Japanese and Communication in the Global Society

Japan has been, just as any other countries on the globe, under pressure and attack from many other regions, nations and so forth. Today I am bound to realize the pressure but that is probably due to the current whaling issue.

Let us then take the incident as an example of how Japanese would react to the stimuli; we remain silent. The last thing that we would do is to make our voices heard by other people by explaining what is going on, how it occurs and how we suffer from the thing. For this reason, it is quite often said that you cannot tell what the Japanese are thinking or feeling, mixing the stereotyped image of the old-fashioned Japanese that would not express his or her emotion explicitly.

Then you would probably question why this particular people are reluctant in making speeches in public or writing letters of protest and so forth? Good question. Japan has been actually independent as a nation for more than 2600 years with the oldest and quite primitive monarchy system that still exists within.

Most of people were farming class, who later would develop their collective-consciousness rather than invididualistic way of life. If you are isolated from your tribe or group of people, you cannot attend a big event of farming as opposed to hunting where you can do much on your own if only you are equipped with legitimate weapons. So, No Rambo or Commando was born in Japan, much less the soil for those individualistic hero who can do on his own.

Look at Heros in movies and television. Rambo, Commando, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Popeye, they all are just 1 man. In the meantime, we have dozens of Power Rangers and its equivalent; usually Japanese heroes are 3 or 5 guys in unit and together they fight against the evil men. It is quite rare that 1 standing hero kicks some butt.

Coordination or harmony has much higher value than stand play and impressing other guys. Team-work between trusted friends, colleagues or comrades is of paramount importance in our culture. My feeling is, post-WWII Japanese government is misunderstanding the cooperation and teamwork in the international society as the same as that within our culture.

After coordination or harmony, style of communication between those members of a hero group should NOT be verbalized. Each one is expected to guess what other are feeling, thinking or planning by grasping the subtle signs that his or her friend makes or expresses. I am not talking about the Force in the StarWars, but this has been the very basis of our communication.

Feeling and sixth sense with the subtle energy, Ki, is the very key in understanding the way of communication between regular Japanese. If you doubt it, watch some Ninja movies made by Japanese. They nod, wink and you are good to go get your enemy.

Now we have sophisticated mobile phone and all fancy electronics, so now finally we are forced into the usage of words and phrases in expressing ourselves; well, if you think that way, you are wrong. As visual and intuitive we are, we have developed special type of character just like emoticons when communicating with others using fancy mobile phone. That character "Kao-moji" (meaning, "face-character") is rather a symbol not a character, so once again, we have failed to verbalize our thought and put them together into an organized sentence to make a speech or to write a thesis.