Personal space is a concept of physical distance to keep good mutual relations. Asian people’s personal space is much closer to the western people’s. The degree of discomfort by this personal distance is really different between Asian culture and Western culture.
If you are from on of the western countries, you may face unacceptable trouble unless you know this thing. To help understand Japanese personal space and go along well with Japanese people, I will talk here about the way of thinking of personal space.
Contents
Personal Space
In the United States, there is a word of “personal space” which indicates physical distance between you and others, which makes you not uncomfortable. This word is created by Social Cultural Anthropologists of the US.
| Intimate distance (15cm) | This distance is allowed to people on first-name terms with you like your family or your lover. You might feel uncomfortable if someone except for these people come closer to you within the distance. |
|---|---|
| Personal distance （45～75cm） | When you talk to your friend, this distance is appropriate. This distance is as close as you can reach your hands out to someone whom you talk to and read his/her face. |
| Social distance （120～200cm） | This distance is kept when you meet your client, your boss, and a person whom you meet for the first time. This distance is close enough to make a conversation each other but not enough to reach your hands out to a person whom you talk with. |
| Public distance （more than 350cm） | This distance is appropriate to public place like public speaking, lecture meeting etc.. |
Japanese personal territory
Not only Japan but also other asian countries have a tendency to concentrate population in a certain width of area compared to western countries. Asian people are reckless of keeping reasonable distance to others. It is pretty natural that mutual distance is close enough to reach hands out to each other. This is subconscious permissible distance for them.
You might understand this situation if you got jam-packed train in Japan. A packed train during rush hour which you can see in Japan or in India is the most persuasive example for this.
Western personal territory
In contrast, in the wester countries, privacy territory is within 1 meter radius and if someone come close to this territory, western people take warning subconsciously. For that reason, in order to call off their sense of caution, when they get on a elevator which everyone stick together, they say “Hi” to indicate “No offense” like “I am not an enemy/ I don’t intend to tread on your toe”.
The difference of population density in rush hour train between the US and Japan
When you get on a train during rush hour at New York City in the US, a train is not as packed as people stick together like Japanese train. American people say packed train is as hatred as lining up the long queue.
But if you experienced rush-hour-trains in Japan, you might feel there are so many gaps between people even during rush hour, which make you think is not much of discomfort packed train in the US.
Especially, a number of people living in Australia or Canada is quarter of Japanese population in a continent with 25 times as large area as Japan’s.
You can feel the overwhelming difference of population density in a train during rush hour.
Personal distance in Japanese office
When you work for a Japanese company, seniors will look after you to instruct tasks like spoon-feeding a baby and you are practically forced to participate in business drinking party to give a lecture seniors’ view of lives and their attitude toward tasks. In a bad meaning, people misunderstand this distance as kindness but objectively this is how you are treated as a dependent children who doesn’t make your decision.
Depedent or indepedent is, needless to say, the important concept of how you can keep your personal distance in the office. However, in Japan, this concept is despised and nobody care about this. On the contrary, this spoon-feeding working environement tends to be favored by fesh people.
Some of you can’t put up with working with micro-manager, who pretend to be kind to look after what you’re doing but don’t believe your ability to make a good performance in the real sense. This way of relationship between seniors and subordinate is formed naturally in Japanese business society. If you work for Japanese company, you should learn this in advance, otherwise you may experience unexacting crush with your senior.
It is very difficult for especially western people to get used to this Japanese business custom.
Conclusion
“Physical” distance is easy-to-understand personal territory to build good relations. However, people’s communication network theses days has been pretty much closer than in the past since social network had emerged out and innovated the world communication network. Some young people are not good at reading this distance by considering which stage they stand from the above 4 stage types.
Actually some people put on another’s shoes by understanding the meaning of “familiar” in Japan. But rememeber, Japanese people’s stance of supportiveness is not to back up your pesonal decision but to back up the ability to support seniors regarless of weather or not they are skillful. Doing-it-yourself person will be shut out in high possibility.