Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・Outright discrimination is hardly seen in the Japanese business society, however, still many Japanese people have a high hurdle for them to accept someone different from the ordinary Japanese.

・The question “what’s ordinary?” often remained unanswered. But we think that their definition of “ordinary” is the majority of the group they belong to.

・So we may not call what we have in Japan “discrimination” but something like unconscious bias triggered by the strong group mentality against outsiders of that group.

・For instance in some big Japanese companies, people who joined straight out of universities are called “proper employees” and feel special about themselves over mid-career hires.

・Foreigners in expat positions have no issues, but locally hired foreigners still have tougher times to live in Japan as they do not get adequate support due to the language barrier.

・It may not be seen as discrimination but a huge disadvantage still exists for foreigners living in Japan.

・When Japanese people have a meeting, even if there is someone who does not understand Japanese, they conduct the meeting in Japanese. Or they simply do not invite foreigners. It could be considered as discrimination in the global standard. But the Japanese have no bad intention. They are just behaving based on their group mentality and ignorant about this topic. They need to be educated more about discrimination and unconscious bias.

・Japan has a strong island group mentality which gives people a strong desire to belong to the group. As it is an island, you can not survive once you are expelled. So you will do everything to comply with the group rules, not to stand out and also to be polite and nice all the time in order to be accepted as a member. Once you become a member, 100% total commitment to this group is required.

・Often when you are a foreigner, it’s easier to deal with the Japanese because they don’t expect total commitment and Japanese mentality from an outsider. Their expectation is well managed. But if your Japanese is almost at a native level and live here for a long time or look like a Japanese, it gets harder to deal with the Japanese because they now expect you to behave a Japanese with total commitment with Japanese mentality.

・When the Japanese were talking about foreigners with Stefan, Stefan said “I am also a foreigner.” The Japanese said “You don’t count.”

・When the Japanese were talking about the Japanese with Satoshi, Satoshi said “I am also a Japanese.” The Japanese said “You don’t count.”

・For the Japanese, still being Japanese is a very strong definition of their group. Japanese TV shows international sports only when some Japanese athletes were playing. If not, they do not show it. They don’t even show the result of the tournament itself as soon as the Japanese athletes finish competing.

・Germany has changed over the past 20 years and today if there is any foreigner Germans talk to the person in English. At most German global companies, the official language is English. If there is a single person who does not understand German in the meeting, they all speak English.

・Japanese companies will not be able to achieve the German level of English communication skills any time soon. But if the Japanese leaders learn how to communicate clearly and effectively and arrange a translator, they should be able to work with non-Japanese people as well. International communication is not about the language but about the short, crisp and effective message. Then it should not be lost in translation easily.