Cross-Cultural Communication Problems in Expatriation- an American Working in Japan

Japanese people regard schooling as one of the most important aspects of the growth and development of a child and therefore their entire school system is more competitive and higher achieving. Before beginning this task most of my knowledge on Japanese schools was based upon small pieces of information provided from class activities, previous teachers, or stereotypes.

Japan is a collectivistic culture country, they put more emphasis on group members, group obligations, and group goals that on the individual (Hamilton, 2014, p.74). Their culture is more relationship oriented, valuing empathy, listening, preserving friendships and saving face for the individual and others (Hamilton, 2014, p.75). Japan consists of a high context culture, relying minimally on spoken words. This is a tightly bound culture by experiences, family, and tradition (Hamilton, 2014, p.76).

Japanese education is very influential to the youth of Japan. It can affect students future and plays a big role in society today. Some people believe that students in Japan are better educated than the students in United States. While some people think this is not true, there are many strong reasons that prove this is accurate.

in a mere half-century Japan had gone from a backward country being virtually dismissed by the West as an obscure and rather backward to being recognized as a major world power. It was arguably the most remarkable achievement of any nation in world history. (Henshall, 1999, P102)

Japan is the top 5 best countries in 2017 because of their political stability. It moves from rank #7 in 2016 to rank #5 in 2017. Japan’s accomplishment shines in their up and coming economies, entrepreneurship, and countries with the biggest cultural influence. Moreover, Japan is one of the most technologically advanced nations with 126 million people which means industries are very efficient. Since the manufacturing disruptions caused by tsunami and earthquake in 2011, Japan has largely recover and continue being one of the world’s biggest motor vehicle and electronics manufacturer.

The country that I choose for the Session Long Project for this class is Japan. By observing the Hofstede’s webpage a person can easily tell that there is a huge disparity in the values of the power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance cultural dimensions between Japan and the United States. Japan’s cultural dimension values of power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance are significantly higher than the values of the United States. The United States’ value in the cultural dimension individualism doubles that of Japan. Japan’s power distance score indicates that the country’s has a borderline hierarchy society while the United States’ fairly low score indicates that the country has the belief that everybody is treated equal rather than having a hierarchy. By observing the individualism culture dimension value for both countries, one can identify that the United States has a more independent society than Japan.

Each nation has an interesting society. There's no sense in saying that one nation is more novel than another. With regards to Japan, Japan has numerous things in the same manner as Asia. Nonetheless, in some ways, it additionally looks like Europe or even the US. In numerous different ways, Japan is genuinely one of a kind. Japan has had a tremulous history loaded with wars, seismic tremors, fires, tidal wave, storms, edit disappointments and scourges. Nearby this foundation of continuous tragedies emerged a one of a kind and advanced culture(Cowley, Parker, 1996). Japanese human progress can be followed back to its first ceramics that is around 16,000 years of age. The significant occasions of Japanese history number in the thousands. In this unique circumstance, the accompanying chronicled truths are for the most part irregular, however, may be intriguing in any case Japanese culture is exceptionally fascinating, particularly to Western eyewitnesses, a number of whom quickly consider sushi, sumo wrestling, and samurai when they consider Japan(Cowley, Parker, 1996). While these three things are particularly some portion of Japanese culture and history, they just begin to

This knowledge of weakness should not be used against people of other cultures or in stereotyping individuals. In obtaining the indices, research was based on data obtained from IBM employees. According to Hofstede, “dimensions and associated country scores were developed through factor analysis of the means of nationally aggregated individual item responses which were collected as part of IBM employee surveys” (Hofstede 491). The problem, however, is that as much as this may be useful in determining the culture of a country, it does not have enough diverse subjects to form a complete perception of an individual, cultural group or organization; especially an organization different from IBM. The diversity of ethnicity, religious belief, social economic status, education and other variables that makes up an individual’s value system may not be reflected in the average IBM employee. Brewer and Verniak, in their article On the Misuse of National Culture Dimensions, believe “The correlations among the items used to measure the national culture dimensions are positive and highly significant at the aggregated national (also known as “ecological”) level, but are mostly low and insignificant and sometimes of opposite sign at the individual level” (Brewer and Venaik

The term industrious can describe Japan’s education system for a few of reasons. The foremost reason is that Japan is diligent when educating their students. During primary education, what Americans consider elementary education, the students are grouped into four-person teams. In each group, the students are paired by strengthens and weaknesses, in hopes that they can learn from and help each other to further their education. The Japanese education system is also diligent throughout their secondary education, which includes their middle and high school levels. They meticulously select what classes the students take, to ensure that each student is taking the needed academic courses, while also making sure they are taking an arts course. These are required because the Japanese believe that a mix of academics and arts creates a well-rounded citizen.

A brief summary taking each of the different cultural models into account will be given at the end of each cultural examination.

The grouping of scores obtained shows some of the roots of cultural differences. There was a pattern among the common history countries that scores alike. For example, all Latin

Fig. 1. Japan-United States Hofstede’s cultural analysis comparison. Information from Hofstede Insights. Hofstede-insights.com, 22 Nov. 2017, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/japan,the-usa/.

economic force change is needed to get the economy running at the levels it once

And the five dimensions of national culture are: Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism vs Collectivism, Masculinity vs Feminimity, and Long Term Orientation.

Japan aims to address a few issues in academia such as their rankings among universities for global stature, level of publications in top academic journals, and international mobility of researchers, which all ranked low compared to the OECD median, in addition to