A good friend of mine, Dr. Eric Messersmith, who lives in Miami, Florida, has encouraged me with his comments on Facebook to write two novels in English by the end of next year.  Thanks to his comments, I will write a little bit of my personal experience that has motivated me to write the first story as follows. It's title will be "Ellie".

When I was a college student learning international economics in Sasebo, my hometown in Japan, I also worked as a bartender at the Ball Room in the EM Club within the US Naby base in town. Many young Japanese girls came to the EM Club with American sailors. I entertained them with cocktails that I made for them. I became madly in love with one of such Japanese girls. She was a Korean-Japanese. Her name was Ellie (fictious name).  She was discriminated by society of Japan.

I used to listen to this song in 1978, when I was often dating with a girlfiend of mine, who is now my wife. I liked this song because I was crazy about her. Yes, I was electrified by the eyes of my wife.

Whenever I see photos taken by Kevin Carter, my heart aches.

I was only 18 years old when I heard Righterous Brothers sing this song on the juke box at a pub in Sasebo where there was a large US Navy base, and I was the first year student of the college in town. This song jolted my soul, and I will never ever forget coming across this song 39 years ago.

Really creative and awesome!

I have been providing crosscultural business training to Japanese business people and native English speaking people. As I wrote in my profile, I have performed such business as an entertainer so that the participants to my training can enjoy the sessions.

I have a very good friend, who is engaged in the largest entertainment business in East Asia including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. She and I have been friends for nearly 25 years. We were just friends, and did not have common business at all.

However, we had a casual conversation on the phone yesterday, and both of us realized that we would be able to do business together. She realized my talent as an entertainer consultant, and she offered me a new business opportunity. It is to provide crosscultural training to entertainment business executives including artists. 

Life is really interesting. She and I had never discussed that we should do business together for about 25 years. It has just started. I feel like that I entered a new world, which I have never dreamed of. Life is, indeed, full of mysteries and excitements.

In previous blog posts, I explained kuuki dynamism unconsciously utilized as a tool to have smooth communication among Japanese people thereby contributing to high productivity, quality improvement and low cost of manufacturing.

Kuuki has something to do with the nature of yamato kotoba. Kuuki can't be explained by language, because it is understood through feeling and sensing where language is not effective as a tool to understand it.

Likewise, yamato kotoba can be understood through having images in a Japanese person's brain. An image contains a lot of information, which is hard to explain in language.

Both kuuki and yamato kotoba are closely related where language becomes less important. Further, they exert strong influence on the emotions of Japanese people.
 
Japanese deeply depend on empathetic communication where language can't be an important tool for communication. The more a subject concerned is important, the lesser Japanese count on language because empathetic communication through reading kuuki and using yamato kotoba can play a better role for Japanese people to understand one another. 
 
This specific Japanese cultural trait can be observed in business management in Japan too. When it comes to the decision making process, ringisho is issued for approval from the upper management in a Japanese company, as I explained in this blog posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 .

When ringisho is issued, the issuer knows that all people concerned will approve it including the upper management. How does the issuer know that it will be approved? It will be possible because the issuer and stakeholders on a project proposal for approval have gone through nemawashi process whereby they share the information on success probability and on the risk factors.
 
Nemawashi is a Japanese word and is used in gardening originally. When a plant is moved to a new place, the roots of the plant should settle down in the new soil. In order to do so, soil treatment will be important for the roots of the plant.

Its work is called nemawashi where ne means roots and mawashi treating. Nemawashi is carried out through kuuki reading using a lot of yamato kotoba. 

Stakeholders for the project will have many rounds of meetings both officially and casually, when a project for approval is very critical and involves a lot of money.

Sometimes a Japanese pub called izakaya will be a place for discussion while they dine and drink. The more important the subject is, the longer time it will take to reach agreement among the people concerned within the company.
 
In a production factory, quality-improving activity called kaizen activity is also carried out through very close relations among operators in the factory.

They read kuuki by using yamato kotoba by tuning their wavelength to what the requirements are from the top management for the total benefit of the company including the factory.
 
If such Japanese immersed deeply in Japanese indigenous culture are relocated to the US, what will happen?

They may expect the same trait that Japanese have from local people in the US. The local people want to have plainly explained manuals and job descriptions based on clear business strategies set forth by the Japanese company.

Many Japanese and many local people have communication problems here.  Needless to say understanding mutual cultures is thus very important to have better global business management for both Japanese and Americans.

Besides the kuuki reading habit of Japanese people, there are a couple of more intriguing elements in Japanese language in relation to communication and business management.
 
ARAKI Hiroyuki wrote the book titled "Nihongoga Mieruto Eigomo Mieru" meaning "You can see English language beyond Japanese language". This book is published by Chuko Shinsho.

Unfortunately he passed away several years ago. When I read the book, I was very impressed by the content, so I wrote to him via the publishing company with my appreciative comments on the book. He responded to me a week later with his hand-written letter. It was about 10 years ago. I still keep the letter in the drawer of my desk. Since then, we had exchanged our thoughts on Japanese language vs. English language by facsimile.

However, for a long period of time while I was in Munich Germany, he became ill, and I stopped receiving responses from him. A couple of years later, I realized that he had passed away. I regretted that I didn't persistently try to contact him.
 
The reason why I wrote to him was because he objectively analyzed Japanese language in comparison with English language, and explained the structure of Japanese language very plainly in his book mentioned above.

Until then I vaguely thought that Japanese language was fundamentally and structurally different from English language but I was unable to clearly figure out the differences objectively.
 
In the book Araki Hiroyuki explains that original Japanese language called yamato kotoba contains graphic images thereby polysemous and appealing to people's emotion. As examples he quoted two yamato kotoba, which were kenage and ijirashii.
 
By the way, I have experimented many times with Japanese people who attended my seminars by asking them to explain meanings and differences of the two words.

Unfortunately no one was able to explain the meanings or tell the differences between them even in Japanese language. Honestly speaking, they had never thought of meanings or differences about Japanese language.

This fact explains plainly that many Japanese don't explain yamato kotoba even in Japanese language. It happens because a Japanese person has images in his or her brain when he or she thinks of or uses yamato kotoba.
 
Araki Hiroyuki concludes the two words as follow.
 
Both kenage and ijirashii contain four common elements 1) small and weak, 2) hardship, 3) perseverance, and 4) industrious and diligent.

With having such four elements kenage will be used to praise a small and weak person, and ijirashii to sympathize with such a person. This is how both kenage and ijirashii contain very complex meanings in their graphic images, and further the image exerts influence on the emotions of people. Kenage and ijirashii can be used for a same person dependent on circumstances where the person is situated. 
 
Where Japanese takes yamato kotoba as graphic images, definitions for yamato kotoba in Japanese language are not so important. In daily conversations among Japanese people, yamato kotoba takes up the majority percentage. It means that most of Japanese are exchanging graphic images in their daily conversations. 
 
English language is situated at the opposite side of Japanese language represented by yamato kotoba. Definitions for English words are very important before anything in order for native English speaking people to communicate among themselves. It is because English language does not contain much graphic image like Japanese language. Further, they would like to appeal to the logic of people. Logic for native English speaking persons exists mainly in language whereas it exists in the graphic image for Japanese people.
 
These significant differences in Japanese language and English language should be kept in mind to understand that Japanese and Americans have different concepts about language per se.

Japanese tend to explain matters in graphic images. I am sure that many American people have come across cases where Japanese wanted to illustrate their thoughts on a white board or a piece of paper when they had presentations for American people. This habit is applied to not only American people but also Japanese people.

    --- to be continued ---

What would happen when people read kuuki in a manufacturing company so as to make the maximum profit for a company where they work?

All employees always want to know what the company expects from them without any clear instructions given to them through reading kuuki where job descriptions or manuals are not necessary because they are eager to work for the total benefit of the company. They know that disturbing the harmony of any group in the company may lead to reducing the profit of the company.

So they try to maintain peaceful harmony, again without any clear instructions, in order to have more profits for the company. Japanese call it commonsense. That's what I found through studying Japanese culture.
 
In the beginning when American franchise businesses such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Macdonald, Seven Eleven, etc. brought job descriptions and manuals to Japan, job performances by Japanese employees of those franchisees became significantly poorer.

Soon afterwards, many Japanese firms started similar franchise business based on specific ways of Japanese labor management, which is to let the Japanese follow Japanese invisible kuuki dynamism for smoother labor management.

Japanese job performance in general drops drastically when they are required to go by the book. When most of Japanese, without such a book, were able to perform their jobs - which are not written clearly - to pursue the total benefit of a company for which they work, the introduction of manuals or job descriptions according to American business style impeded effective labor management.
 
I reiterate that the average Japanese are not aware of this kuuki reading habit rooted in Japan specific culture. Japanese not only read kuuki but also tune their wavelength to implied requirements existing in kuuki. In other words, we can say that Japanese work very hard for the benefit of the company being influenced by power hidden in kuuki.
 
That is another reason why Japanese need a lot of courage to resign from a company. If a person moves to another company, he or she has to learn specific kuuki already existing in the new company. It would take him or her a lot of time to learn new kuuki because there is no book prepared, and no one in the new company teaches him or her specific kuuki existing in the company in detail, because most of Japanese have not observed kuuki objectively, and further they might not know how to teach it to a new person.
 
What will happen if a Japanese business advances to the US? Probably many readers of my articles would be able to figure out some outcomes.

Japanese business persons relocated to the US would take it for granted that local people can read kuuki as much as Japanese can, and also would expect that local people have the same commonsense that Japanese have. Further, many local people working for a Japanese company in the US would like to have well organized and written Japanese business style management.

What Japanese business people relocated to the US expect from local people and what local people expect from such Japanese people are very different. In addition to such a difficult situation, a language problem exists.

   --- to be continued ---

I have discussed kuuki and Japanese culture so far under the theme of  "Secrets of Quality & Productivity in Japanese Companies" by referring to YAMAMOTO Shichihei, the author of "Kuuki-no Kenkyu" meaning "Study of Kuuki", and based on my personal business experiences abroad. Frankly speaking, many Japanese find the book hard to understand. Further, I have explained kuuki dynamism to many Japanese business people in my intercultural communication seminars before they were relocated to overseas countries, and most of the attendees to the seminars were surprised to know that many Japanese are under the influence of kuuki unconsciously in the manners of communication including decision making process.
 
This points to a fact that understanding kuuki is not an easy task even for Japanese people. Unless I had tough experience in communication with my fellow Japanese when I worked in the environments outside Japan, I would have never tried to understand Japanese culture. If one is immersed in monoculture, one will not have a chance to observe one's culture objectively.

He or she would not think it necessary to analyze and understand his or her own mother culture. I was no exception. In Singapore, as a manager of a subsidiary factory, I was in the middle of local people and Japanese people where I realized that I was not capable enough to communicate with both cultures in order to have good business results.
 
I had much greater difficulty in communication with the Japanese factory manager being my boss than with the local employees. During those days he crucified me, but nowadays I take such an experience as an educational period for me, because except for the experience, I would not have tried to study about the cultural peculiarities in Japanese communication. I greatly thank him.
 
The Japanese factory manager emphasized the importance of "commonsense" in production management where kuuki dynamism existed as Yamamoto said in his book. This phenomenon can also be observed in every business situation in all of Japan. The point here is that the majority of Japanese people don't objectively realize that they use Japanese culture including kuuki dynamism as a tool to expedite communication among them.
 
Japanese manufacturing companies put forth three major advantages. They are "excellent quality", "high productivity and "lower cost of manufacturing" whereby Japanese products including automobiles flood the world market. Under the circumstances, many non-Japanese companies believe that the Japanese companies have well-organized knowledge of manufacturing including effective labor management.
 
In reality, in the core of Japanese business management, kuuki dynamism exists. Japanese want to read kuuki to make sure of their belonging to a certain group and to understand what the other people in the group think and aim for the benefits of the group where self-interest is not much taken into account. Average Japanese place more emphasis on group interest than self-interest. Small groups in a factory form the single greatest group called a company.
 
   --- to be continued ---

He associated commonsense with such happenings in Singapore.  At tha time, I wondered what commonsense was. I questioned myself if there was universal commonsense in the world.

I started to pursue cultural issues in it. What the Japanese factory manager said to me was that Japanese commonsense should prevail in Singapore too.  I vaguely thought it was somewhat impossible. At the same time I realized that I didn't understand what Japanese commonsense was in Japanese language either.

It was also the beginning of a journey to quest for my identity. That is the reason why I went to a bookshop to find the book of "Kuuki no Kenkyu" (Study of Kuuki).

YAMAMOTO Shichihei wrote many books in Japanese about Japan specific cultural and sociological issues in relation to communication among Japanese people.

Yamamoto was a Japanese Imperial Army's officer during the past war time. He was enforced to be in the Army because he was a university student, whom the Japanese Military authorities wanted to enlist as one of military human resources when Japan was facing difficult situations toward the end of the war. In other words, Japan was losing war to the US, when Japan didn't have many capable soldiers. Therefore, university students were enlisted as soldiers for the Japanese Armed Forces.

Since he didn't volunteer to be a soldier, he had an attitude of observing the Army objectively. He was sent to the Philippines where he witnessed the defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army by the US Armed Forces.  He was captured in a Prison of War camp in the Philippines for some time until he returned to Japan.

Yamamoto was a phenomenal observer and analyst on Japan specific culture throughout his life. During the war time when he moved around as a soldier of the Japanese Army in Southeast Asia, he always struggled with the way Japanese communicated among themselves. He often wondered how Japanese reached decisions for important matters where life-and-death issues were involved. The process of decision making on important matters seemed very opaque to him.

As a Japanese person he was bizarre because he thought that the Japan specific communication habit was somehow strange.  Many Japanese people never question whether Japanese communication styles are strange or not. That is the attitude of majority Japanese people in Japan anyway.  Yamamoto was very different.

   --- to be continued ---

I was very much shocked with his condemning me. 

On another occasion, the Japanese factory manager came to me and said, "You really are a moron. Again you hired an operator who does not have commonsense at all. He always comes to the factory with rubber slippers. I told him to wear shoes in the factory. Do you know what he said to me?  He asked me to pay money for the shoes because I demanded him to wear them. Why should I pay for them? You idiot hire anyhow those operators who don't have any commonsense.  You should immediately bring in a better operator. I am disgusted with your sense of personnel management.

There were more incidents alike observed in the factory in Singapore. Each time such a problem occurred the Japanese factory manager chewed me out because he could not speak English, and I was in charge of hiring local operators. Of course I worked with local personnel manager.

Since the factory manager was my immediate boss, I had to listen to his demands and instructions. I discussed with the local personnel manager, whose name was Ted (fictitious name) on how to accommodate the factory manager's requirements. Ted asked me if there were any criteria of hiring operators. I didn't have anything like that available. He suggested to me to make a standard job operation guideline and job description so that they can be explained to operators before they start to work in the factory.

I admired his insightful opinions. I went to the Japanese factory manager and asked him to give me copies of an operation guideline and a job description if any. He replied to me, he doesn't have any in written. He started to explain to me verbally, and asked me to make them from scratch in English. I thought he was still angry at me so he didn't want to hand me copies. I never thought that he didn't have them.

I made them in English after all. Each time when the personnel manager hired an operator, he explained to him or her what he or she should do and what not. After he or she agreed to such conditions, the personnel manager asked him or her to sign an employment agreement. Since then, we didn't come across any serious problem with regard to personnel management. The Japanese factory manager was contented with me.

So I again asked him to give me sets of the job guideline and job description in Japanese language. He honestly told me that he didn't have them at all.  I asked him how he administered and managed the factory operation when he was in Japan. What he said was that Japanese operators learn how to do through on-the-job-training at the workshop. They learn it from observing what their senior operators do in the factory. All of them have good commonsense, and he didn't come across particular phenomena in Singapore.

    --- to be continued ---

In the previous blog post, I mentioned "homework" to study and analyze secrets hidden in Japanese culture in relation to lean production management in Japanese companies.

After I finished interpretations for the British delegation, I picked up a book in the bookshelf at home. Its title was "Kuuki-no Kenkyu" meaning Study of Kuuki. Kuuki means air, atmosphere, aura, etc. The book was written by YAMAMOTO Shichihei and published by Bunshun Bunko, a Japanese publishing company.

This is a book that I bought in Singapore in 1980. The reason why I bought and read it was because I wanted to know secrets in Japanese culture, which had something to do with Japanese mindset in carrying out manufacturing activities by Japanese people. 

When I was in Singapore taking charge of business management of a small subsidiary factory manufacturing polyester film capacitors, I was only 27 years old. I was sent to Singapore to set up and run the subsidiary by a Japanese company headquartered in Tokyo.

It manufactured a variety of electronic components. Since I was quite young, I didn't know about Japanese culture well.

I believe that it is very difficult for one to objectively know and understand one's culture unless one goes and lives overseas where one mingles with peoples with different cultural backgrounds and languages.

In the beginning when I started to administer and manage manufacturing operation, I was compelled to perform translation for Japanese engineers in order for them to teach production techniques to local people in English. I stood right between Japanese engineers and local employees as a translator. There were so many happenings, which were sorts of intercultural problems, and they bothered me a lot. 

One day the Japanese factory manager ran to me, saying, "Hey, how have you employed operators who have no commonsense? I can't run production effectively as I did in Japan. I doubt your sense of personnel management. You should hire good and sensible people for me. Got that?" 

He was shouting and in fact he was angry with me. I asked him why he was so upset. He said this way. "One operator eats her breakfast while she is in the production line. I asked her to stop it, but she demanded that she come a little later to the factory for not eating breakfast in the production line, because she had to take care of her six children plus grandparents of hers and her husband at a small house. She doesn't have enough time to eat at her home. At the same time she doesn't want to come late to the factory, so she buys her breakfast near the factory and brings it to the factory. Can you believe it, huh Shintaro? It's your fault, because you hired a person who doesn't have commonsense at all. You should immediately bring in a better operator."

   --- to be continued ---