What is High-Context/Low-Context

Some may still have a stereotypical image that Japanese employees work like a robot, and achieved the industrial development even though they are not logical thinkers. This chapter is against this based on the latest cross-cultural studies. The conclusions are as follows. (1) Even if Japanese appears to be illogical in the sense that they are less likely to do rule-based thinking, this does not means that they are less intelligent. (2) Easterners are more likely to do dialectical thinking. (3) Easterners' naïve dialecticism is strongly associated with cultural tradition, and it is plausible that it has been developed in a high-context culture. (4) Japanese people may have a collectivist culture, and it is not an undeveloped culture comparing with an individualist culture as shown in the case of ‘nemawashi'. Finally, it is proposed that the distinction between Westerners' low-context culture and Easterners' high-context culture provide important implications for globalizing business and that the notions of global mindset and ‘glocal' are important for international business.