[Globalized Economy & the Japanese] グローバル化と日本人

During my stay at home this summer break, my family and I went shopping at a large shopping center. I was hoping to buy a planner refill of the next year. For the past couple of years I have purchased an English version of it at the same store. I knew there were some stores dealing with an English one for my personal planner organizer.

 The store didn't have what I wanted. I thought it just happened. Nothing more than that. There were several kinds of planner refills of the same company but everything was Japanese. I went to another big store in Tokyo remembering that these stores had what I wanted one year ago and two years ago. But there was no English version. I visited another big store, but there was no such thing.

Don't say "You are in Japan, right? What do you expect?" The problem is not that there is no English version of the item, but the things have changed.

Grown up bilingually in Japanese and English, I have always been sensitive about this sort of thing. I recognize English books sections have disappeared in many bookstores in Japan. It sometimes makes me feel, "Hey, it's almost like a scary science fiction by Osamu Tezuka!"

Looking back some years ago, I remember there were far more bookstores that shared an English books section. I know several bookstores dealing with English books have been closed. Many of the stores no longer deal with books in English. Meanwhile, so many people are dying to mention this language.

When I'm outside, I always overhear people talking about English speaking countries, such as the U.S., Canada, Australia or the U.K. So many Japanese kids go to an English conversation school from very small ages.

The IT age has made it to accelerate the speed of the globalized trend of economy, and the speed has been getting even faster. I remember I knew nothing about the Internet back in 1996 or a few years later. In 2006, about ten (10) years after that, there was nobody who don't use an e-mail or the Internet services. Five (5) years later, in 2010, much more business people in Japanese have been involved with opportunities in English. Before the internet age, there was no way to know about foreign countries. You had to actually travel abroad. Today there are YouTube videos. Living in Japan, information can be obtained in English via the Internet as much as in Japanese, or even more than Japanese. People use Twitter, facebook, skype and other social networking services in order to communicate with other individuals of different places. They made conducting businesses on a global scale an effective necessity for most organizations. This tendency will be accelerated to be even faster.

At the same time, the people of Japan, in my impression, seems to have become more xenophobic, while they brag about English or foreign countries they have traveled to with their fellows. There is an apparent tendency among Japanese that even a talkative person will turn dumb as soon as they face an English native speaker.

Online shopping might be a factor that the multiple stores didn't have an English version of the planner refills or books in English. The same can be true with the bookstores that closed the English books section.

Yohan, a Japanese books importer and distributor filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Some said it was not due to a migration trend to electronic publishing. I personally think this symbolizes something of a great change in terms of English for the Japanese. But the fact was the news didn't leave much impact on the society in general, and that was even more impressive to me than the bankruptcy.

IT is a funny thing. It allows an individual to have so much information on one hand, while it will let the person become more closed-minded on the other hand. It intensifies the characteristics of an individual or a group of people. Living and working in Japan while speaking English at home, this impression becomes stronger each year. So many Japanese love listening to songs in English without even knowing the words well. They love chatting away with friends over a topic of foreign countries they have traveled to. Or, they love letting their dearest kids attend an English conversation school. But when actually faced with an English speaking person, they will most likely turn shy all of a sudden, or they behave as if playing a knock-on-the-front-door-and-run-away sort of thing.

Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. Some Japanese media has been saying Japanese stuffs and people are "Galapagos-like" or "closed-minded" or "behind the speed of the globalized economy".

What's wrong with that? They can handle it that way. Japanese media should not just focus on their negative side. They should keep on being who they are, being perfectionists and being very careful about work. Their jobs are super cool. Eating rice cake on the new year's day is a cool culture. It is not a bad thing that a Japanese becomes like a dog with straight face in front of a non-Japanese, or treat them differently. Why even bother pretending to be open-minded or friendly? A Japanese literary giant Soseki Natsume who lived in the periods of Edo, Meiji and Taisho mentioned that a cultural opening including human behaviors and ideas should be encouraged to come out internally, otherwise it only ends up being mentally distorted.

What if a translation system was to be practiced, for example? I have thought of one thing on the company level or a department level. If this system has been adopted with the idea of "cloud computing", they wouldn't have to reply too much on one single translator in the office. Administration work position will be necessary in order to establish and maintain it, but that is meant to work for the system of company or department. Proofreading or correction will also be necessary. Human skills should be needed and respected in any advanced system or technology. - But it is totally different from a case when somebody asks a translator to work on a specific document and then wait.

I am writing about that today here because I wanted to reconsider what I have experienced a year and a half ago in order to make the Japanese companies system work better. As a fully bilingual CATIA specialist, I wish I could do something more to help this business field become even better.

There should be more ideas to let Japanese people or companies be more involved with the globalized economy. I am always thinking about what I can do, so they will tackle with that trend even better with my bilingual skills and background.

Translation