The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

“Japanese are two faced”, is a common complaint you will hear from foreigners in Japan.  The implication is you cannot trust someone who has two faces, so believing what you are told is a folly here and you need to really evaluate the messenger carefully.  It is totally true that Japanese are two faced, in fact they are world champions at it.  Living cheek by jowl for centuries in crowded cities breeds a lot of accommodations and a big one is with the truth.  In the West the truth is absolute, but in many parts of Asia the truth is more relative.  Hence the trust divide between East and West and that includes Japan.   We do it in the West too.  The “little white lie” is a bold faced lie, but we wrap it up in cotton wool and creates the illusion it isn’t so bad.  If your friend, who is obese, tells you she has been trying to lose weight and she has last a couple of grams and asks you how she looks now, what do you say – an absolute truth – “You are still grossly overweight and look like a heart attack waiting