Japan and the West: The Perception Gap

Keizo Nagatani, David W. Edgington

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138324046
• eBook ISBN: 9780429814792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book first published in 1998 containes the work of Six members of the Centre for Japanese Research (CJR), an area unit of the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. They were motivated by the fact that after over a century of cultural, economic and political interaction between the two regions, mutual misunderstandings or perception gaps remain deep and wide and by the belief that highlighting these differences, as they manifest in diverse areas and manners, might potentially contribute to a better understanding, if not an immediate narrowing, of the gaps. The six essays that follow are the products of such group efforts. Three authors are Westerners and the remaining three are Japanese by origin. By speciality, they represent modern Japanese literature, cultural anthropology, art history, political science, economics and geography.

1 Perception gaps: an introduction

Keizo Nagatani
Akio Tanaka

'Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner', an old French proverb.

Images of Japan

For Japan, the 1980s and 1990s have been characterized by an unprecedented degree of internationalization, a fact which has resulted in the parallel growth of both academic and popular interest on the subject of Japan at large (for a broad discussion of Japan's internationalization, see Befu and Mannari, 1983, and Hook and Weiner, 1992). Although cultural exchanges in the forms of academic conferences, art exhibits, mass tourism, and student exchange programs have increased, the driving impetus, for the most part, has been an economic one, as can be seen in the proliferation of Japanese overseas direct investment in the past two decades, with a notable acceleration from the post-endaka period of the late 1980s (Higashi and Lauter, 1992; Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 1992).

North American reactions to Japanese economic expansion range from early congratulatory works by Vogel (1979) and Pascal and Athos (1982), which portray Japan's ascent as positive and exemplary, to more recent alarmist writings by Prestowitz (1988), Johnson (1982, 1995), Fallows (1989), and van Wolferen (1989), which see Japan's new might as conspiratorial and dangerous. In addition, towards the closing of the last decade, the continuing trade imbalance in Japan's favour engendered a plethora of reactionary works with provocative titles insinuating an imminent economic war with Japan (Friedman and Le Bard, 1991, take this view a step further). Thus, it was not so long ago that the vocabulary of 'Japan Bashing' entered the Western media, which featured lengthy coverage on the economic threat from Japan — media hype which seemed to have lost its steam shortly after the 50th anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. More recently, the Hollywood interpretation of Japan's new economic might has culminated in the cinematic adaptation of Michael Chrichton's Rising Sun (see Chrichton, 1992), a controversial film replete with a mixture of old and new stereotypes which have been given legitimacy by supplementing fiction with occasional doses of real-life anecdotes.

The common thread which binds a large number of works on Japan, even those books being published as we speak, is the persistence of the age-old Orientalist representations, which sometimes appear as new discoveries when in fact they are recycled versions of existing stereotypes (for example, see Wilkinson, 1990, Littlewood, 1996). Still, among a modest number of Japan specialists, there has been a critical rethinking about the dominant modes of representations of the country. The group model, a hallmark of traditional Japanology, which has been reinforced by complimentary ideas of Nakane's vertical society (1970) and Doi's dependency (1973), has been questioned both on theoretical and empirical grounds (Befu, 1980; Dale, 1986; Mouer and Sugimoto, 1986). From a theoretical perspective, Befu (1980) questions the ways in which psychological constructs which describe interpersonal relationships in Japan are uncritically extended to the description of the national character. Both Befu (1980) and Dale (1986) point out that the advocates of the so-called 'group model' selectively employ those Japanese idioms and proverbs which support their position, while ignoring those expressions which contradict such a singular notion of Japanese society. On the empirical front, Sugimoto (1981) challenges the idea of a 'harmonious society' — another building block of the group model — through his investigation of the postwar history of popular unrest in Japan, while Mouer and Sugimoto (1986) contest the notion of a classless society — as implied by Nakane's vertical society — by examining statistical evidence on the distribution of income in Japan.

There is a particular sociology of knowledge to the development of the group model, which itself is situated within the history of Japan's contact with Europe and the United States. Wilkinson (1990) has conducted a comprehensive review of the historiography of image building between Japan and the West since their early contacts in the 17th century. In his observation, the images that they hold of each other — despite subtle historical variation — have remained largely unchanged. Along with journalists and politicians, the chief culprits who are responsible for perpetuating static images of Japan, it seems, are academics who, unintentionally or otherwise, propagate the canonical observations of early Japanologists that Japan is fundamentally an antithesis of Western civilization. The bi-polar schematization of Japan and the West, of which both concepts are problematic, emerged out of the Orientalist tradition of European scholarship (Minear, 1983) as Japan, one of the last nations to be discovered by European colonial powers, became largely subsumed into the dominant discourse of Orientalism:

The phrases, the Orient and Orientals, were applied indiscriminately to many countries and peoples, being gradually extended to cover Persia, Arabia, India, China, Mongolia and last, Japan. As contacts were made with each new country, past images were simply transferred to them (Wilkinson, 1990, p. 99).

Hence, Japan is attributed with qualities that are diametrically opposite of what supposedly characterized the West: while the West is conceived as muscular, rational, and progressive, Japan remained feminine, emotional, and backward. When early observers actually found similarities — heaven forbid —between Japan and Europe, such unasiatic qualities were often met with utter puzzlement. The image of Japan as a peculiar and unique society was thus established at the onset in the European mind (for a particular account of how images of Japan became popularized in Victorian England, see Yokoyama, 1987). Such singular stereotyping, by its very nature, tends to preclude a more nuanced and multi-dimensional understanding of Japan in favour of a crude caricature.

Under the Orientalist mode of representation, the construction of mutual images was predicated upon a dialectical process whereby the identity of the Self becomes inextricably tied to that of the Other:

[A]s much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to and extent reflect each other (Said, 1979, p.5).

Moreover, to add an ironic twist to the whole story, the characterization of Japan as the immutable Other, was not a product of one-way, single-minded European imposition, as Said's original thesis suggests: the Japanologist discourse had complicit partners in Japan who were eager to share their views on Japanese uniqueness with the curious foreign visitors. Many authors point out the historical linkages between earlier forms of Japanese nationalism (see Gluck, 1985) and today's popularized version of theories of Japaneseness (nihonjinron) (Davis, 1983; Breger, 1990; Kamishima, 1990; Befu, 1992). The nuances and the expressions of the national identity have certainly changed over the years; however, the basic tenets of nihonjinron continue to paint the essentialist images of Japan in such a way that Orientalism from without becomes reciprocated by Occidentalism from within:

Nihonjinron encourages Japanese to classify reality as being either nihonteki (ethnically, racially or culturally Japanese) or non-Japanese. It is an all or nothing perspective which leaves little room for accommodation or international mixtures (Mouer and Sugimoto, 1986, p.378).

For the foreign observer, the ideology of nihonjinron establishes an a-priori identity of the Japanese as the quintessential and transcendental 'other'; and conversely, for the Japanese such a self-image provides a protective buffer against the turmoil of identity crisis which internationalization may potentially bring about. The expressions of such mutual polarization have been sedimented into artistic and literary archives along the line of an East-West discourse, which to this day saturates our muse imaginaire (for specific examples, see Lehman, 1978; Burgman, 1987; Tsuruta, 1988; Wilkinson, 1990, Littlewood, 1996). As Ivy (1988, 1995) shows in her analysis of the National Railway advertising campaigns named 'Discover Japan' and 'Exotic Japan', the most perverse manifestation of the Orientalist discourse, however, is found in the self-exoticization by the Japanese of themselves whereby the essential qualities of Japaneseness seem no longer familiar, but simply foreign to the Japanese.

In coming to terms with the perception gaps between the West and Japan —the very theme of our concerted efforts in this volume — it is not very constructive or helpful for us to simply assert that the prevailing modes of representation are problematic and that we should do away with nihonjinron and Japanology altogether. On the contrary, perhaps we need to spend more time working with these concepts in order to examine how they articulate themselves within the process of perception in the cross-cultural settings to produce today's hegemonic images. If we fail to engage with them seriously, we would then be blindly conducting our perception research in a sociocultural vacuum. We must not hastily reject the group model for theoretical and empirical discrepancies alone: so far as it plays a central role for the construction of Japanese self-identity, the model exercises real ideological power. Subjectivities cannot be totally reduced to objective realities: perceived Images are reality too.

Problems of social perception

Because of the diversity of fields represented here, it has not been possible to coordinate or streamline the following six essays into one cohesive project. It is not even clear whether all the contributors would agree on each author's perception of perception gaps. Therefore, our diversity of interests directly translates into our varied approaches to the general question of representation. Each author feels that he/she has had to strategically choose and focus on just one of many gaps he/she could have written about — a daunting and frustrating task indeed. Nonetheless, as a point of departure, we feel a few words on the problematic of perception gaps are in order here.

Perception, in our loose definition, is a socio-psychological process by which we develop our knowledge of the objects in the world around us. We put our senses to work in this process of perceiving, whose product constitutes our images of the objects. Images, naturally, are only as accurate or truthful as the work of the sensory processes underlying them. Yet our knowledge of the objects around us is built upon our own images of them and to complicate the matter, in our modern society, the images of foreign places are further mediated by our cultural industries — television, films, and magazines — which precondition our perception of the other on a daily basis. As our perceptions are built upon layers upon layers of representations, it follows that our knowledge of and facts about foreign cultures are subject to innate instability — with a notable exception of age-old stereotypes which continue to prevail.

The multi-layered process of perceiving may be affected by a number of factors. First, the quality of perception is limited by lack of information about the subject due to insufficient observation or sheer unfamiliarity. The generally poor quality of the composite drawings of criminals based on the images of several witnesses is an example of unreliable images due to poor information. Second, the inherent variability of sensory perception itself can affect the resulting interpretation. It is our common experience to see different people form different perceptions of the same object, about its colour, shape, size, distance, texture, etc., even when the object is a relatively simple tangible object. When the phenomenon is more abstract in character — such as a speech, a novel, or a piece of music — inter-personal divergence in perception becomes more contentious. Third, when we interpret phenomena, we bring in our own moral, cultural, and theoretical biases, which tend to privilege certain kinds of interpretations over others. We project our own beliefs, values, and prejudices onto what we observe. The consequence of projection is especially serious in the case of intercultural person perception, where the nature of perception enters the sensitive arena of race and ethnicity. Since this third factor is more pertinent than the other factors to the theme of this volume, and since every paper makes reference to it, it warrants a closer examination.

The unique feature of person perception is the similarity between the perceiver and the perceived. It is this similarity as human beings which makes the perceiver's task of a so-called objective study of the object almost impossible. First, personal emotions — for better or worse — creep into the perceptive process. The sight of a stranger, inevitably, incites a multiplicity of feelings in the observer instantly — curiosity, suspicion, amity, hostility, fear, and so on, which are mostly subconscious, gut feelings formed prior to any rational thought process. So-called chemistry plays a vital part in this process of perception. Second, learning about a human being is inherently more difficult and challenging than learning about an inanimate object because of the complexities of human nature. For example, the very subject whom we observe will have his/her senses at work and will form an image of us, and the signals he/ she sends to the observer will be influenced by the impression so formed. This reciprocal process constitutes the methodological problem of the interviewer effect in socio-psychological research. Generally speaking, this two way signaling between the observer and the observed turns the task of observation into a fairly complex psychological game whereby the nature interpretation becomes deeply embedded within the relationship between them. Third, this difficulty literally multiplies in social perception in which a group of people engage in the task of studying another group of people, as in our Japan and the West perception gap study. In an effort to construct defining characteristics of a group of people, we tend to aggregate, by way of generalization, the members' diverse images into a simple and coherent image; therefore, more often than not, much of any subtle and nuanced understanding about the people concerned is lost. Moreover, once a cultural stereotype is established within an academic community as common knowledge, it tends to perpetuate itself via a chain of uncritical citations. The authors of this volume, are of course aware of the dangers of stereotyping. Collectively, we must also admit that we are guilty of it when we speak of Japan versus the West or the Japanese versus North Americans in such undifferentiated, bifurcated terms. At the same time, however, we appreciate the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 Perception gaps: an introduction
• 2 Images of Western and Japanese art: embodiment of imagination and pseudo-reality in Nanban art
• 3 Japanese perceptions of Westerners in modern fiction
• 4 'Kramer vs. Kramer' vs. Suspense Theatre: the perception gap in constructions of self, gender, and family
• 5 Business and government relations in Canada and Japan: the 'homestead' and the 'public vessel'
• 6 Understanding Japanese investment behaviour: an organizational approach to social investment
• 7 The search for paradise: Japanese property investors in North America
• 8 Conclusion: the importance of perception gaps
• Index