If you have ever met Japanese, you know they are quiet to say the least. They barely speak up in a class room, meetings or even in casual conversations among friends. When you ask them any questions, even a pretty easy one, (like ‘What’s your hobby?’) , they would make a face at you and can’t come up with a single answer.
Because of this our unique personality, we tend to give a hard time for foreigners. Silence, which is the biggest part of our usual conversation, often confuse them. They just don’t know how to interpret it. So they make their best possible guess and they often put a label like we’re being ‘Shy’, or maybe ‘Respectful’.
The answer is though, it’s not either of shyness or respect which is making us so silent. The easiest answer is probably just by saying ‘It is a part of our culture.’ But why don’t we dig deeper than that?
Is it common thing in Asian culture?
It is well known that the vast majority of Asian communities share Collectivism, contrary to Western, Arabic or African communities where majority of people have Individualistic personality. And in the collectivism society, people tend to behave like a bunch of introverts. Thus it is fair to say that ethnicity has a role in this topic.
Japanese are, however, even less extroverted than other fellow Asians, like Chinese or Koreans. So there must be something else to explain this.
Educational system
The bottom issue is in our educational system. In an elementary school (age. 6 to 12), we’re more encouraged to follow whatever everyone else is doing, rather than showing what each one of us is good at. Teachers always put their priority to make “organized” class. There’s a famous saying we’re told time to time when we’re kids,
The nails stick out will be hammered down.
You are supposed to be just like everyone else.
In school, we have many unique events too, like you will never see in any other countries. Such as Chorus day, Sports day, School trip, etc. And what I want to stress here is that your attendance is mandatory for all of those events. It doesn’t matter if you like singing or not, you have to participate in it nonetheless. Sports day might be the worst nightmare for those kids don’t like sports.
So every kid has to give up themselves’ ideas and learn how to blend in. This trend will go on until we graduate from a high school. And by that time, all of students are supposed to learn that their opinion doesn’t really matter. Thus, almost all Japanese you meet are quiet and have no personal opinions at all.
Good or Bad
There’re pros and cons to have educational system like this. The upside is that it makes it much easier to organize us for a person who sits on the top. Everything can proceed as smooth as possible. It also makes crime-rate extremely low as well. When you know how to silent your emotion, you won’t have to kill anyone.
The downside is, however, very dark. By surpassing your emotion, you’re losing the most precious thing; your identity. The only thing you know is that you have to follow others. There’s no dream, passion or whatsoever. I have met so many Japanese friends who have a struggle with finding their purpose of life and just let other people decide what they are going to do in their life.
So what’s now?
In my eyes, this is a sad situation. They don’t know who they really are nor what they are actually capable of. Luckily enough, I had an opportunity to study abroad and see what other parts of the world are doing and that experience gave me a better understanding of myself. But I was the only one to do that in the entire department ( 50 students in total ), and there were only 60 of us in the entire university (9000 in total, 0.6 %).
The only solution to change this situation is, of course, to throw away our old-fashioned educational system and replace it with a new system which can teach kids that their opinion matters, and they’re expected to pursue their dreams.
It is really easier said than done though. People don’t like change. It’s a human nature. We always try to cling to familiarity. We prefer to stick to the old way even though by changing it they can live a better life. And to make things worse, Japanese are the complete opposite of innovators, which means changing Japanese people’s mind is extremely difficult if not impossible.
So for now, we have to wait. We have to wait until the new generation arrives. The society started understanding the importance of being open-minded. There are many of Japanese students who are willingly studying abroad. They are explorers, risk-takers and have the huge potential to change the course of the future of this tiny nation with the world’s third-largest economy. When that generation arrives, people will not ask the same question ever again, instead, they’ll be asking “Why are Japanese so innovative?”
If you have never visited Japan, now you’re so curious, don’t you? There’s no other country like ours in the world. Our culture is so unique, you need at least a decade to see the whole picture. Anime and Manga is just a tiny part of it. It is much much deeper than that.
Author: Nobuyuki
Nobu’s blog 
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