ABSTRACT

As we have seen in previous chapters, Japanese expatriate managers had two cores in their imaginary map of the world. When they were assigned to the West, they experienced emotional conflicts between two different cultural value systems. However, almost all of them located themselves within the so-called Japanese system, though there were subtle differences between kokusaiha (the international group) and kokunaiha (the domestic group). Some of them even emphasised the uniqueness of Japanese culture 1 in order to defend their business practices and the management of their transnational companies in the City. Although they said that Japanese society had too many constraints, that Tokyo was too crowded, and that their working lives were much harder than those of the Westerners, they still enjoyed their ‘élite’ position within Japan, and identified entirely with the Japanese identities in their life stories.