Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

· To a large extend, the Japanese culture is driven by the fact that the majority of Japanese hesitates to change. From a Japanese standpoint, Japan as it is provides everything for a good living. There is no need to put this at risk or even to leave Japan. Therefore, the influence from foreigners is often not regarded as positive or enrichment. On the other hand, importing goods, skills and culture from outside Japan and then to „Japanize“ them is part of the Japanese culture as well.

· Many Japanese who have lived or studied outside of Japan got used to foreign values and cultures. They are often struggling after return in adapting back the Japanese culture.

· Japanese culture is mainly driven from putting oneself behind a team or group and not to stand out as an individual or to embarrass others.

· A good foundation about Japanese culture are the books "The anatomy of dependence: The key analysis of Japanese behavior“ (1973) and "The anatomy of self: The individual versus society“ (1986) by Takeo Doi, but they need an update with the more recent developments.

· Japanese culture is actually more recognized from foreigners outside Japan than from Japanese themselves. Japanese see this simply as given. This applies to food, art, monozukuri (the Japanese manufacturing practices), anime and more.

· A possible way to look at culture in general is the iceberg model. The visible tip of the iceberg represents the visible culture, but its foundation is the much larger invisible part underneath the surface. These are the values of the culture and society. While the visible part of the iceberg (visible culture) might change, the invisible part (values) remains essentially unchanged. For example, the US culture changed tremendously over the last century, but it still depends on the values of freedom and equality. The values for Japan are among putting oneself behind the group.

· In every culture, not only Japan, the influence of foreigners can be viewed as a challenge to the status quo. How a culture then adapts and reacts on this challenge usually leads to enrichment of the own culture. I this sense, „threads" might become the new good. Canada’s culture for example changed in after the world war due to foreign influence towards a more team based view. Also in business, corporate culture also changed the recent years from the sole profit oriented view towards sustainable and environmental friendly business.

· Gender roles play also a large part of Japanese culture. With the foreign influence, working women became part of the culture. This, however, increased the burden of working mothers, because the traditional gender role of taking care of family and kids education still remains.

· Sports also might change culture. Because of the history, Germans were in general not proud of the own country around the eighties. It was not common to wave German flags for instance. This completely changed during the soccer world cup 2006 and initiated the positive „new patriotism“ in Germany. Similarly, the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 supported Japanese towards finding their own identity after the world war.