There isn’t a country in the world immune from stereotypes. All people form opinions about places and their inhabitants based on whatever they can glean from the food, tourism, and art of the culture. But not all sweeping generalizations have to be mean and unfounded. The Japanese are notoriously shy and private and are regarded as much more reserved than Koreans or Chinese. Privacy is important in Japan. People can have their names removed from phone books if they want. Windows are designed so people can’t look in. Asking a lot of question is regarded as pushy and rude. People are often expected to be quiet. Many school children have said they have never seen their parents kiss. Young adults don’t talk about their boyfriend or girlfriend or lack of one and generally don’t like to be asked questions about their private life. In one survey Japanese university students said they considered a good friend to be someone who respects their private life. Television drama plots often revolve around romances that others figure out from a few clues. Japanese generally don’t like to stick out in public or talk to strangers unless there is some necessity to do so. Many Japanese are very shy about meeting with foreigners.
They feel embarrassed if they make mistakes speaking English, and thus avoid saying anything. They also feel a lot of stress if they perceive the foreigners as being aggressive or pushy. Dog owners often find pets are an easy way to meet new people. They often talk to one another through their dogs by asking questions directed toward the pet not the owner. Koen debut is a term used to describe the stressful first visit for a mother and child or for a dog owner and pet to a new park. To make the process go smoothly many pet owners have business cards with pictures of there dogs printed up. A common icebreaking expression is saying how “kawaii” (“cute”) a person’s dog is. The owner of a dog named Moko told the Asahi Shimbun, “My son didn’t go to a local school, so for a long time we had no friends here. If it weren’t for Moko, we wouldn’t have met our dog-owner friends…Relationships in the big city can be cold and distant. But when dogs socialize with each other, it helps break the ice among dog owners.” She then explained that is why so many people with dogs visit the local park. Pico Iyer, a writer who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years, said there is passionate reverse side to Japanese restraint. He wrote: “The people I know in Japan are extraordinarily intense and devoted to their passions precisely because they tend to be Self-denying and restrained in public.”
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote: “The Japanese people are, by and large, the nicest and most responsible people in the world. Not the friendliest, not the happiest, certainly not the funniest, but the nicest.” In Japan, taxi drivers sometimes give a discount for accidently taking passengers on a slightly out-of-the way route, the police give money to people who can’t pay the subway fare, and passers by offer their own umbrellas to people who don’t have one. Even the traffic lights say nice things. Japanese often go out of their way to say nice things to the person they are talking to and people associated with the person they are talking to such as a children.
Japanese consider it rude to screen calls on answer machines or even have answering machines. It has been said that “Japanese people are so cooperative and care for others that they can’t say ‘no.’ Japanese children are taught to be considerate, share their food, defer to others, and generally not be selfish. Kristof described an amusing experience he had teaching the game of musical chairs to a girl who was standing right in front of the chair when the music stopped but moved aside to let Kristof’s son sit down. “I walked over and told her that she had just lost the game and would have to sit out,” he wrote. “She gazed up at me, her luminous eyes full of shocked disbelief…’You mean I lose because I’m polite? Chitosechan’s eyes asked. ‘You mean the point of the game is to be rude?'”
Makoto Kurozumi, a professor at Tokyo University who specializes in the history of Japanese thought, believes that compassion has traditionally been one of the most important characteristics of the Japanese people. “The origin of this is a tradition of animism that teaches that everything, including plants and trees, has a spirit. That has cultivated a compassion for all living creatures, in the Japanese.” Novelist Toshiko Marks told the Daily Yomiuri: :“Back when many Japanese were still poor and could not survive without helping each other, the spirit of helping the weak was a fundamental part of conventional morals.” The Japanese can also be naive, trusting and easily taken advantage of. A study found they tend trust those they have personal contact with while Americans are responsive to general trust and have believe a person’s reputation is valid to trust them.
Modesty is a highly regarded virtue. Athletes go to ridiculous lengths to be modest and avoid coming across as cocky. Japanese mothers generally don’t scold their children and try to train their children as much as possible through encouragement and praise. This concept is practiced society-wide. A study of compliment responses by Japanese researcher Junko Baba found that Japanese tend to downplay the compliment with questions, refusals, hedges, and self-mockery. Japanese are highly sensitive to criticism. Insulting someone directly is considered extremely rude and vulgar because it causes serious loss of face, embarrassment and humiliation. Great lengths are taken not to criticize someone. Hints are offered in subtle ways. Criticism when it is done is done through third parties or when drunk. There are exceptions to this rule. Sushi instructors, for example, are notorious of wacking their apprentices when they make a mistake. The same is true with some sports coaches.
The Japanese are also famous for their fondness for apologizing as an act of courtesy. They apologize for all sorts situations. It often seems their reaction to any situation is to apologize first. Conversations often begin with a series of apologies. Cross-cultural apology researcher Naomi Sugimoto examined 34 Japanese and U.S. books on etiquette written form the 1960s to 1990s and found Japanese conduct manuals devoted whole chapters to apologies while only one American book addressed the subject. The American book mainly addressed apologizing to strangers and while the Japanese books addressed apologizing to friends, neighbors and colleagues and examined apologizing on the behalf of others. Sugimoto also found that the word that popped up most often in American apologies was “sincere” while the one that popped up the most in Japanese apologies was sunao (“submissive, obedient”). The American manual also suggested offering an explanation along with the apology while the Japanese manuals infer that such explanations detracted from “the selfless surrender” that is expressed by an ideal apology. So the results on a thread asking for the “perfect words to describe Japanese people” were surprisingly positive! Here are the most common adjectives that Westerners chose when characterizing the people of Japan:
Polite
Weighing in at number one was polite, or in Japanese “reigi tadashii.” Everyone has heard of the traditional Japanese bow used as a greeting during any given exchange. Though handshakes are perfectly common in Japan now, they more often than not come with a bow as well (or two or three). To the Western mindset, this style of address already seems much more polite than a simple handshake, high-five, or shoulder clap. Of course, the term “polite” in and of itself doesn’t only have a positive connotation. It’s possible to remain too polite and distant from a person, even if you’ve known them for quite a while.
Punctual
Japan takes its time management very seriously. The Japan Railway (JR) and other connecting subways and train systems are well-known for their incredibly punctual schedules. As such, when there is a delay of even a minute, the whole system gets thrown off. Trains often issue late slips for passengers to take to their employers if their trains get delayed. After all, it leaves a very bad impression if you’re late to work.
Kind
Unlike polite, which can have its downsides, kind is a genuinely positive word. In Japanese, words with similar connotations to the English phrase are “yasashii” or “omoyari no aru,” meaning “thoughtful of others.” One sterling example of this is the custom of bringing a gift (usually food) when you visit another person’s house in Japan. Most Americans only bring things if it’s a birthday or B.Y.O.B. party. This praise-worthy adjective was the third-most repeated term in the thread. That’s a winning score on anyone’s report card!
Hard-Working
A hard-worker or “hataraki-mono” is definitely a common word that classifies a Japanese mindset. In a culture where your job is supposed to take precedence over even your family at times, it’s unsurprising that foreign nationals would latch on to this particular description. There is even a word for “death by overwork” in Japanese (“karoushi”). It’s not uncommon for people to work several more hours after their contractual quitting time and, if you’re not a contract worker, that means that you aren’t paid for that overtime. Even if you have a “haken” (contracted job), it’s still considered rude to leave right on schedule. This is not something that’s easy for a American-bred adult to get used to, but definitely deserving of the title hard-working.
Respectful
Another tie-in with polite, respectful or “tanin ni taishite keii wo hyou suru” to loosely describe it in Japanese, is a mainly positive word. However, it can sometimes be associated with distance. With the epidemic of idolization in Japan, whether it’s for pop stars or upperclassmen, it’s also possible to take respect just a bit too far. Many Westerners find the concept of being so respectful to their elders a bit outside the norm. But in Japan, the older you get, the wiser you are considered and the more respectfully you’re treated. You’ll get in big trouble if you use informal language with a person older than you unless they’re family. Even then, some relatives still expect proper formal language befitting of their senior status.
Shy
An overall impression of the citizens of Japan is that they’re very shy people, or “hazukashigariya”. This might be linked into their focus on politeness and respect. It is true that you don’t always hear a lot of outspoken Japanese people, especially tourists in foreign countries, but this might be for a different reason all together. Many Japanese people worry about their language skill and fear saying something incorrectly in English when they talk to native speakers. Conversation practice has only recently become a staple of English classes in Japan. If you’d only learned how to read and write the language, I bet you’d be kinda quiet at a party, too.
Intelligent
There’s a definite stereotype of people from Asian countries being the brainy cream of the crop. Whether this is factually correct or not wasn’t technically relevant to the survey thread, but it certainly was a nice compliment. The Japanese word for intelligent is “kashikoi.” Incidentally, if you tried to say the katakana pronunciation of smart, “sumaato,” that actually means to be thin and attractive in Japanese. Not that they’re mutually exclusive adjectives, but be careful of confusing your Japanese friends by trying to call someone intelligent and accidentally calling them slim and sexy.
Grouping
You know how girls are always said to travel in packs? Same goes for Japanese people, according to the interwebs. A word of advice to any aspiring English teachers in Japan is to make lots of group activities. Unlike America, where group work is often disliked because sharing the workload with other students inevitably means that it gets divided unequally, Japanese students thrive off of it. They prefer not to have to voice their opinions alone, but would rather share ideas with their peers and make a group decision. In a class of thirty Japanese kids, not many people want to stand up by themselves and read out of an English textbook. But put everyone in groups of three and make them read it in turns and you’ve got yourself an engaged classroom.
Formal
Tying in with polite, Japan has a reputation for being very formal. This manifests itself in both manner and language. Japanese has many different formality levels depending on who you’re addressing. This can be tiresome for people attempting to learn the language, and it can also lead to crossed wires between friends, especially in the case of foreigners and Japanese people. An American might wonder why their friend still calls them “David-san” when they’ve known each other for a few years. Far from wanting to keep distance between them, the Japanese friend might just be waiting for David to mention that they don’t really need to keep titles between them. After all, without checking first, it can be considered rude to suddenly stop using formal language (an act called “yobisute” or “dropping the name honorific”).
Clean
Many Internet users have seen Japanese tourists pick up trash from around campsites and rest stops even when they didn’t make the mess themselves. This habit and others added the description of clean to the list. Did you know that Japanese students clean their schools by themselves? No janitors, just students hauling trash bags, sweeping the steps, and wiping down the halls with washcloths for a good 30 minutes each day. Most storefront owners sweep up the sidewalks and streets outside their stores, too. Making it your business to keep communal space clean is a distinctly different mindset from some Western countries. Just think of all the gum-strewn, littered streets of big cities in America. Would LA smell any better if its citizens took a leaf out of Tokyo’s book on housekeeping? Overall, the impression of Japan from a Westerner’s eyes is pretty darn good, though perhaps a bit lacking in the relaxed and fun-loving department. My personal word pick for Japan would be focused. Whether it’s staying after school for 3 hours practicing with the baseball club, going to cram schools to get into good colleges, or clocking in extra hours of unpaid work at their jobs, Japanese people seem to find a goal and stick with it. Even in more fun pursuits, Japanese people throw themselves into their hobbies and work with a zeal that is truly commendable, in my humble opinion. ( By Madame Riri from www.madameriri.com )