欧米は契約社会であることは、だれでも知っている。だが、その長所と欠点について知っている方は、少ない。契約は人種・文化が混在した社会では便利なシステムだ。契約社会になじむと、日本の調和社会は極めて異質に見えるのだ。

PART TWO:
How do we achieve and maintain harmony? (5)

By Shun Daichi

7. Make rules elastic.
In Japan rules are considered elastic.

If you drive on Japanese roads you may notice speed limit signs. All those speed limit signs show ridiculously low speeds. This means that the police are expecting people to break the law, and 99% of the time people do not follow the speed limit.

I was driving a car one early morning at a speed of 80k/h on a road in Tokyo when a police car stopped me.

"You were driving 80k/h."

"Yes, I know."

"The speed limit is 40k/h."

"Really?" I looked back on the wide freeway-like road.

"Impossible, I can't believe it."

"Anyway you should be careful with the road signs! O.K?"

"Yes, sir."

Then the police car went off and did not ticket me.

In the book "You got have Wa " Robert Whiting tells the story of a different (bigger) strike zone for American ball players. That is a typical example of elastic rules. Japanese consider the harmony of the society to be of paramount importance, and that rules may be bent or compromised.

A candidate for the Diet in Japan took a wrong "Shinkansen" train during an election campaign. After the train had left he realized that it would not stop at his destination, going directly to Nagoya non-stop for two hours.

He rushed to the train drivers cabin and asked the driver to stop at XYZ station on the way, because there was 1000 people waiting for him and he had to deliver a speech for his backers.

The train driver called up a boss at the Tokyo operation center for directions, who said "O.K.," so it stopped at the station.

Later the major newspapers uncovered this story. The papers accused the candidate for misusing public transportation.

This was an embarrassment to his political party and he was expelled from the party. Later he won the election and became a Diet member. That the people saw the candidate as not having done anything wrong in spite of the fact that he had been expelled from the party.

Japanese consider rules to be not absolute or final and for the name of Harmonism, in other words, for avoiding a possible conflict, one can bend the rules. So under Harmonism rules are treated as being elastic.

I was an administration manager of a Japanese company in Australia for five years, and dealt with huge contract documents all the time.

Japanese are puzzled to see huge contract documents prepared by the US or British companies. I felt very odd about it in the beginning too. The Japanese and most of none western people are unfamiliar to the concept of contract. Basically contract are rules, therefore it is elastic in Japan.

While I was in Australia I began to understand why contracts are so important to the Westerners.

When you make a contract, the contracts suppose to be fair to both sides. So if you break a contract, you may be accused as an "unfair" person. I realized the idea of " fair" and "unfair" come from the idea of a contract.

Western concept of "fair" and "unfair" are unfamiliar concepts to the Japanese. In Japan, a contract (rules and the laws as well) is elastic therefore nobody is fair or unfair.

Another concept strange to us is "law and order". We believe in "harmony and order”, for in Japan “harmony” is the “law”.

(To be continued)