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Japanese ideology insists that the individual create its sense of personhood through self-control and attentiveness to the goals of the reference group. The Japanese sense of self is rarely defined in the abstract as an American self might be (Ohnuki-Tierny 1990:93). Japanese cultural ideology puts little faith in the existence of the individual personality Japanese 'cannot justify a self identity as a valuable social identity distinct from culturally expected behavior.' (Pelzel 1970:47) The symbolic invention of personhood involves an 'intention of mutuality' in a way that American self-invention does not. Kondo observed in her participant observation of a Japanese workplace, that she was never allowed to act in ways which would suggest that she was an autonomous and free individual (Kondo 1985:26). It seems that in Japanese culture, there is not the same overriding pressure, as there is for Americans, to invent oneself as a free agent, 'one's own man'. In contrast to American personhood, which is under symbolic pressure not only to be true to one's self but also to publicly express this 'true self', the Japanese sense of self is actualized through self-control. The mark or sign of a truly mature person in Japan is the ability to put aside one's own selfish desires in favor of those of whatever group they find themselves a member of. This orientation is even more marked among women, who must, above all else, be able to accommodate themselves to the needs of others (Kondo 33). Though Americans view efforts to repress aspects of one's unique selfhood in favor of group demands as oppressive (an American woman once told me that I must be damaging my self psychologically by being able to fit in at Japanese staff meetings), self-control is viewed in Japanese culture, not as a dangerous act of self-castration, but as the mark of a 'healthy personality' (to use an American phrase). Self-control is a sign of kokoro or 'heart'. I have argued elsewhere that Japanese personhood is is centered around the key trope of kokoro (glossed as 'heart'), and that this ideal is actualized through self-control of selfish desires (Rosen 1990). Standing in binary opposition to this is the metaphor wagamama (glossed as 'selfishness'), seen as a moral evil in Japanese cultural ideology. Japanese selfhood, therefore, is invented along the lines of a symbolic oppositon between selfishness (a moral wrong) and pure heart achieved through self-control (a moral good). Not only my own ethnographic data but that of others reaffirms this conclusion. In the so-called spiritual education seminars in Japan held by companies and religious groups alike, individuals are taught to improve themselves through the exercise of self-restraint (enryo) and the ability to endure hardship (gaman); the self-improvement which results from this type of self control in the face of both physical and mental hardships is precisely what leads to the actualization of 'heart'/kokoro. In other words, the Japanese self is symbolically constructed in contexts which emphasize self-control as a means to and expression of heart. Personhood then becomes defined as involving the obviation of personal interests in favor of corporate/social ones. Part of this process of self-control in social situations requires the perfection of the social mask or persona (tatemae). Persona is not the moral evil it is in American culture, not the mark of inauthenticity, but the mark of maturity it signifies the desire if not the ability to harmonize with the group. My own experience supervising English teachers working at a college in Japan was that westerners often can't understand (what they perceive to be) an overemphasis on form over content in Japanese interaction, in informal as well as formal settings. These westerners tended to denigrate communication which they perceived as being purely ritualized, viewing it as phony and disingenuous, not to mention shallow. But in Japan, it is precisely this ability to skillfully use set phrases and stylized discourse markers which signifies that an individual is a mature self (Kondo 26). So, unlike American selfhood, which demands a person to publicaly show their 'true self', in Japan the development of a ritualized social persona is a necessary condition for Japanese selfhood. In 1990, when I escorted a group of around 50 students to Cambridge, England for summer English language study, there were continual cross-cultural communication problems which were never resolved. In a nutshell, the British teachers were constantly frustrated by the lack of straightforward answers to direct questions, or frustrated that their questions to the Japanese students were sometimes met by silence, or simple one-word answers. The teachers were frustrated that Japanese students preferred not to reveal personal opinions or give straight-forward replies to direct questions. The Japanese students, for their part, often complained that the teachers couldn't understand what they were trying to communicate! Smith has observed that, in the interests of group harmony (wa), Japanese will often refrain from putting their own opinions forward (Smith 1983:57). This writer's 'ethnographic experience' living in Japan and working for a Japanese college, has confirmed what most ethnographies have said about this phenomenon: that Japanese are reluctant to express themselves directly, categorically and unequivocally, preferring instead the use of indirection and paralinguistic strategies which would not have them committed to one black and white irrevocable position. The term inshindenshin means a kind of quasi-telepathic communication style characteristic of in-group communication; members know each other so well it becomes less necessary to resort to direct verbal expressions, and this helps maintain group harmony. Since Americans don't participate in such symbolic praxis, this will be an obvious source of cross-cultural communication difficulties. In Cambridge, the Japanese students failed to realize that the westerners could not value or appreciate communication in which meanings were not directly packaged in words, where individuals didn't try to communicate themselves as unique individuals and unique opinion holders. The existence of a pronounced inside-outide distinction (ura-omote) (not particularly salient in America) also will affect communication; true feelings (honne) are expressed to in-group members while for 'outside' people, interaction is characterized by more mask/ persona (tatemae). Metaphors relating to hierarchy are also relevant here in that communicative reserve will be more pronounced with social superiors. The interested reader is referred to the wealth of literature on Japanese hierarchy and social structure (Nakane 1967; Lebra 1976). However, what the ethnographic data points too is not just a 'group orientation' for Japanese people (in any culture one can find those who are 'other- directed' and those who make a point of going their own way) it shows that Japanese are enculturated such that their self definition is generated from a radical ontological attachment to the group. Augustine Barque, in his study of Japanese personhood and cosmology (1993:93-104) argues that Japanese metaphors show a logic of identification rather than identity, 'in which sharing a common attribute entails an intersubjective shift' (101). Whereas the Euro-American tradition stresses a logic of identity with self as clearly distinguished from others (and from nature), the Japanese tradition has stressed the logic of a self in terms of what it is not; if one is, for example, a middle-aged housewife married to a company man, then one can not easily assume the 'role' of 'artist' (102). Berque maintains that Japanese metaphors organize reality into certain sets (Kata) which transcend the individual subject such that the individual is related all the more to their physical and social environment. This is presumably what social scientists have meant when
they say that Japanese have little role flexibility, or more rigid role
categories (Lebra 1976:362). This is why a Japanese working for Mitsubishi,
for example, would be more likely to reveal themselves as 'a Mitsubishi man'
than just 'a company man'. 'In that sense, the Japanese self is relatively
permeable with its environment (both social and psychical); but only as much
as this environment has been institutionalized (codified) into what reality
is for the Japanese.' (Berque 103) The revelance of this for cross-cultural
communication encounters is that Japanese may be trying to establish a link
for themselves to contexts which transcend themselves. The American, on the
other hand, may be trying to reiterate a sense of self as separate and
distinct from both the other and the communicative context, and may feel
uncomfortable with efforts to establish a (radical) empathic link with the
other in communication praxis. ConclusionIn Japanese culture, key tropes, core symbols, center around a sense of personhood as actualized in social contexts. American cultural metaphors articulate a definition of personhood as something actualized by freedom of choice which is the expression of a self-reliant self, a unique personality invented precisely as a result of personal 'choices'. Americans are under a pressure to try to communicate themselves as unique human beings not falsified by social norms. The moral urgency to 'express oneself' directly and clearly in public, is not part of Japanese cultural ideology. The American understanding of and emphasis on 'self-reliance' in the invention of personhood, is foreign to Japanese culture. In Japanese cultural ideology, going against the group or 'going my way' as the Japanese put it (borrowing a western phrase), is a sign of selfishness. Japanese metaphors articulate an ideology of self in which personhood is actualized in social contexts which transcend a putative 'individual.' In the on-going process of cultural invention which is communication, Japanese will be trying to articulate this conception of self which is radically different from American self-definitions. If, in cross-cultural communication encounters between Americans and Japanese, the participants are unawares of their cultural ideologies of personhood which structure their perceptions and experience of reality (not to mention their communicative styles), then there's likely to be a great deal of mis-communication. While this paper has outlined some of the theoretical
issues at stake, it still remains to analyze specific communication
encounters between Americans and Japanese to see how these culturally
specific definitions of self tend to obviate meaningful communication. The
failure to look at the symbolic matrices which radically structure, among
other things, an experience of the self will be to condemn oneself to
intercultural communication which is superficial at best. BibliographyBachnick, J. l993. Kejime: defining a shifting self in multiple organizational modes. Nancy R. Rosenberger (ed). Japanese sense of self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Befu, H. 1990. Conflict and Non-Weberian Bureaucracy in Japan. S. N. Eisenstadt and Eyal Ben-Ari (eds). Japanese Models of Conflict Resolution. London: Kegan Paul International. Berque, A. 1993. Identification of the Self in Relation to the Environment. Nancy Rosenberger (ed) Japanese sense of self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calman, D. 1992. The Nature and Origin of Japanese Imperialism: A Reinterpretation, of the Great Crisis of 1873. London: Routledge. Carbaugh, D. 1988. Talking American: Cultural Discourse on Donahue. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Co. Eagleton, T. 1991. Ideology. London: Verso. Geertz, C. 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books Hams, G. 1989. Individval, Self, and Person. American Anthropologist No. 91/l989. Hillman, J. 1989. The Essential James Hillman. Thomas Moore (ed.). London: Routledge. Kondo, D. 1985. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourse of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and Mark Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Lebra, T. 1976. Japanese Patterns of Behavior. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Letendre, G. 1994. Guiding Them On: Teaching, Hierarchy, and Social Organization in Japanese Middle Schools. Journal of Japanese Studies, pp. 37-59. Mehan, H. and Houston Wood 1975. The Theory of Ethnomethodology. New York: John Wiley. Mover, R. and Yoshi Sugimoto 1986. Images of Japanese Soiety: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality. London: Kegan Paul International. Nakane, C. l970. Japanese Society. London: Penguin. Ohnuki-Tierny, E. 1990. Monkey as Metaphor: Transformation of a Polytropic Symbol in Japanese Culture. Man, no 25:89-107. Pelzel, J. 1970. Japanese Kinship: A Comparison. Maurice Freedman (ed). Family and Kinship in Chinese Society. Stanford: University of Stanford Press. Rohlen, T. 1974. 'Spiritual Education' in a Japanese Bank. Takie Lebra (ed). Japanese Culture and Behavior. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rohlen, T. 1983. Japan's High Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosen, S. 1990. 'Wagamama and kokoro': The Symbolic Construction of Japanese Deviance. Kio No. 26 Dec. Hiroshima, Japan Rosenberg, H. 1970 Act and Actor. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
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Opdateret:
31-03-2004
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