Bridging Cultural Barriers in China, Japan, Korea and Mexico

Understanding and Dealing with Other Cultures!

The economies of the advanced countries have gone global, but not the cultures! This creates a plethora of problems that include economic as well as political affairs, especially with countries whose cultures are often so different that compromises--much less agreements--range from difficult to impossible.

In Bridging Cultural Barriers in China, Japan, Korea and Mexico I present a series of business-oriented insights that take much of the mystery out of the mindset and behavior of the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Mexicans...all insights I gained over a period of 60 years of intimate involvment with these countries as a member of an intelligence agency, student, trade journalist and cultural analyst.

Early in that learning period I discovered that the fastest and most comprehensive gateway to understanding people of other cultures was through key words in their languages--words that were pregnant with cultural nuances and uses. I subsequently wrote a series of hefty "cultural code word" books on China, Japan, Korea and Mexico that are now widely used.

This new smaller book is an introduction to the "key word" concept, focused on China, Japan, Korea and Mexico. It is excellent background reading for business people, diplomats, political leaders, academics and students...and is available from Amazon.com. See my website, BoyeDeMente.com, for a list and synopses of the larger tomes noted above.

The Advantages of Using Both Sides of Your Brain!

何故日本人は
優秀な人々なのか
There can be no argument that the Japanese have been remarkably successful in their arts and crafts, their architecture, their social customs, and even their military endeavors, for more than a thousand years.

Since the end of the Shogunate era in the 1870s, which maintained a policy of virtually prohibiting change in the country, the Japanese have proven equally adept at adapting foreign technology as well as inventing new technology.

I attribute the special knowledge and skills of the Japanese to the premise that they are primarily right-brain oriented as a result of their vowel-heavy language—a linguistic circumstance they fully share with only one other group of people: the Polynesians of the South Pacific.

Japan’s noted brain authority Dr. Tadanobu Tsunoda [author of The Japanese Brain and many other works] says the Japanese tend to first process information in the right side of their brains—the side that deals with feelings rather than facts; a factor that is readily discernible in their arts and crafts as well as in their traditional management practices.

In the Japanese mindset, aesthetics and form play an equal role with functionality and it is this cultural element that is responsible for the extraordinary beauty of such common things as their bowls, vases, paper doors, room dividers, kimono and yukata.

The fact that the Japanese are able to use both sides of their brains has given them significant advantages over strictly left-brained people [the rest of the world!] in designing and manufacturing products, from arts and crafts to electronic devices.

In my book WHY THE JAPANESE ARE A SUPERIOR PEOPLE! I address such topics as emotions vs. reason, the “fuzzy” [holistic] thinking of the Japanese vs. the linear thinking of other people, the diligence factor in Japanese behavior, and quality vs. profit, and identify a long list of views and practices that distinguish the Japanese from left-brain oriented people—and are important for foreigners to know about.

For foreign readers, one of the more interesting topics in the book may be what foreign women have to do to cope with their left-brain oriented male counterparts. The book is available from Amazon.com.