Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

The traditional sense of fairness in Japan is about “fairness of the results” where everybody gets the same experience. On the other hand, the traditional sense of fairness in the West, it is more about “fairness of opportunities”.

A good illustration of Japan’s version of fairness is the school lunch and school uniforms at Japanese schools where students are eating and wearing the same things so that every student can get the same experience.

In the West, rich students probably have nicer lunch while poorer students eat the same ham sandwich every day. Also, richer kids may wear brand jeans while poorer kids may wear non-brand used jeans.

However, despite the above mentioned different experiences due to the kids’ family standards, education itself is free in Germany. So German students can go to university regardless of their family’s financial status.

The U.S. society is the opposite extreme of Japan. In America, everybody experiences different things mainly based on their financial status. It’s all about individuals and the choices they make. Having choices is regarded very important in the US. If you end up with bad results, it is regarded that you made bad choices. But in reality, the gap between rich and poor is so big that if you are poor you don’t have so much choices to start with.

In recent years, even Americans have started considering the importance of having social baselines, such as educational baseline, medical baseline, street safety baseline and basic income etc. because they do not have them now and suffering because of that. What’s the point of being super rich if your neighborhood is too dangerous for you to go out?

On the other hand, the Japanese society has been good providing at those baselines so far. Many foreigners really enjoy the social baselines in Japan. Probably this desire to provide fair treatment to all the people in Japan is linked with Japan’s strong cultural identity.

However, the flip side of the coin of the baseline-providing culture of Japan is that it could weaken individual drive of the Japanese people to be independent, innovative and resilient. Also, it could make Japanese companies slow to promote more diversity and differentiate people’s performance based on meritocracy.

When the baseline culture is too strong, it could make people ignore differences and impose social pressure on everybody, leaving them with not so much alternatives. For instance, minorities and socially weak people such as working single mothers, orphans and people with disabilities etc, may not be taken into consideration and they may not be properly supported in Japan today.

When it comes to innovation, diversity and resilience etc, which are critically important in today’s business world, the Japanese leaders should shift more towards “fairness of opportunity” rather than sticking with the traditional “fairness of results”. However, when it comes to the social safety side, the Japanese leaders should maintain what’s good in the “fairness of results” society and keep supporting the basic needs of everybody including minorities.