Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- Preface: Japan as Front Line in the Cultural Psychology Wars
- Introduction: Japanese Cultural Psychology and Empathic Understanding: Implications for Academic and Cultural Psychology
- PART ONE MORAL SCRIPTS AND REASONING
- 1 Moral Scripts: A U.S.–Japan Comparison
- 2 Moral Reasoning among Adults: Japan–U.S. Comparison
- PART TWO MOTHER AND CHILD AT HOME
- PART THREE GROUP LIFE: THE YOUNG CHILD IN PRESCHOOL AND SCHOOL
- PART FOUR ADOLESCENT EXPERIENCE
- PART FIVE REFLECTIONS
- Index
1 - Moral Scripts: A U.S.–Japan Comparison
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the Contributors
- Preface: Japan as Front Line in the Cultural Psychology Wars
- Introduction: Japanese Cultural Psychology and Empathic Understanding: Implications for Academic and Cultural Psychology
- PART ONE MORAL SCRIPTS AND REASONING
- 1 Moral Scripts: A U.S.–Japan Comparison
- 2 Moral Reasoning among Adults: Japan–U.S. Comparison
- PART TWO MOTHER AND CHILD AT HOME
- PART THREE GROUP LIFE: THE YOUNG CHILD IN PRESCHOOL AND SCHOOL
- PART FOUR ADOLESCENT EXPERIENCE
- PART FIVE REFLECTIONS
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In the contemporary world, international tensions arising from conflicting practical interests are often moralized as oppositions between good and evil. The Japanese, for example (and possibly Asians more generally; see Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990), tend to place more importance on personal relationships than Americans and West Europeans, even in the transactions between large industrial firms and their subcontractors. A firm fosters close relationships with a few subcontractors, giving them priority. The subcontractors in turn will try to satisfy the requests of that firm, sometimes even sacrificing their own profits. During Japan's feudal period, which covered the seventeenth, eighteenth, and most of the nineteenth centuries, Japan was isolated from the outside world, and the social and geographical mobility of people was restricted. However one may judge the policies of the Shogun government, it must be acknowledged that there was no warfare during this period, Japan's literacy rate was among the highest in the world, and the threat of starvation and disease was lower than in most countries at the time. In that historical context, ingroup ties were strengthened and customary practices reinforced. Changing a longstanding partner for immediate profit was considered unethical and a threat to social stability.To deal only with loyal subcontractors was seen as a moral as well as practical necessity. Of course such practices block the entry of new firms, including foreign subcontractors, to the market, and from the point of view of Anglo-American free-market ideology, they are unfair.
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- Japanese Frames of MindCultural Perspectives on Human Development, pp. 29 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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