Japan Still Suffering from Communications and Cultural “Black Holes!”

During the 1950s and early 1960s I often characterized Japan as being a “black hole” when it came to information relating to corporate Japan and the government.      Like “black holes” in the galaxies, companies and government agencies sucked in information from around the world but never gave anything back. Companies and government agencies collected tons of domestic data, but it was not made available to the public, in part because of cultural reasons.      The barriers to obtaining business information about Japan were not fully breached until the proliferation of computers in the 1980s and the accompanying seismic shift in the mindset of the Japanese.       But Japan now suffers from a “communications and cultural black hole” that impacts on domestic matters and as well as its international relationships. The reasons for this problem are also both linguistic and cultural.      A Tokyo University professor has noted that the Japanese language is so obtuse, so inexact, that often only about 70 percent of one hears the first time is clear, requiring further explanation that often is not forthcoming.      On the international front the main reason for Japan’s communications “black hole” is the fact that so few Japanese on that level are bilingual or bicultural, and they continue to have a built-in Japan-is-unique bias.      From the late 1630s until the 1860s Japan was virtually closed to the outside world, and regarded its language as one of the most important barriers in keeping foreigners at bay.     Near the end of this period of isolation, when foreigners began pounding on Japan’s doors, the shogunate government passed an edict making it a capital crime to teach Japanese to foreigners. Furthermore, any Japanese who learned a foreign language was regarded as a traitor or potential traitor, and was kept under surveillance.       As late as the 1960s most Japanese automatically assumed that Westerners could not learn Japanese, and were dumbfounded when they encountered one who did. At the same time, the Japanese approach to encouraging and requiring the study of English for business and political purposes was even more myopic than the traditional American approach to the study of foreign languages.      Mandatory English lessons in Japanese schools were taught by Japanese teachers who could read English but could not speak it or understand it when spoken.      By the 1970s, however, this situation had improved significantly, with hundreds of public and private schools employing foreign language teachers and many companies hiring foreign tutors to teach English in-house to key employees.      There has since been a very conspicuous increase in the number of Japanese [especially girls and women] who can speak and understand English well.      But on the business and political front the number of Japanese who speak English—the main language of international business and diplomacy—is still so small Japan’s news media warns that the country is on the verge of being left behind the rest of the world.      The problem—which the United States has also faced and not yet fully recognized—is that the Japanese were conditioned over the centuries to look inward instead of outward, to have a built-in isolationist “Japan is different” complex.      The fact that Japan was able to become an extremely rich nation in just 25 years [thanks to the American and European markets] while still limiting its involvement with the outside world has allowed most Japanese to maintain their isolationist mindset.      Language remains a primary cultural barrier not only for the Japanese but for Americans as well. As noted in an earlier column universal language translators [which will be readily available by 2015] will reduce this problem but will not solve it.      Languages do not automatically convey their cultural content, so language-learning [and the use of translation devices] must be combined with cultural learning, and this is an area that has gotten little attention in many countries, if not ignored altogether, especially by Japan and the United States.      Both Japan and the United States have increased their number of foreign language-cultural programs, but they are far behind China, India and most other countries—and this puts Japanese and Americans at a serious economic and political disadvantage.   Copyright © 2009 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente ____________________ Boyé Lafayette De Mente is a graduate of Jōchi University in Tokyo and Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. He is the author of more than 50 books on the business practices, cultures and languages of China, Japan, Korea and Mexico. For a list and synopses of his books go to: www.boyedemente.com .

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