A Perspective of Cross-Cultural Psychological Studies for Global Business

The Phantom In The 19Th Century

How has the stereotypical image of Japanese employees been shaped in people’s minds? As Said (1978) summarized as the term of “Orientalism”, Westerners stereotypical images have been shaped through the history of their hegemony over Eastern peoples. In the case of Japanese, two kinds of people’s belief above are as follows. The first is the folk belief that Japanese people can never be more intelligent or creative than Westerners. What are the rationales for this belief? The biggest one is the phantom of white supremacy and social Darwinism in the 19^th century. The notion of natural selection proposed by Charles R. Darwin gave a scientific ground to the doctrine of white supremacy, although he did not intend to argue this. Social Darwinism is a general name given to various theories which apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to the social sciences. According to this approach, Western civilization and culture are the most developed through natural selection and survival of the fittest. This assertion was enforced by the historical facts that many Asian and African countries were colonies of Western powers in the 19^th century. To make matters worse, social Darwinism was used to justify the imperialism and colonialism of Western powers, and engendered a belief that Westerners were the most intelligent and created the most advanced culture and civilization, although the original advocates did not intend to do so.