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Reflections
I would like to summarize the several points of the results of our
research, focusing on why this exchange was productive for us.
First, according to
the result of the questionnaire, about 70% of the answers showed the
similar characteristics. Of course, it is easy to guess that
both people sometimes share many similar values because Korea is located
close to Japan and some values have been formed through a long term
exchange since the ancient times. Some behaviors are also similar since
they have been influenced by people's value systems. Moreover,
interestingly, the results of some questions answered by Korean students
were generally taken on favorably by us,
which might show that Japanese students are more open-minded to other
culture.
Second, I would like to pick up the interesting example from the results of
the questionnaire.
As for the school life, Korean students behave more openly during the
class than Japanese students. They can speak to their teachers frankly, but
they respect their teachers more. Such attitudes might be fading
now and many Japanese students
do not act in a
respectful way toward their teachers even if they could talk with them
openly. About the friendship both students think it very precious.
It can be said that this kind of value might be universal.
Third, as for social and family life, we had thought that Japanese and Koreans have
many similarities. Surely both people think family relationship is very
important. However, Korean students value their family bond and
respect the elderly people in their
family much more. This fact shows that the teaching of the Confucianism
has been kept in their communities for such a long time. However,
this situation is likely to change in Korea, too. We had the image that Korean students might maintain stronger male
chauvinism than us because of the influence of Confucianism.
But in fact they value equality between men and women.
Fourth, the new cultural values have also been born in both
countries, which might be caused by the influence of western culture for over the
past 100 years. For example, people's behaviors are
likely to be self-centered and they behave thinking of their own benefit. This
seem to be like the individualism in western countries, but
it is actually
different from the definition derived from the characteristics of individualism there.
For our better communication...
How can we communicate with other people and understand each other
effectively?
Is it enough to get information about other culture only through the
media such as books or the Internet?
Although the comparison of cultural aspects between Korea and Japan was
the goal of our project, as the process of our research was going on, we
found ourselves to reach the answer to these two questions.
If we focus on the first, I would answer that our positive attitude is
the key to the communication. There are two points about this.
Of course, the knowledge of cross-cultural aspects is important, so we
often try to get information about culture using the Internet or various
resources. However, we soon find it very difficult to keep up
enough new information about culture only through media.
Especially we can hardly learn about the people's value systems because
of the lack of the information. This made us realize that direct
communication is very important and necessary to know the true
information that can be useful for our better communication.
Second, we should have the attitude to promote communication.
This seems to be easy, but rather difficult for us. We need to
create our communication with others by ourselves.
Afterword...
As cultures might be mixed up, people's value systems could also be
affected with the progress of civilization. Today we are exposed to such
an environment through the development of technology especially in the
recent few years, which allows everyone in the world to be wired to the
network as a sender of information using the website. Hopefully we can
enjoy creating communication with others with the attitude that
diversity of every culture should be respected in the world.
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