts and Perspectives”

 

Exercise 2. Summarise each part of the text in three sentences.

Exercise 3. Prepare three questions about each part. In pairs ask and answer your questions.

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