From: mtachiba@rkna50.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Tachibana)
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Followup-To: fj.misc
Organization: Institute of Physical & Chemical Research (RIKEN) Saitama,Japan
Distribution: fj
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 12:07:12 GMT

This article from fj.misc is cross-posted to fj.soc.culture.

In article <2168@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:

>For example going back to the RiceReport, when I asked people how
>long they kept rice before eating it, they tended to give a "We
>Japanese" kind of answer. But I've been playing this game too long
>to just let it go and kept asking questions until I had some
>concrete answers. And found, as usual, that people keep rice
>differing amounts of time. And, as usual, there was great surprise
>because after all, "Japan has a homongenous society and everbody does
>things the same way" ... actually many times it just isn't so! 
>
>In the beginning, I would ask somebody something and accept the
>answer as nobody said otherwise. Finally one day I just couldn't
>believe that everybody felt the same way about one particular
>subject. I said that, IMHO, if somebody says X and others don't
>disagree, then they were giving tacit (unspoken) approval or
>agreement. But they said, "No no!" that it was just that when
>somebody had said something they didn't like to contradict it. 
>
>So now I am of the opinion that within local groups of
>communicators, there is a strong tendency to maintain surface
>harmony with people feeling comfortable by using set phrases. The
>facts of the matter can be quite different only nobody likes to get
>down to the nitty gritty of concrete answers ("OK, you keep rice the
>usual amount of time, how long is that, exactly?"). 

    To believe or make oneself believe that he/she is doing the
same way the colleagues do.  It is important in believing, not
being.

>And while the Japanese I speak with tend to speak only with the
>same, relatively small group of people ("How many people you've
>never met before did you speak with this week?") people from other
>countries cut across these groups and realize that in the larger
>sense just about everything is case-by-case (even though each local
>group says this is how "We Japanese" do it).
> 
>So is there one and only one, correct way to say/do everything within 
>each local group? I think so. 
>
>And is there one correct answer for the Japanese culture as a whole?
>No, I think there are many different ways of doing/saying things,
>all of which are called "We Japanese". 

    Is it like this;
    Assume someone was asked by you and said `This is the way
we Japanese do'.  You show counter-examples to him.  `Oh, I didn't
knew that, but at least in Tokushima prefecture this is true' 
But you happened to know a friend from Tokushima city whose habit
is not as the way he does.  `I came from the west part of the pre-
fecture and you have to know Tokushima city is the exceptional place
than the other, really a big city'.  
    Yes, as you know, he may withdraw his front line to his county,
his town, his neighbors or even to his family.  Still he will be OK 
enough to believe that he is a typical Japanese.
    
    (I referred Tokushima simply because I have a friend who is likely
to think in a way the hero of this story thinks.  Of course I like
him and I have no intensions to Tokushima.  Any prefecture will do
where people has been in a good old temper :-)

--
 Masahiko Tachibana	          E-mail:  mtachiba@rkna50.riken.go.jp
 Lab. of Organometallic Chemistry,   Tel:  +81-48-462-1111 ext.3513
 The Institute of Physical and       Fax:  +81-48-462-4665
 Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako-shi, 351-01 Japan.    



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