{"id":39056,"date":"2016-01-16T23:32:48","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T03:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=39056"},"modified":"2016-02-08T21:14:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-09T01:14:31","slug":"jets-in-academia-understanding-privacy-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/16\/jets-in-academia-understanding-privacy-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"JETs in Academia: Understanding Privacy in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathaniel Simmons<\/a> (Nara-ken, 2007-2009) is currently a communication professor at Western\u00a0<\/em>Governors University and lives in Columbus, OH, USA. He teaches a variety of intercultural,\u00a0<\/em>interpersonal, and health communication courses. He has researched and published several\u00a0<\/em>scholarly articles regarding privacy management between foreign English teachers and\u00a0<\/em>Japanese co-workers in Japan and is currently working on turning his research into a book.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is private in Japan?<\/p>\n

If I tell my co-workers I have hemorrhoids, diarrhea, or need to go to the OBGYN will they tell everyone else?<\/p>\n

These may not be questions JETs think about when they first go to Japan. It also may not be something JETs consider when they are ill and trying to gain medical care or just discussing information (i.e., relationship status) about themselves with their co-workers.<\/p>\n

The reality is Japanese cultural conceptions of privacy might be different than many JETs\u2019 expectations. Depending upon how individualist<\/a> or collectivist<\/a> your home country is will influence how privacy is interpreted, expected, and maintained. The concept of \u201cwhat is private\u201d or \u201cprivacy\u201d differs cross-culturally, as\u00a0do the ways in which privacy values are expressed.<\/p>\n

Japan is no exception.<\/p>\n

Japan has been largely classified as a collectivistic culture. As you know from your own experiences in Japan, the group matters more than the individual. In other words, in Japan the \u201cwe\u201d wants and goals come before the \u201cI\u201d or \u201cme\u201d wants and goals. For collectivists, the very notion of privacy might be viewed as selfish due to an individual\u2019s wants and goals taking precedent over the group\u2019s desires.<\/p>\n

Ever notice that privacy is in katakana, the Japanese syllabary used for foreign words? Puraibashi<\/em>, or \u30d7\u30e9\u30a4\u30d0\u30b7\u30fc, is taken directly from the English word for \u201cprivacy.\u201d Since traditional Japanese language has no word for privacy, a unique cultural conception of privacy emerged. For example, the idea that one has \u201cthe right to be left alone\u201d might signal a lack of cooperativeness with the group and an inability to work well with others. Additionally, controlling one\u2019s privacy information might be perceived as an excess of mistrust. Even Japanese scholars have commented that gaijin might perceive the group interdependence of Japanese people as \u201csuffocating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japanese language use two distinct, yet interrelated meanings of Japanese privacy: shakai<\/em> ( \u793e\u4f1a), or “public,” and seken<\/em> (\u4e16\u9593), or “world\/society.” Such terms stress the importance of relationships, interdependence, and group harmony. Shakai<\/em> contributes to negative aspects of crimes being withheld from the media in order to protect victims and their families. If one was to \u201cbreak shakai<\/em>\u201d it would involve speaking publically about private\u00a0matters which might harm another\u2019s reputation. Seken<\/em> emphasizes human relations and allows Japanese people the ability to \u201cunderstand\u201d or at least \u201cexplain\u201d what went wrong in a given situation. To the foreign eye, this might look intrusive, or like \u201cgossip,\u201d as one tries to understand one\u2019s home life or culture to explain a tragic event.<\/p>\n

As JETs operate on differing values of privacy, this might result in individuals feeling \u201cviolated\u201d or \u201cexposed.\u201d Perceived privacy violations can lead to relationship withdrawal, isolation, and negative assumptions\/stereotypes about one\u2019s co-worker or Japan in general. Throughout my research, gaijin<\/em> English teachers reported feeling that their co-workers invaded\/violated their privacy expectations. In other words, if they told someone something, it was then told to someone else, who then told someone else\u2026etc. You get the point. In my research, gaijin<\/em> felt victimized when people knew things about them that they didn\u2019t disclose (i.e., So and so sensei<\/em> told me you went to the doctor and are on X medication), even if it was something positive (i.e., I heard your dental checkup went well!). My participants felt like \u201ccelebrities\u201d because \u201ceveryone (i.e., Japanese people)\u201d in their communities knew \u201ceverything\u201d about them.<\/p>\n

Critics of my participants\u2019 stories have said \u201cWell, they should know it will be different from their home country.\u201d It is easy to say \u201cexpect things to be different.\u201d To what extent should this responsibility be shared? No recruiting organizations discuss privacy in their trainings. Perhaps privacy is something so engrained in one\u2019s culture that it is perceived to be \u201ccommon sense?\u201d Perhaps that \u201ccommon sense\u201d is where the most difficulties exist when what one \u201ccommonly\u201d thinks doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Regardless, this is a collective issue that requires further dialogue and research to better understand how to cultivate meaningful relationships. Several of my participants chose to cut their contracts short or to not renew because of their interpersonal privacy experiences.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s costly \u2013 it costs financially and personally.<\/p>\n

This blog post is an adaptation of the scholarly article: Simmons, N. (2012). The tales of gaijin: Health privacy perspectives of foreign English teachers in Japan. Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research, 11, 17-38. Retrieved from\u00a0<\/em>http:\/\/opensiuc.lib.siu.edu\/kaleidoscope\/vol11\/iss1\/3\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathaniel Simmons (Nara-ken, 2007-2009) is currently a communication professor at Western\u00a0Governors University and lives in Columbus, OH, USA. He teaches a variety of intercultural,\u00a0interpersonal, and health communication courses. He has researched and published several\u00a0scholarly articles regarding privacy management between foreign English teachers and\u00a0Japanese co-workers in Japan and is currently working on turning his research into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,1216,825,282,1],"tags":[771,191,162],"class_list":["post-39056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic","category-life-as-a-jet","category-lifeafterjet","category-jet-roi","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-japan","tag-japan-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-a9W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39056"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39066,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39056\/revisions\/39066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}