Earlier this month (July 4), Roger Pulvers wrote in The Japan Times a brief article called “Japanese betray some blinkered views of their foreign coworkers“. While some of his observations may not be surprising or new, I thought it was nevertheless a good little read. To quote from the article, “Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper ran a feature on Japanese people’s attitudes to non-Japanese colleagues at their places of work. The article included the results of a survey that explored those attitudes”.

Now, the word “betray” is what caught my eye, but readers shouldn’t hold an initial negative feeling when reading the article. Pulvers’ story seems to cover a fairly balanced side of things.

Some facts:

• from whomever they surveyed, it seems that one-third (34%) of companies have foreign co-workers (more…)
  Tags: company, foreign coworkers, ishindenshin