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Japanese cooperation
The cliche is that the Japanese are more cooperative than Westerners but I don't quite believe that as stated. For instance early twentieth century Japanese labor history is rife with conflict and the Japanese Communist Party considered starting trouble as late as the 1960s. Today in new or surprising situations many Japanese will simply giggle or get nervous or do nothing rather than helping to solve the problem. When cooperation breaks down it seems to break down altogether.
In my alternative mental model the Japanese have specialized in the use of explicit focal points. They reaffirm these focal points repeatedly, to an extreme, by the use of rituals, particular forms of relational address, and almost absurd degrees of politeness and apology. When the focal point is explicit the cooperation works very very well.
But precisely because the Japanese are so good at using explicit focal points, the culture seems ill-suited to improvising or dealing with implicit or shifting or ambiguous focal points. When the focal point becomes unclear or is placed in danger, they are not very good at finding a new one on the spot. That is why the Japanese are either extremely ordered and cooperative in their behavior or extremely ineffective and chaotic. Of course since a new or unexpected situation creates a dilemma, there are social pressures to avoid such states of affairs. That dynamic strengthens the explicit focal points further, but makes it even harder to change focal points in the longer run.
The idea of a society investing in a particular "technique of cooperation" I find to be a powerful one.
Addendum: This hypothesis may also help explain why the Japanese travel abroad so often in groups. It's not just a lack of language skills but the group leader also supplies codes of conduct for unfamiliar situations.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 28, 2008 at 04:20 AM in Travels | Permalink
Comments
This is an interesting idea. But what coordination games are being solved by the rituals accompanying apologies, for example.
Posted by: michael webster at May 28, 2008 2:20:13 AM
"... absurd degrees of politeness ..."
I suggest "deference" rather than "politeness".
When I first waited for a train on a platform in Japan nearly 40 years ago, I was amazed at what an orderly queue the people formed starting from the carefully marked position at which the door would be exactly positioned when the train arrived. I was about tenth in a line of 40 or so. And I was nearly the last one onto the train, most of the 30 people behind me having dashed past as soon as the doors opened.
Japanese are deferential to people with whom they have some formal relationship (kankei) of a sort requiring deference -- which includes people such as foreigners who fall into the category of "high-status guest". To others their attitudes and behavior range from utter indifference to haughty arrogance.
I would contend that, in terms of genuine politeness as I believe most Americans would define it, Americans are significantly more polite than Japanese.
Posted by: jm at May 28, 2008 2:50:07 AM
Another point: Although there was significant rivalry between the several branches of the US armed services in WWII, it was nothing compared with that between the Japanese army and navy, whose inability to cooperate made US victory much easier than it might have been.
The degree to which the formation of cliques and factions form about charismatic leaders is much greater than in the US. It may seem paradoxical, but I think the reason one sees so few statues of "great men" in Japan is that the factionalism is so divisive, and the status of their leaders so dependent on their direct personal relationships with their faction members, that leaders able to marshal broad-based support -- especially through statement of abstract principles to which large numbers of people can subscribe (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) -- have been very rare.
Posted by: jm at May 28, 2008 3:04:19 AM
Stupid question: What do you mean by "focal point"? I can't imagine that Japanese people all stare at the same point on the wall when talking to each other...
Posted by: Nathan Sharfi at May 28, 2008 5:51:45 AM
Many years ago I had dinner with a music ed prof who had been a high school band director. He had just returned from a trip to Japan to see how their high school band programs worked. He raved about the clean schools, polite students, cases of empty beer bottles outside the teacher's lounge after lunch, etc.
He also raved about the musical ability of the students. Japanese teaching techniques clearly resulted in superior high school bands.
But there was one curiousity. Part of most competitive band evaluations is "sight reading" where the band and director are given a piece unknown to them, with 5 minutes to review it before playing. When the prof did this with one of the top high school bands in Japan, he said "In each instrument section, every student made exactly the same mistake. In an American band, the mistakes would be distributed randomly."
Posted by: Bob Knaus at May 28, 2008 7:27:13 AM
Nathan, "focal points" are another name for Schelling points.
Posted by: cjc at May 28, 2008 7:32:07 AM
On music students, Radiolab had a piece on speakers of tonal languages and found that they had substantially larger numbers of children with perfect pitch, which they concluded was either much more environemental or self selected by speakers.
Posted by: nelsonal at May 28, 2008 8:31:40 AM
Japanese is not a tonal language, though rythym is very important
Posted by: cabjoe at May 28, 2008 8:48:07 AM
Michael:
But what coordination games are being solved by the rituals accompanying apologies, for example.
Perhaps it is merely signalling. "I am willing to play expensive games to show you how much like you I am. You can therefore expect that I have a lot invested in this culture, and understand it very well. Be at ease about the predictability of my behavior, even though I just screwed up."
You could say that learning these elaborate rituals signals my ability to participate in the "real" coordination game, which is the tendency, in a given situation, to act just as any other Japanese person would act.
Posted by: mk at May 28, 2008 9:07:13 AM
(To tack on the obvious last sentence:) This predictability facilitates planning and cooperation among members of the Japanese culture.
Posted by: mk at May 28, 2008 9:10:10 AM
It is a shame that a young, untrained, non-expert layman linke me is going to be (probably) the first Japanese gentleman (who was born, raised and have been living in Japan for more than 30 years) to leave a comment on this article written by such a terrific writer / honourable economit like Mr. Cohen, and I would deeply apologize to anybody who is even slightly offended by the comment I am going to leave, but, yeah, I like what this guy said: part of me as a Japanese finds it extremely difficult to react when focal points like elder-younger or guest-servant relations are unclear. I'll start a conversation with a stranger using the most 'deferential' honorifics , and tone it down (or cheer it up?) as I know about his/her status relative to me.
But I would not call it 'explicit' focal points. Everyone is not so verbal about focal points, and we guess it from the situation around us and adjust ourselves to it. If I understand what is meant by 'explicit' and 'focal points.'
This article reminds me a book written by a Japanese sociologist, Toshio Yamagishi, which compares the cooperational behavior of Japanese groups and American groups and concludes that the former is more 'individualistic.' One of his article, in English, can be downloaded from his web site (the page itself was in Japanese, but you can find the link.)
Comparisons of Australians and Japanese on group-based cooperation. Asian Journal of Social Psychology , 8(2), 173-190.
http://lynx.let.hokudai.ac.jp/members/yamagishi/articles/index.cgi?ctg=0
Posted by: T.Ono at May 28, 2008 11:23:55 AM
This is an interesting idea. But what coordination games are being solved by the rituals accompanying apologies, for example.
Rituals are much easier than making it up on the spot. In English, for example, I'm always at a loss as to what the correct thing to say is, in tense situations (e.g. extending condolences, making apologies) because Americans always want that "personal" touch, and require a kind of artificial informality in all cases, even when you don't know the person well. You might say that it coordinates expectations. At least, that's why I like to have ritual words to exchange on those kinds of occasions. You get to express your condolence (or your apology) and your commiseration, but because there's a correct form in which to do it, you worry less about whether you're overstepping your bounds or failing to show them the consideration they think they are due.
I would contend that, in terms of genuine politeness as I believe most Americans would define it, Americans are significantly more polite than Japanese.
I'm probably biased here, since I'm operating from experience mostly with Californians and New Yorkers, but . . . uh . . . no. Not by a long shot. People are inconsiderate, don't know how to queue, almost never apologise when they screw up. That last is the really galling one to me, the total failure to show consideration in so many cases, that "tough luck for you" attitude. Maybe Southerners and Midwesterners are polite (they're reputed to be polite, at least), but not Americans in general.
The degree to which the formation of cliques and factions form about charismatic leaders is much greater than in the US.
Is this really true? To a certain extent, we saw that with Koizumi recently. But if you look at other historic faction leaders in the LDP, like Nakasone or Hashimoto, "charismatic" is not really the word that comes to mind. Rather, it's well connected people people owe favours to (and who owe favours to other people) -- and my sense is that this dynamic plays out throughout the country, in government and private bureaucracies, in academia, in community groups, etc. Isn't that the point of Amakudari, for example?
Re: factionalism preventing statues, the Japanese also do have plenty of things memorialising great men, like putting their faces on the currency and so on. Not so many statues, but it's not like there aren't any. Ninomiya Sontoku gets a lot of statues, for example. I think I've seen more than one of Fukuzawa Yukichi too. On the other hand, true, it's not like the capital is full of grand avenues lined with equestrian statues, the way London or DC are. I suspect that if you look at more than statues and include memorial stelae and that kind of thing, you'd get rather more, though. I have (Korean) politicians among my ancestors, and they certainly don't have statues. Instead, people put up stele and pillars and things like that to honour them. I've never gone looking for this, but I suspec the Japanese may be similar.
Posted by: Taeyoung at May 28, 2008 11:30:05 AM
The cliche of a Japanese cooperation culture is overrated. It was glorified by the work of Nakane, Johnson, Wolferen and others who prided themselves on understanding this "mysterious culture," and picked up by lots of journalists trying to titilate their American audiences.
For a good response, take a look at John Haley's work on how the lack of lawsuits that culturalists cite as evidence of cooperation is actually a function of Japan's legal institutions, not any cultural proclivity. Or look at Kohno or Ramseyer's work on how politics in Japan (and differences between that in America or Europe) is the result of politicians acting on the same basis politicians elsewhere do but under different institutions, not on any cultural procilivity. Or for fun look at http://westfearneon.com/ where the author loves to mock this sort of thing.
And in response to Mr. Ono, the same process of linguistic adjustment during conversation happens in English too, it just seems more obvious in Japanese because words can be formally categorized into politeness/formality level. Ironically, I've noted that this process is something that native Japanese (and Koreans) have trouble with in English, missing subtle forms of politeness that native English speakers use.
Posted by: George at May 28, 2008 11:39:36 AM
I love this!
Incidentally, it also helps explain why there is no concept of property rights like there is in the west. Relationships are defined in terms of relationships to something external to both parties -- the focal point -- rather than in terms of relationships between the parties -- the fence.
Good fences make good neighbors in Anglo-Saxon cultures. But good focal points make good neighbors in Japan.
But what focal point is strong enough to overcome even petty squabbles between neighbors? Is it the ideal of being Japanese? If so, might not this also account for some measure of xenophobia?
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at May 28, 2008 11:53:49 AM
The point in general is quite true. Japanese cooperation is very impressive when social groups are well-defined, but OTOH Japanese people are arguably less cooperative than Americans in situations where groups are ill-defined. (And in particular in-group vs. out-group situation.)
At the same time, it's true that American society, like others, have the same sorts of group dynamics, use of different forms of address and other politeness markers, and so on. People's superiors get treated differently, people use different language and behave differently at work or away. The "rules" just tend to be more informal or less spelled out in the US, in addition to various generalized shifting of rules over the years. Japanese tends to use words for the concepts more often and to explicitly spell out the "correct" behavior, which means that it's easier to explicitly think about how one behaves.
And yes, New Yorkers and Californians are each in their own ways quite different from Southerners and Midwesterners. Being Southern, my mother automatically knows when to make an offer that you know someone won't take you up on, and understands the ritual of how both people are supposed to offer to pay for a meal, with the person who really should be paying insisting more strenuously and winning out in the end. Those sorts of things are common in Japanese society as well, but less so in New York. (It made it easier for me to understand certain things in Japanese than my classmates when I was studying the language at Cornell.)
Posted by: John Thacker at May 28, 2008 12:22:22 PM
Most Americans I know claim to believe that a person's true character is revealed in stressful, chaotic situations. Do Japanese have any similar cultural ideals?
I'd say that, in American culture, it is considered quite shameful to "freeze up" in a stressful situation. And Americans greatly admire cool-headed people. Is freezing up not a similar source of shame in Japanese culture?
Posted by: im at May 28, 2008 1:26:19 PM
Anecdote from Japanese literature: in the final confrontation from the "Treasury of Loyal Retainers", when the ronin invade the enemy's house, the neighbors are roused by the sound of fighting in the night and ask what is going on. After one of the ronin yells back that they're avenging their master and they promise to take extra care not to kick over any lamps (fire being a big issue in houses built mostly of wood), the neighbors are like, "O.K., then," and go back to bed, leaving the ronin to slaughter everyone in the house next door.
Posted by: Diana at May 28, 2008 2:25:31 PM
I do think some valid points have been made here.
However, I am always a bit uneasy with these sorts
of generalized discussions about what one or another
national group tends to do. In particular here, aside
from a fictional example given by Diana, which may not be
relevant anyway, and the example given of the Japanese
army and navy's mutual competitiveness, which also may
not be relevant, since it was an in-place competition
rather than some breakdown in the face of uncertainty,
I have seen exactly zero actual examples of what is
supposedly the big problem. How many of you have seen
Japanese falling apart in unusual situations? Have you
seen this, Tyler? Have you read of it? Anybody with any
actual, real examples, please?
Mr. Ono,
Sorry to embarrass you, but the author of the post is
"Cowen," not "Cohen." The former is an Irish name, the
latter a Jewish name. Hara-kiri is clearly called for
(just being ironic).
Oh, and regarding Japanese politics, a useful observation
is that the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire has also
long been applied to the long-ruling (but maybe not for
much longer) Liberal Democratic Party, which has been said
to be "not liberal, not democratic, and not a party." The
usual argument is that it is coalition of factions who run
on essentially feudal priniciples, and the last time I was
there, a faction member committed suicide when he voted
against the wishes of his faction leader on a major issue
(postal savings bank privatization).
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 28, 2008 3:57:50 PM
A friend who has lived in Japan for decades says that meetings in Japan always start with everybody making vague statements as they try to locate the "focal point" of the group. He believes that the Japanese are much more sensitive and made uncomfortable by other people's emotional discomfort than Americans are, thus the tremendous cultural emphasis on achieving "harmony."
It would be interesting to identify the polar opposite culture of Japan, a culture of argumentation -- perhaps New York City, or possibly Tel Aviv.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at May 28, 2008 4:55:16 PM
Barkley Rosser: "How many of you have seen Japanese falling apart in unusual situations? Have you seen this, Tyler? Have you read of it? Anybody with any actual, real examples, please?"
I teach English at a Japanese junior high, and I see this happen relatively often (a little less than once a week).
Most of the regular classes at a Japanese school generally follow the same model of a teacher lecturing and the students quietly taking notes or filling out worksheets/practice books. This approach seems to be highly effective for teaching kanji and generating good scores on standardized tests. It is not, however, a particularly good method for learning English, so my classes tend to deviate from that style.
Naturally, there are focal points (and/or coventions) that are specific to English classes in Japan (e.g. repeating words and sentences after the teacher, writing memorizing, and performing dialogues that deviate slightly from a model conversation, copying sentences from a textbook), and most students can handle those conventions fairly well. But when students are asked to do things that fall outside these conventions (e.g. answer a spoken question that doesn't have a prescribed response, give an example of a word from a categoy like animals or colors (in English or in Japanese), or speak to a member of the opposite gender), then it is fairly common for some students to "simply giggle or get nervous or do nothing."
From my American standpoint, at first this seemed passive agressive or xenophobic, since once a student shut down, they would not respond to my presence at all, such that I cannot generate any response from them using English or Japanese. But recently I have seen the same thing happen in classes taught by Japanese teachers who have had enough exposure to foreign teachers that they slightly deviate from the norms in their lessons.
Over 9 months in Japan I have seen other examples of the (non)response to novel situations, but the classroom one is the most striking: watching otherwise bright, energetic jr. high students disappear into themselves because you told them to ask the girls sitting next to them what colors they like.
Posted by: Dan Kling at May 28, 2008 9:49:29 PM
To Mr. Cowen and Mr. Rosser: a thousand times of my harakiri would still have a long way to compensate for the deadly mistake I have committed. I apologize.
Hi Dan, I can imagine how embarassing the non-response of the student was to you. There's more to it: we somehow hate 'role-playing' and do now allow someone around us to do that. Putting myself to the mind of students who are told to "ask the girls sitting next to them what colors they like," it makes perfect sense to remain silent and do nothing, because otherwise I would be teased later by my peers for being "pretentious" (in need of better words to put this feeling in). The lack of a focal point is not between the girl and me; it is rather between the classmates and me.
Posted by: T.Ono at May 29, 2008 1:07:54 AM
I don't have much to add to this thread, but since I've tried learning spoken Japanese and want to visit Japan some day, I have been following it.
Dan_Kling, do you have experience with American students to compare to? In German class, it felt weird to be put on the spot like that, but not because I was uncomfortable speaking or because it was to the opposite gender. Also, I remeber there would be occasions when we had to "Practice dialogue with the person next to you", which I hated, because that person would, unless already a friend of mine, sit there like a log and do nothing.
T.Ono, thanks for your input, that's really interesting.
Posted by: Person (jin?) at May 29, 2008 9:32:13 AM
To Mr. Ono,
Please accept my deep apology for my
inappropriate and defocalizing remarks
(picture deep, improperly executed, bow from me).
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 29, 2008 5:01:51 PM
Sorry for a remote comment because I wonder why nobody referred to the natural theory about Japanese culture.
I think the appropriate model for Japanese culture is not Schelling's game but Greif's repeated game. Yamagishi's experimental results can be interpreted as the reputation mechanism among Maghribi traders - although it was questioned recently.
Now Japan is changing from the personal mechanism of Maghribi to impersonal mechanism of western Europe. It's painful because it's the wholesale change of mechanism inherited for hundreds or thousands of years.
Posted by: Nobuo Ikeda at Jun 4, 2008 10:38:54 AM
George writes that Wolferen and others glorify a "cliche of a Japanese cooperation culture". I strongly disagree. Karel van Wolferen in his book "The Enigma of Japanese Power" hardly glorifies any aspect of Japanese culture. I believe Wolferen's analysis/critique of Japanese culture has stood the test of time. I make no defense of Nakane and Johnson.
Posted by: Colin Glassey at Jun 4, 2008 12:01:21 PM
