Milo's Musings: On Japan & Work Travel
On Masks and Japanese Jekyll and Hyde
Welcome to Edition One Point Oh of Milo’s Musings!
I plan on using this space to discuss developments here at Pew Pew Laser. We’ll discuss what we have planned and in the works. We also plan on addressing some big-picture topics that our readers have bought up and hopefully it’ll spark some meaningful dialogue.
I don’t have much for you guys today - just a short anecdote about cultural differences that I encountered during my time abroad.
When I was working on assignment in Asia, I always took advantage of the cheap, short flights around the continent that literally transported you to an entirely different culture within a matter of hours.
Globetrotting in Asia. There were also the work trips. Clients often summoned us to their respective home countries and we would oblige. Except for the Japanese. For some reason, the Japanese had no desire to host us in the Land of the Rising Sun - instead, they insisted on visiting us almost every chance they had.
After several work hard-play hard sessions with our Japanese visitors, I learned why we never broke bread in Tokyo, and why they would rather party with us at our far less glamorous manufacturing-site offices in Southeast Asia.
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It was only after a number of interactions with my Japanese salarymen peers, that I became interested in, and finally learned about the Japanese concepts of tatamae(建前) and honne(本音). Tatamae is in essence, the metaphorical “mask” that Japanese people wear in public that guides how individuals must behave in order to ensure social harmony. Honne is how one actually feels on the inside.
Once free of the deeply engrained social hierarchies and the suppression of individualism in famously laissez-faire southeast Asia, the tatamae mask began to slip and it was only a matter of time (and bottles of local beer) that our guests were more about the honne and less about the tatamae.
I recall how even in front of fellow countrymen, as we nibbled on tasty tapas-esque platters at an izakaya run by a retired Japanese businessman now living in the area, how quickly my typically stoic counterpart from up north had transformed from buttoned-up corporate drone to….not wearing many buttons at all.
He gleefully told stories of women, wine, and song, all the while, beckoning for the same. He invited the performers from a Filipina cover band over to share his expensive whiskey and by the end of the night, we were were basking in his honne in all of its glory.
So there you have it folks - my first authentic lesson in Japanese social norms. I’m certain there’s a lot more to dissect here, but that’s for another article. Cheers!