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Excerpt from" French
Toast", by Harriet Welty Rochefort
It
seems like the Japanese have a particularly hard time understanding
Parisian behavior .
The behavior of the Parisians
may sometimes be incomprehensible to an
American like me who has lived here for over twenty years but
it is almost a total mystery to some nationalities. Although
one million Japanese flock to France each year and approximately
25,000 live in Paris, it would be an understatement to say that
the Japanese have a hard time penetrating the French psyche.
Many Japanese have such a hard
time adjusting to life in the French capital that one Japanese
psychiatrist, married to a Frenchwoman, has baptized the phenomenon
"Paris Stress". Doctor Hiroaki Ota, the head
of the Association
Franco-Japonaise de Psychiatrie et Sciences Humaines (Franco-Japanese
Association of Psychiatry and Social Science), explains that
this is not a malady strictly speaking but "a perturbed
psychological state accompanied by indeterminate somatic symptoms
such as irritability, a feeling of fear, obsession, depressed
mood, insomnia, impression of persecution by theFrench".
This would sound almost funny
if it weren't a very serious problem. Dr. Ota, who since 1987
has specialized consultations for members of the Japanese
community at the renowned Saint Anne psychiatric hospital
in Paris, has a private clientele of 715 patients, and of them
three times as many women as men. His patients are divided into
three categories: businessmen working for Japanese companies
and in Paris with their family, Japanese or Franco-Japanese residents
of Paris, and tourists. Some of these are "light" cases
which can be dealt with in ten to twenty counselling sessions.
Others are more serious and take longer.
One of the main problems for
some of the Japanese businessmen is that they have jumped from
one work category to another. They may have worked in non-professional
jobs in Japan, but to be able to come to France, they have to
qualify for "professional" (or, as the French say,
"cadre ") positions to get a work permit. This means
that they are asked to make decisions and carry out work that
they are absolutely not used to doing in Japan, and all this
in a foreign language. Under the strain of it, many become depressive.
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The cultural shock for the Japanese
is not just the language, but everything that goes with the language,
all the nuances, the nonverbal talk. One thing that particularly
mystifies the Japanese, as it does other nationalities, is how
fast the Parisians talk and how often they interrupt each
other's conversations. French humor, which consists largely
of poking fun at other people, is no fun for the Japanese because
they are unable to respond with alacrity. According to Dr. Ota:
"They can't decipher the different levels of the meaning
of a discourse and stop at the first level which, in French humor,
often contains aggressive or vexing elements." (Americans
as well often stop at the "first level", even though
in France, it's better to probe more deeply into what is being
said because it's not always what is on the surface).
Another hard thing for the Japanese
to cope with, Dr. Ota tells me, is the changing moods of the
French who are given to blowing up suddenly and
calming down just as quickly. A Japanese thinks "it's because
of me that that person is angry" and feels guilty. The Japanese
take into account the emotions of the person or persons they
are addressing whereas the French base their discussions on logic
and rationality. Dr. Ota says he advises his patients, those
who are only light cases, to confront French reality by observing
the French but not trying to "move with them". In Japan
he says life is more structured, calmer, more disciplined and
the discipline is respected. "In France things appear to
be without discipline but there is one."
One situation which Japanese
businessmen in particular have trouble coping with is the business
meeting (la réunion ). "In Japan we have a meeting
once something is almost decided, and the meeting is just to
confirm and
conclude. In France everyone is talking all at once and they
are too tired to accomplish anything." For the French, "principles
are very important which is why the French are such good diplomats,"
says Ota. "For the Japanese pragmatism is what counts."
Talking in general is a problem.
For the Japanese as for Anglo-Saxons, the spoken word is important,
serious. "The French talk as if they are strolling. The
conversation doesn't go anywhere," says Ota. And this leads
to confusion for the Japanese who have trouble, in any case,
formulating an answer before the French have skipped to another
subject. And yet, "if you don't talk here, you don't exist",
another contradiction for the Japanese for whom silence and discretion
are important.
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