Chapter 4, Hidden Culture Summary and Analysis

Hall uses his experience of life in Japan to describe his development of an understanding of Japanese culture and concomitantly his own. The concept that everyone round the world is basically the same as themselves is a universally held misconception. Cultural differences are based, in part, on deep-seated emotional parts of the brain, the part of the brain that synthesizes experience but does not verbalize.

Similar paradoxes, to the Western mind, occur in the differences in attitudes to companies and jobs. Many aspects of Japanese life pertain to the concept of high-context culture, where enveloping intimacy begins in the home and extends far beyond into public life. The emphasis on self-control and hiding inner feelings are rooted in a long past history, which extends to the time of the samurai and their culture. Paradoxically, when the Japanese...