Finding Your Sweet Spot in Japan
If you act too Japanese, you’ll creep ’em out
Past clients have, on occasion, requested a list of “dos and don’ts” to help their employees effectively engage with Japanese colleagues and customers.
Never once did I provide any hard rules. That’s because for every rule I could think of, I can also imagine breaking it under the right circumstances.
So forget about dos and don’ts. Follow this simple guideline and you’ll be fine:
Be kind, respectful, attentive, and authentic.
Authenticity is underrated
The notion of authenticity comes with a catch. Namely, if you haven’t yet figured out who you are at your core, then how could you possibly present your authentic self to others?
Using myself as a case in point, even at 66 years old, I am still peeling away the bullshit personal hangups that have prevented me from achieving complete self-understanding; and while I am getting close to figuring out who I am, I am embarrassed to admit that I am still a work in progress.
Be that as it may, the importance of authenticity doesn’t get much attention in the cross-cultural field, probably because it’s not something that can be measured or even taught.
At the risk of sounding a bit loony and woo-woo, authenticity has a mystical quality; it’s hard to define, but if your bullshit detectors are working, you’ll know it when you see it in others. And when you don’t.
On one end of the social spectrum are the rare, enlightened, self-aware unicorns who attract people with their raw, unfiltered authenticity.
On the other end of the spectrum are folks who spend a lifetime searching for their “true selves” but never quite crack the code.
The rest of us are somewhere in between, works-in-progress figuring things out as we go along.
The Japan code is hard to crack, but for some it comes effortlessly…
Japanese culture can be a tough nut to crack for foreigners. The good news is that Japanese cut foreigners much more slack than we deserve.
The downside is that their polite tolerance can fool you into thinking you’re killin’ it when you’re not, which means it’s a missed opportunity to learn from your mistakes.
But mistakes are inevitable. People who do especially well in cross-cultural encounters are, as I implied earlier, kind, attentive, respectful, and authentic. These personal attributes seem to somehow immunize them from any faux pas imaginable — as long as the perpetrator’s heart is deemed to be in the right place.
I happen to know a goodhearted person who possesses this rare, authentic superpower. I call him The Unicorn.
A glitch in the cross-cultural matrix?
Over a decade ago, when we lived in Hawaii, my wife and I befriended an international couple, an American man married to a lovely Japanese lady.
My new friend was born and raised in Boston. He fulfills every stereotype that you’d expect from an Easter-coaster: loud, brash, direct, obnoxious, and hilarious, the proverbial bull in a China shop, except he’s more like a unicorn than a bull, hence, “The Unicorn.”
One fateful day, two friends from Japan— a married couple — visited us in Hawaii. Through happenstance, we ended up introducing The Unicorn to my Japanese friends. Shock and awe would ensue.
To prepare my new friends for their encounter with the soft-spoken Japanese husband, I let them know upfront that his English might be a little rusty and difficult to understand since he was out of practice. I took it for granted that The Unicorn would keep this little tidbit of information between us.
How wrong I was.
Imagine my horror when, upon meeting my Japanese friend, Mr. Unicorn blurted out, “Tim was right, your English is hard to understand, you need to work on your pronunciation.” (Envision, if you will, the deer-in-the-headlights look on my face.)
This was a level of directness and honesty beyond even my wildest interpretation of American cultural standards.
Now with over a decade of temporal distance from this ordeal, I can look back and laugh because it’s the stuff of comedy, the kind of comment that would come from the mouth of a cartoon babe like Crayon Shinchan or Dennis the Menace.
The Japanese have a word for this kind of unfiltered honesty: “baka shōjiki” (馬鹿正直), literally “foolishly honest.”
This was my first clue of just how foolishly honest my friend could be. More clues would follow.
If I were to list personal attributes most likely to alienate Japanese people, at the very top would be “loud”, “direct”, “brash”, and “brutally honest”. And if this criteria is indeed valid, then in no known universe should my friend get along well with Japanese people.
And yet, amazingly, he does !
For in spite of The Unicorn’s blunt, public critique of my friend’s English pronunciation, my Japanese friend had a grand old time and still speaks fondly of the The Unicorn today.
Might there be a glitch in the cross-cultural matrix?
The lovable unicorn
I personally know four Japanese people who have interacted with my Boston friend.
No one ever gets mad at him. As much as I love my friend, it can be maddening.
The Unicorn’s consistent attentiveness to the needs of others (known in Japanese as “Kikubari” 気配り) brings more than enough mojo to offset his complete lack of tact.
In my Unicorn friend’s defense, back then he had no clue he was breaking any rules, he was just being his authentic, unfiltered self. All the Japanese in our little circle simply shrugged off his blunt observations with a chuckle, mumbled under their breaths “shikata ga nai ne” (=Whaddaya gonna do?), and moved on as if nothing happened.
The lesson from The Unicorn is threefold: one, authenticity is a key ingredient for developing meaningful relationships within and across cultures; two, proactive kindness is the glue that binds; and three, people like my unicorn friend are a rarity.
This means that the rest of us need to continue cultivating our authentic selves and be strategic about making our connections within and across cultures.
Now let’s turn our focus to the other end of the cross-cultural spectrum as it applies to Japan: foreigners who act too Japanese.
Many moons ago, Tim went native and it was creepy
During the first seven years of Japan’s roaring 80s, I was completely immersed in Japanese life. From morning till night, I was speaking Japanese, socializing with Japanese friends and colleagues, even dreaming in Japanese — then waking up and doing it all over again.
During these early formative years, by sheer osmosis, I took on an array of Japanese mannerisms without consciously being aware of it. I was bowing, bobbing my head when listening to and speaking with the locals, all the while sprinkling in aizuchi (vocal prompts to signal that one is listening) in conversations — even while speaking in my mother tongue, which thoroughly annoyed siblings and compatriots.
“I was bowing, bobbing my head when listening to and speaking with the locals, while liberally using aizuchi (vocal prompts to signal you are listening) in conversations…”
My heart was in the right place, but I was still a raw work-in-progress, a half-baked version of who I am today.
In this light, imagine how weirded-out my family and friends were when this Japanized younger version of me returned to the motherland after ten years in Japan.
An identity correction would gradually ensue.
Indeed, over the next three decades, from Tennessee to Chicago to Hawaii, with every new situation, I tweaked and re-calibrated.
Lots of pain, lots of gain, lots of fun, all worth it, because it helped me get much closer to figuring out my authentic self.
To my utter surprise, my return to Japan six years ago felt completely natural, like this is where I belong. And for the first time in my life, I feel completely comfortable in my own skin.
Damn, it sure took me long enough.
One unanticipated change in my outlook is that I’ve completely embraced the advantages of being a foreigner in Japan and the liberating feeling that comes with it. The locals kindly allow me to live outside the social pressure cooker, while I play ambassador and I seek out opportunities to show gratitude and respect to my hosts. I’d like to think it is a win-win for all involved.
But if you must break the rules…
To reiterate my point at the beginning, any cross-cultural rule I could make, I would break in a heartbeat if I thought it would create a desirable outcome. But you have to be judicious in picking your battles.
For clarity, let’s use a concrete example.
It’s common knowledge that Japanese people generally greet each other by bowing. When Westerners are involved, they might adjust their greeting style by shaking hands, but rarely do you see Japanese folks hug each other.
As always, exceptions exist. But it’s safe to say that hugging is not a common practice in Japan, even within families, much less with overly affectionate foreigners like me.
To this point, if I were so inclined, I could create a “don’t-hug-Japanese-people” rule, and slap it on a dos-and-don’ts list.
As someone who comes from a long line of huggers and has lived in Hawaii for over a decade, no surprise I’ve gotten even “huggier” in my old age. Still, I am hyper-conscious about restraining myself, so it’s always a situational “game-time” decision.
In contrast, my Japanese wife is now a recovering non-hugger, thanks to three decades of intensive hugging practice with my overly affectionate American family — plus the influence of Hawaiian culture.
With this backdrop, when we used to host Japanese hula groups in Hawaii, whenever guests would visit us, my wife and I would conspire to break the no-hug rule when we met them at Hilo airport, at which time we’d put leis around their necks then quickly move in for our hug.
The move, by design, would surprise them. But it always broke the ice and made them smile, our desired outcome. In this case, breaking the rule was calculated, strategic, and came from a genuine place.
Interestingly, in ensuing years when we would visit Japan and meet these same folks on Japanese turf, they’d always greet us with a hug and still do today. Dare I say, our Japanese friends seem to actually enjoy it?
Moral of the story : break rules if the context is right and it has strategic value in eliciting whatever response you desire.
Final Thoughts
Okay Mr. Smarty-pants Tim, what about taking off your shoes before entering a Japanese home? Surely that is a rule you should never break, right?
Um…point taken. However! I have seen with my very own eyes, my Japanese wife, after lacing up her winter boots, walk on her heels to a table several steps away from the genkan (玄関) entrance, grab the car keys she had forgotten, then “heel-walk” her way back to the genkan. (Apparently walking on her heels somehow gives her special dispensation. Still, rule broken!)
Exceptions notwithstanding, there’s no hard-and-fast rule book, no prescriptive paint-by-the-numbers scheme for every possible cross-cultural encounter that might conceivably occur. Connecting with people is an art, not a science. It can’t be reduced to a dos-and-don’ts algorithm.
If you hope to improve your cross-cultural communication skills, start by knowing who you are. Then educate yourself to better understand the other person’s culture and background. Ultimately, you want to learn to use that knowledge to build a bridge that works for you, one that starts from a place of authenticity, and ends with a meaningful human connection.
I can’t in good conscience recommend you start hugging Japanese people willy-nilly or walk into a Japanese home with your shoes on. But I can say with confidence that you should never let one-size-fits-all rules dictate how you engage with others.
Be yourself. Be kind. Be attentive. Be respectful. Break some eggs. Find your sweet spot. The rest will take care of itself.
If stories about my cross-cultural triumphs and failures in Japan sound like fun, you can read all about ’em here.
If you are on LinkedIn and would like to connect, please reach out with a brief note introducing yourself. Here’s a link to my profile.
© Tim Sullivan 2022
