Is japan a collectivist culture

Answer 1

As I was reading a book on cultural differences inside Europe, I found the analysis of the famous Dutch cultural psychologist Geert Hoftstede, who used to work for IBM and classified cultural differences under five categories :

- power distance

- individualism vs collectivism

- masculinilty vs femininity

- uncertainty avoidance

- long-term vs short-term orientation

Japan scored 46 for individualism (0 is the most collectivist and 100 the most individualist). The most individualistic countries in the world were all English-speaking ones + the Netherlands (and unsurprisingly, Dutch is the most similar language to English, very similar to what linguist call Middle English, i.e. 12 to 15th century English). The USA scored 91, Australia 90, the UK 89, then Canada and the Netherlands 80 and New-Zealand 79. The only other countries with a score above 70 were Italy (76), Belgium (75), Denmark (74), Sweden (71) and France (71).

Japan is by far the most individualistic country in Asia, as most score between 15 and 20 !

However, Japan (46) is more individualistic than Southern European countries like Portugal (27), Greece (35), and very close to Spain (51). I believe that Italy's score (76) reflects much more the Northern Italian mentality than the much more collectivist Sourthern one.