Nothing illustrates this devotion better than the tea ceremony, which requires not only sophisticated aesthetic senses but also painstaking attention to every detail. The setting, the decor, the utensils, the food, the dress, and above all the manners must be delivered with the subtlety of studied casualness. Many Japanese who come to live in the US go through a period of frantic searching to find satisfactory tea and coffee, among other things, after finding out that familiar names do not guarantee familiar tastes. It is no accident that Japanese are buying up the finest coffee beans in the world and developing many of the finest consumer products in the world. I firmly believe that it is not the management style nor the QC circles but the attentiveness, the attention to detail, that is behind Japan's high quality products and economic success.
Japanese culture trains Japanese to be attentive in receiving signals.
American culture, on the other hand, emphasizes the role of the message sender to be clear and assertive. This cultural difference seems partly to blame in the recent course of trade dispute between the two countries. Americans' clear and strong message was received by the Japanese as Japan bashing, a hateful display of racism, and it hardened their feelings rather than getting them into a cooperative mood. To the extent Japan yielded, the strong message seemed to be working. Some Americans are trying to take comfort in that the authors of the book aren't in the mainstream of Japanese politics.