Lecture 2005-12
"Dangerous Terrain: Negotiating the Minefield of Inter-cultural Communication"
Dr. Judit Hidasi

The conference room at Shibuya Kyôiku Gakuen was nicely filled, when we had as our speaker Dr. Judit Hidasi, who is Hungarian. The Hungarian ambassador, Mr. Gyula Dabronaki, was to have attended the meeting but unfortunately he was suddenly taken ill. He did, however, send some bottles of excellent Hungarian wine which were warmly welcomed at a mini-reception after the meeting. Council member Mrs. Schreck also supplied her famous open sandwiches, adding a festive note to our last meeting of the year. Our hearty thanks go to the ambassador for the wine and Mrs. Schreck for the sandwiches.

Dr. Hidasi's subject was "Dangerous Terrain: Negotiating the Minefield of Inter-cultural Communication", and she provided handouts giving the examples she used to illustrate her talk, for which she had drawn on themes taken from her recently published book International Communication: an Outline. Copies of the book were on sale at the meeting, and she presented one copy to our Library

Dr. Hidasi began by explaining that as she had studied Russian, German, English, Latin and French at school, and was majoring in General and Applied Linguistics at university, she thought it would be interesting to learn a non-European language as well, and so it was that she launched out on Japanese. At the time, there was no systematic instruction in Japanese available, but fortunately a family friend was able to teach her. After coming to Tokai University with a scholarship, she soon developed a working knowledge of Japanese, and in so doing became more and more enamoured of the intricacies of the language.

However, she soon discovered that in order to communicate, a knowledge of the language alone was not sufficient. One day, after getting on a train whose destination she had not had time to verify, she asked a fellow-passenger in her best Japanese, "Excuse me, where does this train go?", and received the reply "Wakarimasen." She was taken aback at this response, and decided to turn her attention from language to communication. She realized that first she had to study, analyse and interpret Japanese culture, and as a result this had become the area of study she had been researching for nearly two decades, in the process collecting telling instances of miscommunication from her own experiences and those of others

Case studies have shown, Dr. Hidasi said, that communication problems between speakers arise because the use of language reflects the cultural and social backgrounds of the speakers. The cultural differences are not apparent when communication proceeds smoothly, but are revealed in situations where misunderstanding occurs, so it is these situations that are worthy of study. She quoted some observations made by the American cultural anthropologist E.T. Hall nearly half a century ago which still applied today; for instance, when a Japanese says "yes" it doesn't necessarily mean "yes", and when people smile it doesn't always mean they are pleased. As an example of this, she quoted an incident where a Japanese tourist had knocked over a valuable vase in a luxury hotel in Europe. When the manager pointed out the cost of the damage, the Japanese started giggling. The manager grew more and more indignant and named a sum of money to be paid as damages. To his amazement, the tourist paid up at once without complaint. The manager had misinterpreted the giggling because he did not realize that this was a device for concealing extreme embarrassment and defusing a shameful situation.

To anyone who bears in mind the differences between the cultural values of Japanese and non-Japanese speakers it will seem natural that there will be a lot of differences in communications styles. Surveys have found that though there has been a definite shift in Japan towards Western values, few of these manifest themselves in behaviour. Those who profess a strong preference for individualism may still follow collectivistic behaviour patterns in real life. This she illustrated by the consensus-based decision-making process; if one man had reservations about a proposal, the decision would be postponed, whereas a foreigner would expect a vote to be taken which respected the will of the majority. In another instance, an American at a project meeting had understood that plan B had been adopted, but a Japanese colleague corrected him and said it was plan A. People might have said that plan B was better, but there were pregnant pauses, the significance of which the American had missed. The real message may often be conveyed by a "Maa" inserted into the flow of words. Foreigners uninitiated in the niceties of ishin-denshin and haragei may find themselves negotiating a minefield of intercultural communication.

Quite often the difficulty of understanding comes not from the spoken or unspoken words but from the comprehension of the entire communication situation, where there may be certain well-hidden mines. Take the case of a Polish artist invited out to dinner by his Japanese colleagues. On the way they asked him what sort of food he liked, and he said he liked Italian and Chinese. "And what about sushi?" He said he found it difficult to swallow raw fish, but hardly had he finished speaking when they landed up at an exclusive sushi bar. The informant recalled how embarrassed he had been, as he would never have spoken like that had he known. (His hosts had also been embarrassed and their response was to laugh.) He had assumed that, as in a European environment, they were asking for information about his preferences in order to choose a suitable restaurant. Such could also be the case in Japan if a person is asked his preferences before arrangements have been made, but in this case they had already decided where to take their guest, and their question about his preferences had merely had a social function

Since cooperation and group achievement are given preference in Japanese culture over individual achievement, people tend to be less competitive in their attitude, and less assertive about their achievements. In one case, an architectural firm in Kyoto had been invited to take on a major project, and the intending American customer spoke highly of the firm's record of achievement. In reply, the Japanese representative consistently played down his and his company's achievements out of modesty, but this hesitant and unassertive style of communication must surely have created in the customer some uncertainty as to whether the company was able to carry out the project.

Dr. Hidasi then quoted a similar case involving Koichi Tanaka, the joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In Japan he had been adored by the public and the media because of his modesty and enryo, and his display of human weakness. With typical modesty, he played down his own role in the joint research, and said he had never dreamed of being honoured with this prestigious prize. His remarks had the result of inciting some scientists in Europe to protest that the prize should have gone to others, leading to his having to defend his and his team's work later at a news conference in Stockholm.

Dr. Hidasi then broached the question of the function of communication. Whereas in the West the main function of communication is the presentation and exchange of information, in Japan this is only secondary, the primary function being to maintain and enhance human relationships, and for the sake of this Japanese are ready to sacrifice their individual preferences. Thus a Japanese, being asked if he would like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day would readily agree even if he never drank chocolate, as it would be impolite to refuse. If he then left his drink untouched his Western hostess would either see this behaviour as being a waste of good chocolate or would take offence, misinterpreting what was intended as polite behaviour as being impolite

A knottier problem concerned differences in attitudes towards communication strategies. In one case, a traveller wished to convert $2,000 worth of traveller's cheques, but the bank's policy was not to cash more than $1,000. He was politely informed that he would have to speak to the bank manager to get his authorization. The bank manager began by saying "Let's see what we can work out," but then proceeded to go into all the objections to overruling the bank's policy for the next twenty minutes. In so doing, he probably felt a sense of satisfaction in making his point without damaging good human relationships. But the traveller saw the whole process as a meaningless waste of time, and felt he had been made a fool of. He left with a bitter taste in his mouth, which he would not have had if he had simply been told at the beginning that there was no way of getting round the bank's policy. A series of such incidents could also eventually lead to negative stereotyping. There is also an emotional aspect to communication. For a Westerner, what is satisfying is to have information provided in an efficient way. But what is satisfying for a Japanese is to avoid conflict and maintain good human relations

In conclusion Dr. Hidasi said that there were deeply rooted principles of national cultural behaviour underlying patterns of communication. If we were conscious of these principles in the other culture we would be able to interpret the communication patterns correctly. Understanding Japanese communication processes is fairly simple, and involves no desire either to see them changed or to imitate them. The point of studying these processes is to interpret communication situations correctly and avoid friction and misunderstanding; this applies to all levels of interaction, whether in an academic, business or everyday setting. She regretted that the limitations of time had not permitted a deeper analysis, but hoped that at least she had been able to point the way to a fuller understanding of the differences in ways of communication

The first question was on popular linguistics: was there any connection between Basque and Japanese? Linguistically there seemed to be a similarity between Basque, Hungarian and Japanese, at least in the word order; but even within Hungarian there were great differences, for example in Transylvania: the pauses and silences were very similar to those of Japan.

To a question about similarities in proverbs, the answer was that there were some common values of human behaviour; what was the reason? There was the theory than a thousand years ago Hungarians had come to Europe from Asia

Another attendee commented wryly that when she was new to Japan, she had been unaware of the rigid system of formal gift-giving; her gift of tasty, but everyday, food had "insulted" her Japanese landlady. A Japanese questioner asked how to teach communication skills as well as language. Dr. Hidasi said that it was necessary to teach real communicative phrases and expressions from the very beginning

On the question of Japanese modesty in putting forward their own achievements, Dr. Hidasi commented that the lack of assertiveness showed up in the results of postgraduate interviews for foreign universities: out of 10 accepted, because of the different assertiveness skills, four were likely to be Chinese, 2 Vietnamese, and then one each Korean, European, American and Japanese

A young attendee asked whether it was incumbent upon other countries to make more of an effort to understand Japan, rather than the other way round. This broadened into a wider discussion with several people offering experiences and opinions. Finally the comment was made that, although it had been remarked that foreigners tended to put their Japanese friends "on the spot" by offering them specific things they felt obliged to accept although they did not really want them, Japanese people were, in fact, equally likely to do this to foreigners.

The meeting closed with a vote of thanks proposed by Dr. Lee Colegrove and was followed by the reception described above.