I don’t think that living in this country is easy, either for us or for Japanese people. I think that as a city Tokyo runs really well but there are certain hardships and through that hardship a sense of community is built. Particularly when the day is like this, so magnificent, it really makes you appreciate the things that are around you more (maybe it’s just because I’m getting older though). When I was in Hong Kong and London I didn’t have that feeling. There wasn’t so much of a love of nature and appreciation of things.
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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail
There is a real strength to Japanese culture, as opposed to Singapore which is very Western, understanding and open. This is a very closed society and that gives it strength – I see it as a real privilege to be able to be a part of it. Previously i might have found it complicated or irritating but now it is a privilege because I know that I am part of a very small group of people that live here. We are a real minority here and the people have opened their hearts and their country to us – that’s an honour. This cultural strength means that you can’t just get along with blinkers, and live in your own little Western world – in Singapore I could go to the supermarket and get whatever I wanted but when I go to the supermarket here I can’t even get basil half the time.
“My personal opinion on why consumers tend to be so picky is like this. Life is very tough in Tokyo and in Japan. I think people’s lives are really, really hard. People have no space, no greenery, they never have a garden of their own….they live in very small environments three inches away from their neighbours. They are constantly aware that everyone around them can hear their conversations and that they can hear everyone around them. You are very conscious of yourself all the time. You work that far away from the person in your office and the only space consumers get is in their own heads, which is why they are constantly sleeping or daydreaming or in the train zoned out. School’s tough, there are high expectations for university, they’re at work until eleven o’clock at night…everything is hard. Think about people in New Zealand who knock-off work at four or five o’clock and go down to the beach. I don’t think that there is a really high quality of life here. So (in Japan)you have a difficult life and what makes you happy is the novelty of walking into a shop and seeing a new product that for three seconds might pick you up, or lift your spirits, or give you something to think about, and get you out of that “oh god not another bloody day” zone. And I’m the same now. I walk into a convenience store and it’s not just because of the kind of work we do but I go “oh, that’s new, peach flavoured chocolate, must buy” I don’t want to eat peach flavoured chocolate but I buy it because it’s new and when I try it it’s disgusting and I will never buy it again but it doesn’t matter because it won’t be around next week. Next week it will be melon and i’ll be like “oh melon!” It’s just this sense of novelty and excitement – it adds something to your boring day. So that’s my theory on why companies have to innovate. If people’s lives were simple and easy and interesting they wouldn’t need to go into the convenience store and find something that gives them a boost.
It’s very paradoxical isn’t it? Here there is not a lot of choice in some ways but what choice there is constantly changes. Whereas if you go to an American supermarket there might be 5000 types of cereal but go back in a year’s time and it will be the same 5000 types of cereal on the shelves. Here, you will never find that cereal again.”
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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail
“In terms of being creative it’s a bit of a paradox. You come here and it is definitely the most creative place in Asia but that doesn’t mean that it’s creative. People think that it’s creative and crazy but it’s not. It’s not creative. If it was a creative place then brainstorms would be a dream…but they’re not. The problem is that people have an image of Japan as a creative place and then they go to Harajuku and see 200 people dressed up in fancy costumes and think it’s creative. No it’s not. Two-hundred people in a population of 130 million people does not make a creative society. It’s a very small pocket. So you do have creativity but it is very limited, very controlled. It’s not the same sort of “I want to be individual and spontaneous” creativity you might see somewhere else. So whenever I go back to Sydney (and I’m not nationalistic at all) I look at places there and am amazed at how creative it is. People strive to be different, they strive to be an individual, they strive to come up with something that no one else has. Here, people don’t do that. They look at a magazine to study how they can be different…different with another 50 people how are different in the same way. That’s a big difference.
When you go to a cafe it’s a study in creativity. You walk in and think “this is so cute and cool”. Yes, it is but that’s only because the owner has literally, fastidiously made it creative looking. That’s why it stands out against the greyness and the hum-drum of Tokyo. It’s a very ugly city – I mean we’re sitting here looking at a view of the expressway. There are no redeeming features about this and that’s why you go to Yoyogi park and there are a million people throwing frisbees there. It’s the one place where you can have a bit of fun…but then there are a million other people having fun there along with you. You’ve got your one metre square patch and that’s not even a park anymore is it? It’s the equivalent of a carpark for people – they get in there and then they can’t move for fear of losing their space. They can’t throw their frisbee too far because it might hit someone on the head. It’s a funny place.”
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This post is part of a series of excerpts from interviews with foreign executives in Japan, focusing on creativity. Excerpts have been edited for confidentiality.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in relation to this topic. Please feel free to comment directly on this site or get in touch at chris@a-small-lab.com (Chris Berthelsen)
All content on this IDEAS and DISCUSSION blog is provided by a-small-lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License: You can SHARE this content as long as you CITE this work, and TELL US about your work (and send us a copy or link!). See Creative Commons for more detail
