Are Japanese people individualists or collectivists?
Japan has the image of a group-oriented society or a consensual society. According to some books written about cross-cultural communication, we often see the description that Japanese people are collectivists with the characteristics of harmony, dependency, and reserve, which is different from the collectivism in western countries. However, other books say that Japanese people have distinctive features of individualists as well. We would rather agree with this latter idea. For example, recently, people often don’t think it so important to help each other. In our school life or in our community, this characteristic can be found which make us believe that the Japanese people are willing to work cooperatively with others only when the job is beneficial for themselves. They don’t do so thinking of the benefit of the group. Furthermore, protecting privacy is becoming more and more important and this tendency has been usually noticeable for a few decades. People like to behave independently
