イギリス英会話ブログ

I have been following a very interesting discussion on an e-mail mailing list I subscribe to. The thread started off by discussing native English speakers tendency to use the pronoun ‘my’ more than Japanese speakers - as in ‘my company’, ‘my neighbours’, ‘my school’. I think it is basically true that pronouns are used much more frequently in English than in Japanese; but this was not the really interesting part of the discussion. One of the key contributors to this discussion was a westerner who has lived in Japan for 18 years and I would like to summarize some of the ideas he put forward, as I found them very illuminating.

To summarize: one common opinion that is often raised about Japanese people is their so-called collectivism or group-think - arising, it is said, from their island mentality and their agricultural, as opposed to hunting, roots. This division - between westerner-hunter-individualist and japanese-farmer-collectivist - does not really stand up to close examination. Agriculture was widespread throughout Europe and there is evidence of hunting societies in ancient Japan. As usual, the reality is more complex.

There is no point me paraphrasing what someone else has already argued perfectly clearly, so I will just quote from the mail in my inbox:

Anyway, in my previous post I argued three main points:
1. That Japan is actually NOT collectivist in many regards. For example, collectivist cultures are often cited as having easy-going and widespread relations among members, a sense of communal ownership, a sense of equality- among other things. But I do not find much evidence of these in Japan.As I mentioned, Japanese people (in general of course, so exceptions always exist) have real difficulty in dealing with outsiders or newcomers. By outsiders, I don’t mean so much “gaijin” as I mean “shiranai hito”, usually other Japanese. If anything, there is a strong shying away from “others” in Japan, the move is inwards, not the collectivist “outwards”. I addressed the equality issue previously and you seem to agree with that, and will repeat that the Japanese psychological sense of “my” in terms of possessions, ownership or general “nawabari” is - in my opinion - no weaker than in Western countries, and in many cases actually stronger (i.e., the sense of “public” in Japan- a collectivist category- is generally weaker than found in the West).

2. The individual vs. collectivist division is a false dichotomy. When one forms a small collective, like a club or circle it often has the habit of setting itself off from others, heightening barriers between insiders and outsiders more. Since it is essentially inward-looking it thus works AGAINST a larger collectivist notion, as it tends to separate itself from the wider unit or group.

3. Educationally, (and hence more relevant to this message board) I find that Japanese students (post-primary school) are tremendously individualistic. It takes a while to develop pair or groupwork skills here in Japan. Students initially shun working as a team- not even wanting to face each other on many occasions. Peer review or development is a challenge. Learning through interaction with classmates is a challenge because each student seems to be very protective of his/her performance and intellectual property. And then there is the habit of parcelling out work when put into groups, which I see as an individualistic habit.

An underlying point is that I tend to dislike being portrayed as an individualistic Westerner who is mainly looking out for number one, has a powerful sense of what is his, is more materialistic, and lacks concern for the greater good. Not all those things have been stated in this thread (although some have) but they often serve as a simplistic (and negative) summary of the east vs. west division. In fact, Western so-called individualism often manifests itself in collectivist terms- the number of organizations, special interest groups, and circles that Westerners tend to join with a fair degree of ease (again, a generalization) is (in my opinion) no less than that of Japan and may actually be greater. Nor is the sense of importance of teamwork or group success (having worked and played in many Western groups or teams in my life). Western countries would not have
“succeeeded” on many levels without a strong sense of community, cooperation
and coordination.

So, in closing, I certainly do not see the prevalence of “my” in English as reflecting a stronger cultural sense of possession. Japanese have an extremely similar psychological makeup in terms of ownership or possession even though such a word is not used explicitly in Japanese. You also mention “isshin denshin” based on the lack of explicit pronouns in Japanese but I feel that this is a bit of an overstatement. Every language has some cases of ellipsis. Also, it is true that similar people (i.e., same age group, same job, friends) can understand each other better than outsiders because they don’t need to be explicit in the details of the language they use, but this is not something that is particularly unique to Japan.

I thought this was an interesting argument, though some may disagree with parts of it. It is all too easy for us to fall into simple categorizations and generalizations about people from different cultures, usually because we are too lazy to really try to understand them and so we settle for over-simplistic arguments.