The part about amae is a bit off. I would go a step further than translating it just as "to wish to be loved." That's still normal even in western culture. Amae is closer to "nagging to be pet over the head while doing a cute face" or "whining" and "talking in a high pitch voice on purpose to sound cute so that you can get what you want".<p>"Amaeruna!" is heard often and for good reason. It means stop acting like a child and grow the F up. There is also "Amaesugi" (too much) and "Amaenbou" (someone who does too much) which are not positive terms. Then there is "Mazakon" which is short for mother complex. It's an insult, not a compliment, and it's directed towards male adults.<p>So you see, Japanese are both aware and critical of their amae tendencies.<p>> this amae… it's what keeps Japanese society together. It's the root cause of the successes you see in the Japanese education system.<p>Nah. I would stop at discipline, order, and obedience. Amae is still very personal, and is not any glue that builds businesses or communities, let alone the culture. Where it is seen exported the most is in Anime culture, not Sony or Toyota or Uniqlo or Rakuten.<p>Also, the part about "rat babies with a strong attachment to their mothers" can also be interpreted as "rat mothers with a strong attachment to their babies". Amae is not the opposite of neglect, nor a cure for it. The word for a parent's apparent over-attachment is "Oyabaka". You don't want to be too much of that either.<p>I was raised by a single mother. I had a lot of alone time, which I enjoyed very much. But I was never neglected. When I was little, I was an amaenbou. But I did well in school because I had good studying habits, and my mother paid attention to how I did and how I did it. I had a stress free childhood, did well in school, and did not need amae to counteract my stress. None of my friends were stressed out either. Being a kid in Japan is fun. I'd say junior high that's the worst with Ijime at it's peak.
This resonates a bit with me. The relationship with my mother defined who I am, things like my work ethic, perseverance and so on came from her. She sacrificed her career giving up being printer to work a as a janitor, delivering mail, a security guard just to make sure she was home when I came back from school. Saved money for quite a while out of the little we had to buy me a computer I've been wanted. If it wasn't for that I would been where I am now. Most of all it was just about knowing no matter how hard things got I knew I could always come home and she'd be there. She cared about my grades, asked questions about school. She rarely yelled or forced me to learn, but I could see she was disappointed a bit if she saw I didn't try hard enough. A bit of that desire to see me succeed came from her experience of being force to abandon school after 7 grades and having to look after her siblings. Then having to watch them get advanced degrees and good jobs while she was left mopping floors and washing toilets.
<i>>These are things like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence (there are a lot more, too).</i><p>Side note... The author repeatedly mentioning "grit" and "self-control" seems to be citing (maybe subconsciously) Angela Duckworth's research[1]. As an fyi, there has been criticism of her study:<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-d...</a><p>If Duckworth's research is flawed (e.g. IQ is still the #1 statistical correlation we have of a measured trait and economic outcomes), it means the blog author's paragraph is wrong:<p><i>>Most people think that IQ, the ability to memorize, etc., are the key metrics for determining the future of a child. These are what economists call "cognitive skills" and it turns out they are not very good predictors of future success. What are good predictors are what's known as "non-cognitive skills." These are things like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence (there are a lot more, too).</i><p>[1] book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111108" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duck...</a><p>other writings: <a href="https://www.macfound.org/fellows/889/" rel="nofollow">https://www.macfound.org/fellows/889/</a>
<i>Compare that to boys who are supposed to be raised as more independent and tough. Is it possible that the way we raise boys versus girls is what's causing more boys to have trouble paying attention?</i><p>I don't know if "independence" and "toughness" capture what the author wants to talk about. There are cultures built around machismo in which male children are coddled and doted on by their mothers, where it is normal to be a "momma's boy" at home and a swaggering macho in the street. It's also possible to believe in the ideals of equality and interdependence in society at large while having zero emotional intimacy in the home.<p>That said, it's interesting that Japan has language for talking about this aspect of relationships. To me, it suggests a higher degree of uniformity in attachment styles compared to the United States, where talking about these kinds of relationships feels like a new social development associated with a progressive mentality. I think that historically in the United States, actual behavior at home has been all over the map. Different kids in the same classroom, with the same skin color, accent, and social class, are raised with dramatically different family relationships, often without realizing it until they are much older.
> Compare that to boys who are supposed to be raised as more independent and tough. Is it possible that the way we raise boys versus girls is what's causing more boys to have trouble paying attention? Self control, willpower, and the ability to pay attention are all non-cognitive skills. If "attachment" and "dependency" are the things that develop a child's non-cognitive skills… could this be why more boys have ADHD than girls?<p>No, please read some research, please, for the love of god please stop, no. This conjecture is thoroughly questionable, there is copious research to show these traits developing essentially from birth. The same behavioural differences exist in effectively the same way cross-culturally (including in Japan).<p>There's more to it, schools in japan place a lot of responsibility on the kids. They are responsible for maintenance of the school (the non-dangerous kind), and later somewhat responsible for governing aspects of the school, among other things.<p>I can't remember a time in a Canadian public school where I was asked to do something useful for somebody. I think more of that would have helped a lot in terms of motivation.
The main argument made by this article appears to be following:<p>* Japanese students students score higher because of the high-stakes college entrance exam system. However, this creates more stress. Japanese students are able to deal with this stress because of closeness with their mothers.<p>The article mentions studies on young children, but this does not seem particularly relevant because children would not yet be experiencing the stress created by the entrance exam system at this point, unless the argument is that the way children are raised in early childhood leaves them better able to deal with stress for the rest of their life, but I'm not sure there is evidence that Japanese people are better able to deal with stress than Americans in general.<p>Even if we assume that there is a difference parental involvement that makes them better able to handle stress than children in the US, it seems like a surprising leap to attribute this to this notional Japanese principle of "amae" without even mentioning the fact that the percentage of working mothers in the US is almost double what it is in Japan.
Really good article.<p>It's interesting that right now, we're trying to make learning <i>easier</i>. Gamification, bite-sized lengths, multi-sensory ... they all have merits but no one in edtech is talking about instilling a habit of <i>grit</i>. Not all knowledge is presented in a silver dish !<p>And not to be Luddite but technology has made us more detached [1], so emulating the Japanese <i>amae</i> will also not be easy.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39666863" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39666863</a>
>how attachment reduces stress<p>Although I'm in the process of reading the article, the title was quite striking to me - the Buddha said almost exactly the opposite - that it is attachment which is the cause of stress, clinging to changing phenomena, hoping they were permanent, or even without realising at the emotional level that they will fade.
'The word amae comes from the word amaeru, which, according to Japanese psychoanalyst Takeo Doi (he's the guy who basically made this term a thing), can be defined as "to wish to be loved." On top of this, it has connotations of a need for dependency and a request for indulgence of one's perceived needs. This amae type of relationship is the ideal for all close relationships in Japan. It starts with child and mother, but expands out to student and teacher, student and upperclassmen, salaryman and boss, husband and wife, etc. It's the senpai-kohai relationship in a nutshell. If everyone is able to indulge their needs into everyone else then everything will work out, or so Japanese society has been saying for quite a while now."<p>I've seen a number of Japanophiles quite taken with this idea of amae, popularized by psychoanalyst Takeo Doi in 1971. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Dependence" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Dependence</a><p>To me it sounds like a bunch of Freudian psychobabble or pseudoscience.<p>The author doesn't even really attempt to empiricially link Japanese amae and non-cognitive skills (persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence) in the specific case of Japan—where children should do better on the the Marshmallow Test, if this is accurate.<p>Tofugu has some great essays on learning Japanese, but this is not one.
I'm rather wary of culturally based strengths. They DO exist. For example, being a good students is like being a star quarterback in the US. There simply isn't a way for US culture to have better academic performance with just this one cultural difference.<p>I'm wary because I think culture as a whole exists only to stabilize social stratification. Under normal circumstances layers will naturally mix, but if the mobility channels are clearly specified, you have order. In the US this is the mythos if hard work, in many Asian cultures there are establish systems based around tests. Indian and European systems had no mobility, being caste and nobility based.<p>Hard layers eventually lead to revolt, but soft layers didn't cordone wealth. Soft layers with prescribed channels are more stable.<p>So the existing channels are actually purposely inefficient and mostly stupid.<p>Entrepreneuship for example used to be forced. It was what you must do when given too much freedom. It was freedom in the sense of far too much, being ostracized in the desert.<p>Technology though provides the tools to survive in excess freedom. The desert can become a plain, once you have your endless water supply and teleporter that is.<p>The side effect is that these tools eat culture. It doesn't destroy the bike, but invents the car. Culture becomes a weekend thing.<p>Cultural praising often reminds me of hipster-ish praising of things like traditional razors and single gear fixies. People going backwards while claiming to be going forwards.
Great article!<p>Important nitpick: Dr. Mary Ainsworth (the professor who wrote about attachment theory) is female. The article incorrectly assumes the professor was a "he."
I'm still not sure these Asian students make "better" engineers and such. They end up in more prestigious positions due to hiring practices that make it so. But then we see things like the critique of the Toyota software in the sudden acceleration investigation... While over in America with it's "inferior" education system we dominate tech. We want to be more like them, while they want to be more like us.
Hard to reconcile this with the existence of the kyouiku mama, the education mother. I also wonder if this also isn't ignoring all the students who don't do cram schools and who aren't salarymen capable, which is a lot of japan. Sometimes there's too much focus on the elite.
Does it really succeed though ? There is a hilariously cynical account of Japan here,<p><a href="http://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/" rel="nofollow">http://japaneseruleof7.com/are-japanese-people-retarded/</a>