Quiproquo in Japan!

A Frenchman in Japan

In The Samurai Awakens. Japanese culture and strategy in the knowledge society, I report on a symptomatic anecdote through this title Lost in Shinjuku, the name of a station with a very Japanese complexity where millions of users travel daily.

I then organized a seminar between French and Japanese experts in knowledge management at the French Embassy in Tokyo. For organizational purposes, I arrived in the Japanese capital a few days before my French colleagues. One of them, who was setting foot there for the first time, arrived one morning in order to satisfy his dream of discovering the city. I found him in the evening in our hotel, and asked if everything had gone well for him in this land of signs?

Lost on the subway in Tokyo

"No problem, I understood everything," he replied. The Tokyo subway no longer has any secrets for me now, I understood the logic. Besides, he continued, in a station called Shin…juku this morning I was lost at the exit of a staircase. I unfolded my map. Barely had I opened it when a Japanese man came towards me to offer himself, in a bad English, to help me? He invited me to move to a less congested area. It's incredible you know, he too is interested in knowledge management because we exchanged business cards and we are going maybe we'll meet again. Once he figured out what I was looking for, he walked me to the entrance to the right metro line, and waited until he was sure I got on a train car . See, I had no problems!”

Two possible cultural interpretations

The first is that of this scientific colleague admiring what he interprets as Japanese kindness, but the second, indigenous, does not operate on the same springs.

While a cursed irresponsible and antisocial Caucasian blocked the passage at the end of a staircase by widely developing his metro plan, and therefore bothered everyone, spontaneously an element of this society took charge of restoring fluidity . He led this traffic impediment away in the best possible conditions, and then accompanied him to the entrance to the ad hoc line to be sure that he was not going to make a... lump in the road again. Metro !

What about the exchange of business cards between the Japanese and this Caucasian Frenchman? He was so happy to hold out his card proudly with both hands while bowing as he had been told to be polite, that his Japanese interlocutor could only return the favor, so as not to make him feel uncomfortable. easy.

Reading advice: Understanding and applying Sun Tzu,Pierre Fayard, Dunod, 2011 (3rd revised and expanded edition).