ABSTRACT
Many Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) and Japanese new reli-
gious movements (NRMs) are truly global entities, which are found in all the continents and most major capital cities around the world. Not only
their physical presence but also their key ideas and practices, be they man-
agement practices, or daily life practices relating to the sacred, have been
accepted and internalised by members of these organisations, many of
whom are from cultural backgrounds which have no intrinsic resonance
with Japanese culture. Using the context of Japanese Studies to understand
how the East-West dichotomy is being dismantled, I ask the question ‘Why
have Japanese values and practices been accepted so readily in other cultural contexts, often not even as ‘‘Japanese’’, but as universal principles
embraced with eagerness because of their effectiveness and without refer-
ence to the historical, economic and political relationships between the host
society members and Japan?’ This chapter will compare the global sweep of
Japanese MNCs and Japanese NRMs in an attempt to explain this singular
phenomenon and demonstrate that forces stronger than cultural identity are
operating here, hence contributing to dismantling a simplistic East/West
dichotomy largely based on stereotypical national cultural identities.
