{"id":12356,"date":"2014-04-29T22:08:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T08:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=12356"},"modified":"2014-05-08T11:08:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T21:08:36","slug":"sneak-preview-of-my-next-japan-times-just-be-cause-column-75-may-1-2014-on-japans-empathy-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=12356","title":{"rendered":"My Japan Times JUST BE CAUSE Column 75, May 1, 2014: “Tackling Japan’s ‘Empathy Deficit’ Towards Outsiders”"},"content":{"rendered":"

eBooks, Books, and more from ARUDOU Debito (click on icon):
\n\"Guidebookcover.jpg\"<\/a>\"japaneseonlyebookcovertext\"<\/a>\"Handbook<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"sourstrawberriesavatar\"<\/a>\"debitopodcastthumb\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>
\nUPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito
\nDEBITO.ORG PODCASTS on iTunes, subscribe free
\n“LIKE” US on Facebook at http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/debitoorg<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.facebook.com\/handbookimmigrants<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JapaneseOnlyTheBook<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BookInAppropriate<\/a>
\nIf you like what you read and discuss on Debito.org, please consider helping us stop hackers and defray maintenance costs with a little donation via my webhoster:
\n\"Donate<\/a>
\nAll donations go towards website costs only. Thanks for your support!<\/i><\/p>\n

Hi Blog.\u00a0Thanks everyone for putting this in the Top Ten Trending at the JT Online once again this month! \u00a0Debito<\/p>\n

JUST BE CAUSE<\/strong>
\n\"justbecauseicon.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

==============================================
\nTACKLING JAPAN\u2019S \u201cEMPATHY DEFICIT\u201d TOWARDS OUTSIDERS<\/strong>
\n By Dr. ARUDOU, Debito<\/strong>
\n JUST BE CAUSE COLUMN 75 FOR THE JAPAN TIMES<\/strong>
\nMay 1, 2014<\/strong>
\nCourtesy\u00a0http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/community\/2014\/04\/30\/issues\/tackling-the-empathy-deficit-toward-non-japanese\/<\/a><\/strong>
\nVersion with links to sources follows:
\n<\/strong>
\nIn 2006, then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech about people’s \u201cempathy deficit.\u201d <\/a>He described empathy as \u201cthe ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us \u2014 the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think like this,\u201d he continued, \u201cwhen you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers \u2014 it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I agree. Enormous social problems arise when people don\u2019t understand (or rather, don\u2019t try to understand) what\u2019s going on in other people\u2019s minds. I was mindful of that during my Ph.D. fieldwork, when I interviewed dozens of \u201cJapanese Only\u201d businesses. I always asked for (and got, often in great detail) the reasoning behind their exclusionism. I never agreed with their stopgap solutions (shutting out people they thought were \u201cforeign\u201d because they didn\u2019t look \u201cJapanese\u201d enough), but I gained some sympathy for what they were going through.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But sympathy is not the same as empathy, and that is one reason why discrimination against foreigners and minorities is so hard to combat in Japan. Japanese society is good at sympathy, but empathy? Less so\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, Japanese people have great sympathy for human suffering worldwide. Look through the media (particularly material from human-rights NGOs) and you\u2019ll see plenty of pictures of starving or impoverished people abroad. The government has also been extremely generous with overseas development assistance<\/a>, and is one of UNICEF\u2019s biggest donors and promoters<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But \u201csympathy\u201d has for hundreds of years meant a feeling of sorrow or pity for others<\/a>. That\u2019s very different from the ability to understand and share another\u2019s feelings \u2014 empathy<\/a>, which only evolved into a widely understood concept during the 20th century<\/a>. That is not to say that empathetic behavior is anything new, of course: Many societies have a long history of axioms and examples (\u201cwalk a mile in his shoes,\u201d \u201cdo unto others,\u201d Buddha and Christ surrendering their worldly possessions for a higher calling, etc.) encouraging altruistic behavior. In his best-seller \u201cThe Better Angels of Our Nature,\u201d Steven Pinker <\/a>devoted a whole chapter to how empathy has recently fostered human-rights revolutions worldwide.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

However, there remains a marked lack of empathy in Japan towards outsiders, especially minorities and foreigners. Why? I would argue it\u2019s because few Japanese ever leave their carefully constructed comfort zones to become minorities or foreigners themselves.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you think about it, concerns about security, safety and comfort basically dominate all levels of Japanese existence \u2014 especially if it involves leaving the Japanese existence entirely. Even though going overseas is the only way Japanese will ever walk in the shoes of a foreigner, many still spend their short jaunts within group buses on package tours, experiencing a foreign land from a controlled environment geared to Japanese comfort levels.<\/em><\/strong>
\nSEE ENDNOTE FOR SOURCES<\/em><\/p>\n

I do sympathize. Why would anyone pay all that money for a quickie trip and suffer the discomfort of unpredictability? Being a member of a rich, developed country with a high expectation of quality, service and social order should have taken care of all that.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who wants to deal with all those scary foreign languages and potential criminal behaviors lurking beyond the hotel stoop, anyway? It could spoil a stress-free vacation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a deeper disconnect going on here. I\u2019ve written before about Japanese society\u2019s overwhelming conceit with social power maintenance, and power plays a part in this discussion too.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You see, sympathy is in fact about power. People worthy of sorrow or pity have to appeal to people in a position to give that sympathy. Sympathizers have the power to decide to be charitable or merciful.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On the other hand, empathizers have to give up their power. They have to live situations like somebody else, feel their discomforts and disadvantages, walk in their shoes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But we won\u2019t. We\u2019re rich. We\u2019ve earned the right to stay in our own shoes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So never mind empathy. Sympathy\u2019s simpler, for if anyone needs our help, we\u2019ll send money \u2014 if they\u2019re within our ambit of concern. It\u2019ll still have no real impact on our lives \u2014 or, more importantly, no real impact on our perceptions of their lives.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s seal off the attitudinal loop from foreigners in particular: Hey, if you don\u2019t like living in Japan as a disadvantaged foreigner, you shouldn\u2019t have come here in the first place. We don\u2019t go to your country as a guest and tell you what to do in your house, do we?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And now let\u2019s close it further with selective empathy: Ever wondered why many Japanese get so het up when their compatriots get discriminated against overseas? Such as in 1962, when Japan successfully lobbied apartheid South Africa to make Japanese into \u201chonorary whites<\/a>\u201d? Or in 2010, when the British government threatened to put caps on special visas for Japanese (and other non-EU nationalities), and Japanese firms threatened an investment boycott<\/a>? Or when even normally stoic Emperor Hirohito in 1946 expressed rare public outrage at racism towards Japanese in California<\/a>?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Probably not, because one can understand the feelings of fellow Japanese in this situation. Empathy, however, generally doesn\u2019t go outside the tribe: Japan can discriminate against foreigners, but woe betide the foreigners if they do it to Japanese!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, I do sympathize, since a lack of empathy is by design. The government has long portrayed foreigners as Japan\u2019s opponents \u2014 agents of crime, terrorism, disease and land grabs.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The end result is that even the most well-intentioned people in Japan, who do protest clear examples of racial discrimination (e.g., the \u201cJapanese only\u201d signs at businesses, the racist street demos saying \u201cKill all Koreans,\u201d the \u201cJapanese only\u201d banner by Urawa Reds soccer fans), use a different subtext.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

They denounce racism as \u201cNihon no haji,\u201d decrying the shame (haji) that xenophobia brings upon Japan on the international stage: It makes Japan, and by extension themselves as Japanese, look bad.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Shame is a very effective message \u2014 thank you for it \u2014 but the more empathetic tack would be to argue that foreigners are people too; that they live in Japan just like any Japanese; that they deserve to live in Japan as residents, patronize bathhouses and restaurants as customers, attend soccer matches as fans, like anyone else; that foreigners deserve exactly the same human rights and access to public goods as any other Japanese.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But equal treatment is rarely part of the debate. Instead people argue, \u201cIf they want to be treated the same, they should naturalize,\u201d as if that fixes everything. Trust me, it doesn\u2019t.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Again, empathy is key. If more people had it, they would advocate for Japanese society to \u201cdo unto foreigners,\u201d because they would understand how foreigners feel, as Obama argued, and wouldn\u2019t wish that treatment upon anyone.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan, let\u2019s work on that empathy deficit. Less d\u014dj\u014d (sympathy), more ky\u014dkan (empathy). Broaden your ambit beyond the tribe and you just might realize that power is not \u201czero-sum,\u201d i.e., that giving more power to foreigners in Japan does not mean less power for you. In fact, it makes things better for everyone, as it gives more people more opportunity to fulfill their lifetime potential in society.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, who wouldn\u2019t empathize with that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

===============================
\nDebito Arudou, who has just received his Ph.D. in International Studies from Meiji Gakuin University, is editing his dissertation on racial discrimination in Japan into a book. Your comments and story ideas: community@japantimes.co.jp<\/em>
\nENDS<\/p>\n

=================================<\/p>\n

ENDNOTE<\/strong>
\nI have gone through several databases, including ProQuest, and searched through the full archives of about ten academic peer-reviewed journals on tourism, and there really isn\u2019t much related rigorous sociological\/anthropological in recent years on this, it would seem. What I could track down published within the past five or so years:<\/em><\/p>\n

From: Generalized pattern in competition among tourism destinations<\/strong>
\n Dawes, John; Romaniuk, Jenni; Mansfield, Annabel. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research3.1 (2009): 33-53.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Establishes that Japanese tourists take shorter holidays and more picky about their destinations of the four groups selected:<\/em>
\n “This suggests Japanese tourists travel to a smaller range of destinations than USA, UK and Singaporean Tourists. This result might be due to greater loyalty to single destinations or due to taking fewer holidays overall.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Cross-cultural tourist behaviour: a replication and extension involving Hofstede’s uncertainty avoidance dimension<\/strong>
\n Litvin, Stephen W; Crotts, John C; Hefner, Frank L. The International Journal of Tourism Research6.1 (Jan\/Feb 2004): 29-37.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one tells what we already know about Japanese avoidance of uncertainty and risk, replicates older results:
\nABSTRACT<\/strong>: Hofstede\u2019s five cross-cultural dimensions have been broadly applied in the literature. Money and Crotts recently applied the dimension of uncertainty avoidance to a matched sample comprised of low uncertainty avoidance German and high uncertainty avoidance Japanese tourists, finding their behaviors consistent with those behaviors predicted by Hofstede. This study both replicates and extends their research across a representative sample of first time leisure visitors to the USA representing 58 nations. It was found that visitors from high uncertainty avoidance cultures exhibited behaviors consistent with those of the Japanese in the Money and Crotts research, whereas visitors from low-uncertainty avoidance cultures behaved similarly to their German subjects. Such findings, across a broad sample population, validate the original research through a more rigorous test of its propositions, provide increased confidence regarding their generalizability, and further contribute to our understanding of the influence of national culture on tourist behavior. http:\/\/marketing-to-japan.com\/the-japanese-tourist.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

ALSO
\n(sourced from www.visitbritain.com<\/a>, date unknown)
\nPackage tours 48.2%<\/strong>
\n Individually arranged 37.1% (increasing)<\/strong>
\n Group travel 6.2%<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=LC4c7i3WrPgC&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=are+japanese+tourists+more+likely+to+tour+in+groups+than+other+nationalities?&source=bl&ots=gXuRHVKInI&sig=xLud0YIHdySfGG7ue2xlItv9oms&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gGxZU47CD-Xg2QXc3IDYDA&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=are%20japanese%20tourists%20more%20likely%20to%20tour%20in%20groups%20than%20other%20nationalities%3F&f=false<\/a>
\n\u201cIn the past they liked to travel in relatively large groups, but by the mid-1990s the young were increasingly traveling in smaller groups or on their own and had come to resemble Western tourists. Individual Japanese tourists became less interested in purchasing pre-arranged tours\u2026\u201d (2008)<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=_Jz4ZJsoaMgC&pg=PA327&lpg=PA327&dq=are+japanese+tourists+more+likely+to+tour+in+groups+than+other+nationalities?&source=bl&ots=-QHjToQ_40&sig=c6H_eqttasGJvdUoq-xo_breAsk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gGxZU47CD-Xg2QXc3IDYDA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=are%20japanese%20tourists%20more%20likely%20to%20tour%20in%20groups%20than%20other%20nationalities%3F&f=false<\/a>
\n\u201cJapanese tourists are the most distinctive\u2026\u201d<\/em>
\n \u201cKoreans and Japanese are the least active and reserved in social situations (probably due to their collectivistic and high-uncertainty-avoidance characteristics)\u2026 Japanese are the most adventurous in food preferences, and they plan their trips rigidly and meticulously, but choose short trips.\u201d (1997)<\/em>
\nendnote ends<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt: In 2006, then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech about people’s \u201cempathy deficit.\u201d He described empathy as \u201cthe ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us \u2014 the child who’s hungry, the steelworker who’s been laid off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think like this,\u201d he continued, \u201cwhen you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers \u2014 it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

I agree. Enormous social problems arise when people don\u2019t understand (or rather, don\u2019t try to understand) what\u2019s going on in other people\u2019s minds. I was mindful of that during my Ph.D. fieldwork, when I interviewed dozens of \u201cJapanese Only\u201d businesses. I always asked for (and got, often in great detail) the reasoning behind their exclusionism. I never agreed with their stopgap solutions (shutting out people they thought were \u201cforeign\u201d because they didn\u2019t look \u201cJapanese\u201d enough), but I gained some sympathy for what they were going through.<\/p>\n

But sympathy is not the same as empathy, and that is one reason why discrimination against foreigners and minorities is so hard to combat in Japan. Japanese society is good at sympathy, but empathy? Less so\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,44,34,5,4,11,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-cultural-issue","category-discussions","category-exclusionism","category-human-rights","category-japanese-government","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-shoe-on-the-other-foot-dept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}