That kind of culture with that way of thinking, it’s almost like if you
are not an individual human being.
Basically, you had an expectation, that this flight attendant is going to apologise for these
dirty socks (I think you said it was) or whatever the problem was. But instead of apologising,
he said “interesting” and then basically made no attempt to apologise for that at all.
The way that I would interpret this and I think if you think in terms of cultural
differences between Japan and many western countries, the UK included, I think it’s
fairly fair to say that generally speaking, Japan is very much a group-centred culture. The example
you gave is British Airways but, let’s say JAL, which is like the most amazing airline
in the world. Like they are phenomenal. If I can fly, if I have to fly, I want to fly JAL.
That kind of culture with that way of thinking,
it’s almost like if you’re a flight attendant on a JAL flight,
you are not an individual human being as such, rather you are a part of a larger thing. You can
almost think of, you know, JAL, the personality there is JAL, you’re talking to a part of JAL.
So in that kind of instance where there’s a problem, even if that individual didn’t
create that problem, like the flight attendant you are now talking to, is not responsible for
whatever mess it is that you’ve just found in the back of the seat in front of you.
Because their way of thinking is that “I am a part of a larger mechanism, a larger machine”.
It’s perfectly natural to then apologise for that and to say “I’m so sorry” because
we are now considering ourselves to be part of a larger group. And as a part of that larger group,
it’s a part of my responsibility, therefore we apologise. But if you think of that in,
you know, in diff… other cultures, that don’t have that sort of group harmony, group “I am a
part of a larger thing” kind of thinking, and that person’s considering themselves an individual… it
then becomes “Well, I didn’t create this mess. It’s not my mistake. Somebody made a mistake,
but I didn’t make a mistake so why would I personally apologise for it?”
And don’t get me wrong here, me personally, like I’d want an apology as well and I
personally would apologise for it. It’s kind of hard to talk from my own perspective both
because I lived in Japan for so long that I don’t really feel like my culture is British
or Japanese or anything now – it’s more like a weird mix of the two. So that’s
kind of my personal feelings on that, perhaps aren’t very generalised with other people.
But I think that other person probably from their perspective like “I didn’t do it,
it’s not my mistake, therefore it is not my thing to apologise for”. Now, the “Interesting” comment
is interesting and has different interpretations. One possible interpretation is that the deeper,
underlying meaning of “interesting” in that context is: “Huh. Somebody on this team has
screwed up and done something that they shouldn’t have done. Somebody is not doing their job
properly. Ugh… who could that be?” and it’s almost, then, a criticism of other people on
the team, but we don’t know who on the team who did it. And it could be the equivalent,
then, of saying, “Ugh, somebody’s not doing their job properly. I’ll bring you a new one.” It could
also have just been that person just didn’t know what to say and so said “Interesting”.
Then again, it’s about because if I apologise, then I’m saying it’s my fault but it’s not
my fault because I didn’t do it. And I’m an individual, not part of a group. So I would
interpret that as shifting the blame to somebody else in the team. They didn’t say that explicitly,
but I would say that there is an implicit nuance of that in the word “interesting” in that context.