Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・Japanese people show a high level of resilience to cope with natural disaster etc but when it comes to the changing business reality, they seem to show no sign of resilience. Why?

・It seems the Japanese people show a high degree of resilience if it is about maintaining status quo. When it comes to changing the status quo, they seem much less interested. Maybe the image of status quo is easy for everyone to understand and so it prevails. But the image of change is difficult to communicate and so people rather go back to the status quo.

・Natural disaster is a point in time and it will be over. But COVID-19 is longer and the social change it has brought will continue to stay. So people are kept at high alert for a unknown period of time in the future. Being resilient for a short period of time is possible but to sustain that resilience for a long time is a way more challenging.

・Even though people work remotely these days, a toxic environment could still exist. (Toxic cyber environment)

・Resilience is about how much stress you can absorb and deal with. Maybe people could be more resilient to a certain type of stress while not so resilient for a different type of stress. For instance, Japanese are very resilient when it comes to working long hours, commuting in rush hour trains, being polite all the time etc, are quite non-resilient when it comes to global environment, English language, diverse workforce and transformation etc.

・Japanese resilience is well summarized in one Japanese word “Gaman”(patience/putting up with). They are very resilient even to a masochistic degree, but many people are burned out because of that.

・It looks like Westerners are trained for sprint while Japanese are trained for marathon.

・For the Japanese, equality often means being the same, not equal opportunities with different individual results as in today’s global world. This Japanese sense of equality is almost like a psychological prison preventing innovation and creativity from happening in Japan.

・In Japan, because of the traditional Monono aware (sympathizing losers) culture, many people do not support victorious individuals. They would rather support a loyal member of a losing team. They would rather lose together than wining alone. If they win as individuals, they feel quilty.

・It is almost like the Japanese expect each other to be sad and miserable. Suffering is expected. If you are suffering and miserable as everybody else in Japan, you are well accepted. If you look happy and individualistic, you are frowned upon. It’s almost like a misery competition.

・It’s so sad that Japan’s strength is being good at coping with misery because many people are miserable and used to it. It is a real misery.