As I wrote in the other day's essay, I attended at a seminar about change management. There was one thing I couldn't agree with at all. Regarding the communication strategy in changing environment, the textbook says, "You are not able not to communicate". This sentence means that even if you say nothing, you communicate something by your silence. Silence means something. I could agree with this sentence. But it is the following sentence that I couldn't agree with at all. "So you should say something even if you have nothing to say". When I introduce the contents of this change management seminar to my Japanese colleagues, they also look very uncomfortable with this sentence. "The silence means something. So you should say something even if you have nothing to say". Instead of this second sentence, most Japanese will say like this. "The silence means something. But you should wait until the other person starts speaking". Here you can see Japanese attitude is widely different from that of Westerners regarding communication. This essay deals with this difference further.

European and American people seem to think that to say something is always better than to say nothing while Japanese think that silence is sometimes better than to say something. We can generalize this a little bit by saying that Westerners seem to think, "Anything is better than nothing", while Japanese think, "Nothing always changes into something if we wait patiently". You might think this is only an issue of communication. But this shows the fundamental difference of the attitude towards the world between Westerners and Japanese. Westerners basically think that this world is controllable by us as far as we perceive it. Japanese basically think that some part of this world can't be controlled at all by us including the part we don't perceive yet. It goes without saying that our perception is limited. We can't perceive everything in the world at one time. All we can perceive is always only a part of the whole world. In another word, this world consists of two parts: what we perceive and what we don't perceive. Westerners seem to think that at least the perceived part of the world must be able to be changed just as we want. "Everything we perceive must be controllable by us." This leads to another sentence that shows the basic Westerner's attitude toward the world. "We don't care what we don't perceive (yet)".

On the other hand, Japanese think, "We might be able to change what we perceive but not always just as we want". Japanese think, of course, we can have some influence on this world but never expect that it will change just as we want. The world goes following its own principle. Even when the "world" means the "people" in your company, the "people" as a group, or as a society, changes according to its own law. We can bring some changes to the society but we can never change it as we want. Japanese tend to think that we can never predict how the "world" will react against our actions and, therefore, we cannot control what will happen in the world. The word "control" means that the things go just as we expected.

As the philosophers in 20th century, such as Martin Heidegger, repeatedly criticized, the notion that we can control this world is one of the worst things that Western rationalism has ever produced. Based on this notion, the technologies have been manipulating the world or the nature. We start manipulating even the gene, the very basic design of life itself. And Westerners even think that it is always a bad thing to wait until the things change according to its own will. They think such an attitude is ethically wrong and a kind of laziness. On the other hand, Japanese tend to believe that this world or the society has its own principle and that we can influence it only partly. Therefore Japanese accept that the results of our interventions are not always what we expected in advance while Westerners seem to get irritated when their intervention doesn't produce what they expected. Japanese tend to think that a society or a group of people behaves according to its own principle. The principle of a society's behavior is totally different from that of one individual person's behavior.

These are the reasons why Japanese think, "We might be able to change what we perceive but not always just as we want". This attitude leads to another attitude of Japanese. "What we don't perceive (yet) will surely appear later if we wait patiently". Now you can easily see why Japanese tend to think like this. The world itself goes according to its own principle. If we wait patiently, what we don't perceive yet will surely appear by its own will. So if you have nothing to say, you should not start talking from your side but just wait until the other person start talking.

We summarize the argument above. Westerners tend to think that anything is better than nothing because they tend to think that everything they do changes the world in the direction that they want and that they don't care anything they don't see yet. Japanese think that even if there is nothing, something will appear if we wait patiently because we Japanese think that the world goes according to its own principle and that it can't always be changed just as we want. Westerner's perception of the world is too positive and too optimistic because they expect that the entire world follows human will. They overestimate the power of human will. Here is too much self-determination philosophy. It is as if you could decide the destiny of the whole world. On the other hand, Japanese are modest because we know human will can't exceed the principle that is moving the whole world. We don't overestimate the power of human will. This difference makes me very uncomfortable with the phrase, "So you had better say something even if you have nothing to say". If you have nothing to say, you must wait until the other person start talking.

In addition, there is the second reason why it is not appropriate in the Japanese organizations to "say something even if you have nothing to say". It is the distinction of hon-ne and tate-mae of Japanese people. As you know, Japanese people seldom express their true opinions or emotions in formal occasions, such as in the working places. Japanese intentionally differentiate hon-ne (true opinions or feelings) from tate-mae (pretended opinions or feelings) because we Japanese think that it is not appropriate to express our true opinions or feelings as a public person. Only with our own family or among our intimate friends, Japanese can express true opinions or feelings. This is rather ethics deep-rooted in Japanese mind.

Let's take an example. If your friend has a serious problem, how should you cope with it? First of all, Westerners might ask to the friend, "What is your problem?", "What's wrong with you?" or "Shall we talk a little while?" In any case, the first thing they try to do is to know what is the problem, to grasp the problem, or to define and describe the problem clearly. In order to grasp the problem clearly, Westerners tend to ask many questions even if the "friend" is a Japanese. This psychoanalytic style might work with a Westerner but never works with a Japanese friend. If you try to cope with the problem by clarifying it, there can be two reactions. The one is a positively exaggerated answer and the other is a negatively exaggerated answer. For example, your Japanese friend might just answer, "No, no, no. There is no serious problem. I'm OK. Please don't worry so much". This too positive answer is tate-mae in order not to worry you and to avoid a deep and exhaustive discussion with you. Or your Japanese friend might start talking very seriously. "Yes, I'm very serious about this problem. I feel everything will go wrong". This too negative answer is also tate-mae in order to thank you for your kindness and also to avoid a deep and exhaustive discussion with you. But in both of these two tate-mae cases, Westerners not only fail to solve the problem of the Japanese friend but also make the friend exhausted by the questions. In many cases Westerners' questions are too demanding for Japanese. Their questions are very greedy and need the answers too avidly. Western way of problem solving has sometimes a completely adverse effect and make the problem even worse.

When Japanese want to know hon-ne of a Japanese friend, we Japanese never take the Western way of grappling squarely with the problem because we know the active and positive attitude against the problem is counter-productive. The more serious the problem is, the longer way around we should go. First of all, we talk about things not directly related to the problem itself and wait until the friend starts talking about his/her problem from his/her own side because the other person thinks and feels according to his/her own principle and we should not try to change it by our own will. We don't try to change the mind of others by straightforward discussions.

This Japanese tendency also appears in a well-known Japanese decision making system, Ne-mawashi. When Westerners talk about ne-mawashi in Japan, they tend to focus on its bottom-up direction, contrasted with the top-down direction of Western management style and the number of people involved in the process. Many people are involved in ne-mawashi decision-making compared with the top-down decision-making. But the most important point of ne-mawashi doesn't lie in these two aspects, direction and number of people involved. ne-mawashi is the best way to avoid emotional conflicts that might happen later on. Every decision-making produces some conflicts among the affected people. The straightforward discussion to clarify the problems doesn't work among Japanese people. Rather it makes things worse and produces strong emotional conflicts that are never explicitly expressed because the emotional aspects are suppressed by tate-mae in formal occasions such as in the working places. By doing ne-mawashi, Japanese prevent such emotional conflicts by talking things not directly related to the core of the problem. From the viewpoint of Westerners, Japanese might seem to continue talking about not so meaningful things and waste time. But by talking what has no direct relation with the core topic, Japanese sense the emotional reactions of people regarding the problem and learn how to avoid it. For example, some person might show irritation during the chat. This teaches us that we should make a small concession in advance in order to avoid big trouble that might come later. Other person might seem happy. Then we can expect good support from this person. The most important advantage of ne-mawashi does not come from the implementation speed after the decision but its function to prevent the emotional conflicts. Why do the emotional conflicts count in the Japanese environment? That's because Japanese suppress real emotions due to tate-mae concept while the emotions are very important for Japanese even in formal occasions. Why are the emotions very important for Japanese? That's because Japanese think that nothing always changes into something later and that the silence means something. Even if we perceive nothing now, it will come up later according to its own principle. Although people's emotion tends to hide itself at the beginning, it will surely become explicit in the end. Japanese take care not only what is explicit but also what hides itself because the latter will show itself according to its own principle. People's emotion moves according to a principle different from that of ours. Since Westerners tend to focus on what they already perceive, they fail to understand that Japanese pay attention to the hidden things, such as hidden emotions of people. That's why Westerners fail to the most important function of ne-mawashi, i.e. preventing the hidden and not-explicit-yet emotional conflicts.

Even after the post-modern philosophers criticize the Western mindset that strongly desires to take control of everything, Westerners still cannot change the mindset and continue saying something even if they have nothing to say. They still believe that they should control the outside world and it is lazy for us to wait until the world changes according to its own principle. In fact, it's their presumptuousness.