Multicultural Interview Assignment

For my Multicultural Project I selected the Japanese culture. I selected the Japanese culture because my sister in law is Japanese and I really don’t know much about her as a person or her culture. My interview took place with Satomi Kitabayashi Lane. I learned some things about my sister in law through this interview and research that I was unaware of before now. The first question that I ask Satomi was how do you personally identify? Satomi told me that she identifies as Japanese but not so traditional and stereotyped by other cultures.
The expectations on women's roles in contemporary urban life really mean that most women can't work outside the home. They're responsible for the education of their children; they're responsible for managing …show more content…
She does however feel that depending on the area people discriminate more, people in smaller cities discriminate on people that are different from their cultural norm, whereas larger cities people blend in because there is more of a mixture of different cultures there. This appears to be especially true in the South.
In general she thinks that members of her culture view human service workers as people that work for the poor or homeless. Japanese cities have such reasonably strong neighborhood associations that if you are having a problem with things you go to a person within your neighborhood for help, they take responsibility seriously for their own neighborhoods. If you have a personal problem within your family, you keep it in the family.
Some things that she thinks I should keep in mind when working with the Japanese culture are that in general, Japanese are shy and quiet compared to other cultural groups, do not make any personal statements towards them. The main reason is that in the US many Japanese don’t feel confident speaking in English. She said that if I have an opportunity to work with Japanese people, she wants me to listen, and try to understand them before assuming that are not following what’s going on. Silence and body language is a form of communication, so she wants me make sure that I think about that before assuming they don’t understand what is being …show more content…
According to everyculture.com, the traditional "arranged marriage" in which a go-between negotiated a matching process that might give parental opinions more weight than those of the prospective bride and groom. Background checks on a prospective spouse and his or her family are routine. (Advameg, Inc., 2015) Satomi was set up with a man in Japan at a young age as an arranged marriage. They decided to end the relationship because she was unable to produce children. Satomi came to America for a Kendo championship and met her husband to be. They are now married with a beautiful baby