This was reported by A.P. today, and I think it shows an interesting cultural struggle going on in Japan today:

From the A.P. wire:

Births in Japan Rise for 7th Month

Japan's birth rate rose for the seventh straight month in August, the government said Friday, raising hopes for an upturn in the country's plunging annual birthrate and declining population.

A falling birthrate and an expanding elderly population pose serious concerns for Japan as it struggles to tackle a labor shortage and eroding tax base. Japan's birthrate in 2005 stood at a record low of 1.25 babies per woman in her lifetime, far below the 2.1 rate needed to keep the population steady.

In August, a total of 98,276 births were registered, up 3,001 from the same month in 2005, or a rise of about 3 percent, according to Health Ministry statistics released Friday.

That's the seventh straight monthly gain in birthrates. But Reiji Murayama, an official of the Health Ministry's vital and health statistics division, said it was too early to say that the latest data meant a turnaround in the country's annual birthrate.

"We cannot predict if the falling birthrate may hit the bottom this year yet, until we will see the remaining four months," Murayama said. The nation's population last year declined for the first time on record, shocking officials and spurring a spate of measures to encourage women to have more babies.

To encourage women to have more babies, the government started a project to build more day care centers, while encouraging men to take paternity leave. Amid changing lifestyles, many single women are delaying or forgoing marriage to pursue careers.

Without the religious influences of some other countries in Asia, it isn't surprising that some Japanese women finally said to themselves "I am independently successful, so why should I give up this salary and this freedom just to get married and make babies?" The biggest pressure was probably from the young women's parents, especially if she still lived at home. (It is common for young people to live at home until they are married, but now that the average age for marriage is getting later and later, some of those "young people" are still at home, even into their 30s and later.)

Another barrier to marriage and motherhood was the snail-like pace Japanese bureaucrats and business-leaders take in making changes to meet the modern times. Things like child-care, guaranteed employment after maternity leave, paternity leave, and other benefits to having children are all new concepts in Japan, which the rest of the first world has been toting mother's rights for decades. It took something as drastic as an actual population drop and the rapid increase in the elderly population (leading to the eventual devastating drain on the country's heath care and other resources).

How could the government and corporate leaders let things get so bad? Faithful readers to Japan Communications may have a couple guesses.

1) Change is something that is generally avoided and is considered "bad". It's only when not changing becomes more damaging than changing that the push for real change actually happens.

Ten years ago schools started shutting down and there was a hiring freeze on new teachers in some prefectures (this still continues). In many parts of Japan students go to schools where entire floors are left unused. Schools are being converted into community centers, or are rented out. Many young kids now haven't had a teacher under the age of 35. This wasn't enough of a sign to government officials that there was a shift in the national thinking, and a reaction would be needed.

2) The older generation (bureaucrats and company officials) tend to take advice from other members of the older generation, and not from younger or non-Japanese sources.

Three of the big-five auto manufacturers in Japan have hired non-Japanese CEOs in the past five years. Why? Because Japanese CEOs don't work quickly to make drastic changes, but these companies (Mitsubishi, Nissan and one other) were experience losses, and their boards of directors had the intelligence to find quick-minded solution oriented leadership.

Naturally there are more complicated issues going, and a few paragraphs exploring Japanese culture won't solve Japan's population problems, but it is interesting to see how the cultural traits we have looked at can sometimes have farther reaching influences than one might expect.

The Independent Worker / What's the Gamble?

In the US, workers often pride themselves and compliment each other on how independently they can work. "She can work well on her own," is a phrase we want someone to use in a recommendation. Employers look for people that can be given an assignment, and do it on their own. Once abilities are clear and trust is established, the employer will allow the employee to make decisions and changes on her own. This creates efficiency in the work place.

And this is the opposite of what a Japanese employer is looking for. In Japan a worker who works well in a group, and who doesn't strive to work independently is the one that is valued. Japanese work using a constant cycle of consensus getting and approval. The process may be slower than Americans are used to, but also result in less risk-taking.

Let's take this discussion out of the conflict-ridden international office, and into the world of gambling in Japan.. The laws about gambling in Japan are a little obscure. Technically gambling is illegal, but gigantic loopholes allow for a limited variety of gambling. The three main types of gambling in Japan are Mah-jong, "pachi" games, and the races. Let's look at each type and see how the cultural tendency of risk-aversion is not conflicted with this gambling.

Mah-jong is a tile game popular all over Asia, and had a period of popularity in the US in the 1970s. Mah-jong can be played at home, among friends, or at Mah-jong parlors, where a single may join a three-some, like at a golf course. The cultural equivalent is poker, where a group of people are trying to create the best combination using the cards they are dealt. Like poker, Mah-jong has a long cycle of discards. Essentially it's like poker, but the winning "hand" will be of 14 tiles lined up in one of the hundreds of combinations possible to win. Unlike poker, it's not who has the best hand, but who creates a winning combination first.

Like poker, this is certainly gambling, and also like poker, skill is what creates a winner at the end of the night. It can easily be argued that the sheer number of tiles and winning combinations that need to be memorized to be successful, and then figuring out the probability of certain combinations coming up (discarded tiles are seen by the other players) require more skill than poker. That dependence on skill makes Mah-jong a much less risky gambling prospect than Western favorites, like craps or blackjack, which require more luck - or in other words, are more risky.

"Pachi" games come in two forms: pachinko and pachi-slots, AKA pachi-suro. Pachinko (which also had a certain popularity briefly in the 1970s in the US) is often referred to as "Japanese pinball", but this title is only partially accurate. Players sit at a vertically standing board, covered by glass and full of a series of pegs and pockets. Small steel balls are shot into the playing field (like pinball) and bounce off pegs until they either fall into a pocket, or fall to the bottom of the board and are discarded. Different pockets do different things, either release more balls to the player, open a larger pocket for bonuses, start a slot wheel spinning, etc. There are thousands of varieties of machines, with new ones coming out constantly, but the goal is always the same: hit the largest bonuses to release more balls than you are using, creating a win. Pachinko players do not simply sit at a machine and start throwing money in. First they look at the machine, and the machines around it. Do the pegs look friendly, or do they look tight? Is this a good machine to play on, or is it set to be a money pit? A good reader of machines will see his afternoon profitable. Fortunately for the pachinko parlor owners, more people believe they can read the machines well than actually can. But, again, there is a skill involved.

Pachi-slots are similar to pachinko only in the notion that it's human vs. machine form of gambling (no dealers and little to no human interaction required, a selling point in Japan for the shameful Japanese gambler). In pachi-slots there aren't balls and pegs, but the machines look like traditional casino slot machines, and are filled with coins. The one difference is that there is a STOP button in front of each of the three spinning reels. Players stop the quickly spinning reels in an effort to initiate a bonus round which will lead to a big payout. Like pachinko, there is a science to choosing a machine and stopping the spinning reels to lead to big pay-outs. Also like pachinko, those that actually understand the science number far less than those that think they do, but, again, risk is averted. Imagine a slot machine in Las Vegas with STOP buttons on the spinning reels! It would be unheard of! Now imagine being a Japanese slot player, and going to Vegas... it would be like playing slots with your arms cut-off. It is hard to imagine why Japanese players can't understand why Americans throw their money away in casinos? Think risk-taking vs. risk aversion.

The final form of gambling in Japan is the races. Just like in the US, Japanese horse racing is very popular, and there are fancy, high class tracks, and smaller local tracks all across the country. The difference is when we look at the other types of races you can gamble on. In the US along with the horses, we also have greyhound racing. This obviously requires no rider, so even less human involvement than horse racing. Even with pages of statistics, betting on dogs is a risky gamble. In Japan there are two other main kinds of racing: not dogs, but boats and bicycles. One can't help but think that the potential for outside influence is much higher on gambling on boats (one-man mini rockets) and bicycles. (And to be sure, boat gambling and bicycle racing doesn't have the history or regality of a big horse race. They are more local, and a little more seedy.) Japanese gamblers wouldn't imagine betting on dogs. It's just too risky. (Of course addicts will gamble on anything.)

So even in the high-risk world of gambling, Japanese tend to do what they believe are low-risk activities. Traditional casino gambling exists only 0n TV and in the movies. Japanese can respect the high-risk behavior, without feeling uncomfortable engaging in it themselves -- just as I can respect a person who parachutes out of planes, without actually doing it myself.

So back to our troubled workplace. What many Americans who work with Japanese supervisors feel is a lack of trust for the Americans' ability to be able to, and want to, work independently. Where the American feels the supervisor is "crowding" him -- asking lots of repetitive questions, visiting his office or cube several times a day, the Japanese supervisor feels like he is showing his support, and participating in the group process. (Some of this was covered in the previous post.)

The two points to keep in mind are that Japanese businesspeople want to work together on everything; everything is a group process, and that avoiding risk, even if it takes more time, is going to be considered the best route in the end.