JAPAN AND CHINA CULTURE

Compare and Contrast Between Japan and China Culture



Compare and Contrast Between Japan and China Culture

Introduction

Japan and China are two countries of South East Asia. As the geography suggested, they have influence each other culturally, in which there are three characteristics that are obvious the most. Both Japanese and Chinese are collectivist, family oriented and highly concern about saving face. Collectivism is shown especially when a group of people go shopping together. For American, they usually split up to look for what they need personally. Japanese and Chinese people in the other hand stick together. They wait for each other to finish before moving on. Collectivism is also shown in how quickly people become friends. In America, it takes a long time to build up a relationship and call someone a friend. Someone you only talk to once or twice called acquaintance. In Japan and China though, one or two gathering is what it takes to make a new friend. It can be observed that even though they do not hug like American, their personal space is smaller. Girls often latch arms to each other even with a new friend, which is also a sign of collectivism.

As a result of collectivist culture, Japanese and Chinese are also known as family oriented. In China children keep living with their parents after getting married to support them. Similarly in Japan, most students choose to live at home and commute to school for one or even two hours every day. For this reason, most Japanese schools do not have dormitory. On the contrary, as in the US, if the student lives about forty minutes away from school, he/she often chooses to live at school or move out to somewhere closer.

Cultural Similarities and Differences

Cultural similarity between Japanese and Chinese culture is that they hate to lose face. One of the obvious results of this phenomena is they expect, sometime force, their children to study hard and do well at school. Getting into college is not only a choice of students, but also their responsibility to save facing the families.

Even though Japan and China have similarity culture, yet they could be very different. One impression that one can easily have moving from China to Japan is that Chinese are loud, Japanese are a lot more quiet for silence valued as good manner in their culture. Chinese people talk and laugh out loud in public. In Japan on the other hand, people keep their voice down in public. Especially on public transportation, it is considered respectful manner not to talk, especially on cell phone. If anyone pays attention, they can notice that on our bus to school every day, the only people talking to each other are students from our group. Other Japanese students often keep silent during the bus ride.

Other difference I observed that surprised me before was public affection is display more freely in China but not in Japan. Since China is a communist country with thousands years of feudalism, I ...