Friends

I've noticed that Japanese people tend to establish friendships over time. Many of my Japanese freinds have friends who went to elementary school, junior high school, or high school. Whereas, I can meet soemone on the same wavelngth and become freinds quickly with my western friends, this doesn't seem to be as easy for most Japanese I know. Kate Elwood analyzes this discrepancy in her latest Cultural Conundrums column:

If I go to a social event at which there are Americans or Europeans or people from a variety of other countries, we may hit it off immediately and be laughing and cracking jokes and even baring our souls like we've known each other for years. Then there are Japanese people whom I have in fact known for years--but we are as comfortable with each other as if we had met five minutes ago.

Hmm. It seems to be more than a language thing, because my Japanese students also tell me that one reason they join clubs at university is that if they didn't they wouldn't have any friends. American students just seem to strike up friendships wherever, whenever, without needing to join any official group.

The researchers Eriko Maeda and L. David Ritchie asked Japanese college students to describe qualities and characteristics that would satisfy or dissatisfy them in a relationship with a close friend (shinyu). Much of what the students reported as desirable traits in friends was similar to what American students might also say, such as "on the same wavelength" or "concerned for me."

However, some of the things the respondents wrote seemed particularly relevant to Japanese friendships, like, "does not ask too much about my private life," or "aiming toward the same goal in a club."

These were qualities I had also heard Japanese people speak of when talking about good friends but had rarely heard mentioned by Americans. Maeda and Ritchie also note that "a rival in a good sense" and "treats everyone equally," which turned up in their data as well, had been previously revealed in other studies of Japanese friendship but had not appeared in studies of Western friendship.

Maeda and Ritchie further compared their categories with those found by researchers Tim Cole and James Bradac in an earlier study of qualities of American best friends. Maeda and Ritchie found that while Cole and Bradac had categories related to best friend characteristics such as "active," "energetic," "spontaneous," and "creative," the Japanese data had nothing that corresponded to these types of qualities. Rather, the Japanese respondents emphasized close friends as those whom you could feel comfortable with, which apparently does not involve a lot of spur-of-the-moment, whatever-will-she-do-next impulsive behavior. On top of that, the American responses included "not a whiner" which contrasted with the Japanese desirable characteristic "cheers me up."

Maeda and Ritchie make the additional point that even when qualities that are considered satisfying in a friendship sound similar, they can be quite different. For instance, one of the Japanese categories was "joyful to be with" which seems to be pretty close to the American category "fun to be with," but the authors suggest that the Japanese "joyful" quality is enacted in a self-controlled manner whereas the American "fun" tends to be impulsive, so that when friends of the different cultures get together the Americans may find the Japanese joyfulness boring and the Japanese students may feel the American spontaneity is too wacky.

Taking a slightly different tack, the researchers William Gudykunst and Tsukasa Nishida asked Japanese and American college students to answer questions about the relative intimacy of the six terms "lover," "best friend," "friend," "acquaintance," "classmate" and "stranger." There was no significant difference in the perceived intimacy of the term "friend." However, the Japanese respondents viewed "classmate," "acquaintance," "best friend," and "stranger" as notably more intimate than the American respondents did. Even more interestingly, the Americans ranked "lover" as the most intimate, while the Japanese gave first place to "best friend."