Customer Reviews

Different Games, Different Rules: Why Americans and Japanese Misunderstand Each Other

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My dissertation is on US-Japan relations, so I've had to read a lot of these types of books. Its a shame more of them aren't like this. Granted, its not perfect, but if you had time to read only one book on the Japanese before jumping on a plane to negotiate your company's deal, I would hope this might be one of the books on the Airport bookstore's shelf... which it probably isn't.

Different Games, Different Rules sheds new light on common communication challenges encountered by Japanese and Americans. Yamada gives interesting, enlightening examples and explains cultural meanings behind common linguistical expressions. This book is expecially interesting for American students studying Japanese or working with Japanese people. Very easy to read!

If anyone is qualified to write about the subject of US-Japanese communication, it is Yamada. She is truly bi-cultural and bi-lingual, having significant experience in both the United States and Japan (her father's employment required the family to move in three year cycles between the United States and Japan, and she attended schools and universities in both countries). She adds to this experience sociolinguistic research credentials acquired under Deborah Tannen at Georgetown, which she puts to use in conducting a solid reseach study of US and Japanese business communication patterns. Yamada draws on this unique expertise to illustrate her points in a particularly clear and engaging way.

When I started doing research for my honors thesis, I was excited to see how many books there were on the difference between American and Japanese business environments. I was immediately dissapointed; each and every book was filled with generalizations based on anecdotal evidence and weak extrapolations from history and language. Although Haru Yamada's book is an exception in that it actually has real data in it, that data is merely the analysis of a three-person American meeting and a three person Japanese meeting. That is hardly a representative sample.

The first thing you have to learn when attempting to interact with another culture is that culture does affect the way we communicate, and that bad experiences are often the result of misunderstanding. For someone with no experience with Japan, reading a book like this might be helpful. "Oh, OK. These are the things that I should watch out for." But there is always the danger that people will take the contents as gospel. In my experience, expecting that the Japanese will act a certian way only increases frustration and actually impedes progress. Its much better to start off on a clean slate, and to keep in mind that culture might throw off your "gut" impressions, so give people the benefit of the doubt.

What I would desperately like to see is a real linguistic study with hard conversation-derived data that merely attempts to discover what people DO, rather than how they ARE. As soon as you start talking about what an entire nation of people is like you officially leave the realm of sciences and enter the realm of stereotypes.

The very first page of this book made me wary. In an anecdotal style representative of the book as a whole, the author tells of her surprise at learning of the "American" version of Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper (cicada) in which the ants turn the grasshopper away during winter because he played all summer. She offers an alternative "Japanese" version in which the ants invite the grasshopper in to join a party because they worked so hard during the summer doing their "role" singing. She uses this to justify two polarized paradigms of communication (though not merely communication) for each culture: Japanese are interdependent and Americans are independent. (For some reason she never uses Westeners or even English speakers but always Americans). Interesting story but I thought it sounded suspicious. Well, guess what? After interviewing DOZENS of Japanese people from a variety of backgrounds and asking them to finish the story, I have YET to find anyone who can even believe the "nice ant" ending much less anyone who had heard it previously or offers it. Even when asked to brainstorm alternative endings, this ending never appears, however, grasshopper/cicada raids on the ant community do. Yamada disingenuously offers this footnote "I have been told that a more literal translation of the original version exists in Japanese where the rejected grasshopper sadly walks away at the end of the story." Exists? Have been told? It doesn't merely exist but is the only version anyone seems to know. Furthermore, somehow she interprets this story as showing idealized American independence and "the importance of fending for yourself." According to her, "the point is that each person is responsible for his or her destiny" while the Japanese version shows "everyone has a role in society." Really? How can one justify that? How is the work ethic of a collective ant colony about fending for oneself? It would seem much more apt to describe some kind of socialist system. If this kind of interpretation of endings is valid, what about the endings offered in which the cicada invades the ants' mound? Sounds like Manchuria to me. The first page is indicative of the whole book. Things are overly stylized and distorted for academic symmetry. Anecdotes are highly spurious and sometimes only tenuously related to the point at hand. After the first page I simply couldn't accept any of them so that now looking back at the points of this book requires a pillar of salt. In fact, one gets the very distinct impression from the personal anecdotes given that, despite being a trained linguist specializing in cross-cultural communication, Yamada often just doesn't get the REAL point behind what people are saying or the genuine motivation for their actions. Exaggerations, misrepresentations, and stylizations abound obscuring what would otherwise be interesting points. Nonetheless, the book reads like an article from Ophrah's magazine (or what I would imagine they read like) if you inserted a bunch of romanized Japanese words with constant parenthetical translations (also the subject of some disagreement for many of the native speakers with whom I spoke). You finish the book almost as soon as you start. In particular, the "quotes" of parents instructing their children in each language were amusing. I have heard very similar things myself. The notes from the business meetings are interesting (particularly the Japanese section-head meeting) but watching her dissect the American meeting raises doubts in my mind about the validity of her Japanese analysis. She does introduce some interesting points but the sample is so small one feels distinctly disappointed in not getting to see these "principles" at work in other situations. It reminded me of the perfunctory "labs" that might go along with a Junior High science class. One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is the abundance of Japanese present. I actually learned a few useful words from this book, however, as most things in the book, they too become stylized. The discussion of AMAYAKASHISUGI (too sweet), WAGAMAMA (spoilt), TSUMETAI(cold), AND KATTE(selfish) is a good example. No one I spoke to agreed with the sharp opposition she set up among these terms. While this did provide for many interesting discussions, she should not have introduced these as terms defined merely by nurturer/nurtured over/under indulgence. For example, AMAYAKASHISUGI, to my understanding, might be better thought of as "doting" and used almost exclusively for parents. WAGAMA is not merely spoilt in the taking sense that we normally think of. In fact, the first situation I was given defining WAGAMAMA had a person giving a gift in expectation of a certain response and being disappointed not to receive it. Not what we expect exactly. TSUMETAI and KATTE simply aren't polarized in the way defined in the book. KATTE is not merely selfish but also snobbish. I was told a KATTE person may even get mad at the rain. TSUMETAI is used not only for under indulgent nurturers but also for the nurtured. Of course, a lot of the time nurturing is not the correct metaphor for the relationship and so this whole system breaks down anyway. Overall I found the book worth reading but not because it gave me answers. Quite the opposite. I found that it made me ask questions. Unfortunately, if you don't happen to have access to a large group of Japanese people to discuss these propositions with, I don't think you'll get nearly as much out of it. I actually think the central conceit of the book is correct, namely that Japanese communication grows out of a culture of interdependence and American communication from a culture of independence, however, the support for this thesis is mixed and often counterproductive.

I've bought this book right after moving to Japan and whilst learning Japanese (at intermediate level at the time). I would recommend it to anyone who is learning Japanese, is moving to Japan or needs to do business with Japanese nationals. The author is the best-placed person in the world to write about Japanese communication and all she says is very insightful and accurate. This book helped me understand and get over aspects of Japanese communication that were bugging me and saved me from embarrassment on many occasions where I would have either hurt people or created very awkward situations!!

This book is more than ever relevant as Japan remains and will remain for a long time an economic superpower. As a regular traveller to Japan, this book goes deeper than the traditional self-help "5 tips to get by in Japan" which failed to communicate the true sources of cultural differences. It is critical that businessmen and women read this book to, at a minimum, know what they don't know. Importantly you will come away understanding differences and also with communication pointers to adjust for these differences when negotiating, running meetings, presenting, etc. Although it is obviously completly wrong to assume that America is the same as other Western cultures or that what is true for Japan is true for China (and vice-versa), some differences (between Japan and western cultures) are applicable in China with different degrees. However, the way to adjust for them might be different. This book is only for those who really want to understand....

Ms Yamada has written an excellent reference book. It has a very clear style and a 'warm' voice . It was a joy to read this book!

The product was sent fast. It was a gift and he (Prof.) was excited to read it. I did not know how he proceived the book.

As an intercultural communication researcher, I can safely say that Ms. Yamada's book is one of the true rarities in this field. She is truly bi-cultural as well as bi-lingual and this makes her insights into the intricacies of Japanese/American communication far more meaningful and astute. By all means buy this book!