In this world, the Japanese struggle because they are not
trained to manage a decentralized, disorganized and fractured environment where
self is king. Certainly some forms of selflessness are commendable, but in a
world as homogeneous and as socially isolated as Japan, the suppression of
self-expression and the unwillingness to accept mistakes constricts the ability
to take risks.
One Japanese entrepreneur, Masao Horiba, described to me the
challenges in the "go-along, get-along" world of the Japanese business culture,
what he called a "deduction-free" world. "As long as you never do anything
wrong, you never lose points. And if you never lose points, you are guaranteed
a promotion every year, as well as a pay raise," he said. "So no one takes risk
for fear of making that mistake."
No wonder an ad for blue jeans, which in English demanded "dare
to be different" (and not buy Levi’s), was rewritten for Tokyo’s subway. In
Japanese the ad read, "Be part of the group."
Michael Zielenziger, a former Tokyo-based foreign correspondent,
is
author of Shutting Out the
Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, available in paperback this September.
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