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The Japanese sense of information privacy

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Abstract

We analyse the contention that privacy is an alien concept within Japanese society, put forward in various presentations of Japanese cultural norms at least as far back as Benedict in The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese culture. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946. In this paper we distinguish between information privacy and physical privacy. As we show, there is good evidence for social norms of limits on the sharing and use of personal information (i.e. information privacy) from traditional interactions in Japanese society, as well as constitutional evidence from the late 19th century (in the Meiji Constitution of 1889). In this context the growing awareness of the Japanese public about problems with networked information processing by public sector and commercial organisations from the 1980s (when a law governing public sector use of personal information was first passed) to recent years (when that law was updated and a first law governing commercial use of personal information was adopted) are not the imposition or adoption of foreign practices nor solely an attempt to lead Japanese society into coherence with the rest of the OECD. Instead they are drawing on the experience of the rest of the developed world in developing legal responses to the breakdown of social norms governing interchange and use of personal information, stressed by the architectural changes wrought by networked information processing capabilities. This claim is supported by consideration of standard models of Japanese social interactions as well as of Supreme Court judgements declaring reasonable expectations of protection of privacy to hold in Japan.

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Notes

  1. Collectivism in China, while valuing those closer in the collective over those further away, does not regard those further away as in opposition or competition, so long as they are culturally connected. Harmony is even more strongly valued than in Japan, but this extends to more of a reality of harmony between groups with necessarily competitive interests (such as, for example, those amongst whom a limited common resource must be distributed) than the Japanese focus on only the appearance of harmony between competing groups (see the later description of the role of social lies in Japan).

  2. Collectivism in India has blood relatives as the focus. As such, even one's spouse may be of less importance in one’s collective group than one’s siblings. Obviously, offspring provide significant points of common interest between two bloodlines, but the interests of a non-blood-related parent will only be advanced where this (potentially) aids the blood-related child (now or in the future). Arranged marriages can often reinforce this notion, with the purpose of an arranged marriage being the production of children, not the joining of two individuals or of their respective families.

  3. See http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/secretariats/cabinet_committee_business/general_guide/cabinet_committees/collective_responsibility.aspx for the UK Cabinet Office’s own basic definition of the principle.

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Acknowledgments

Supported by a Global Research Award from the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering. Supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology within the open research centre project ‘Quality-oriented Human Resource Development and Smart Business Collaboration: Quality Management Science,’ (2007–2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AY, UK

    Andrew A. Adams

  2. Centre for Business Information Ethics, School of Commerce, Meiji University, 1-1, Kanda Surugadai, Chiyoda, Tokyo, 101-8301, Japan

    Kiyoshi Murata

  3. Faculty of Law and Letters, Ehime University, 3, Bunkyo-cho, Matsuyama, Ehime, 790-8577, Japan

    Yohko Orito

Authors
  1. Andrew A. Adams
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  2. Kiyoshi Murata
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  3. Yohko Orito
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Correspondence to Andrew A. Adams.

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Glossary of Japanese: The Japanese words used in the text are given more formal definition here. Note that the definitions here are limited to their use in the paper, while their full linguistic usage may be broader. Order is alphabetic by phonetic spelling in roman letters.

 /himitsu

Secret; secrecy

/hito

Person; another person; someone else. Generalized reference others per Kuwayama (1992)

/honne

True feelings; real motivation. Opposite to /tatemae q.v.

/jibun

Self; oneself. The individual

/jukinet

Abbreviation for jumin kihon daichō q.v.

/jumin kihon daichō

The Basic Residents’ Registration Network. The network of databases supporting the Japanese ID Card, National ID Database and e-government system

/mawari

Surroundings; vicinity. Immediate reference others per Kuwayama (1992)

/miuchi

Family or close social grouping

/muen no hito

See /tanin

/naimitsu

Secrecy; privacy

/naisho

A secret

/omote

Front; face; outdoors. External (figuratively). Opposite to /ura q.v.

/puraibashii

A ‘loan word’ from the English ‘privacy’

/seken

The world; society; the way the world is. Reference society per Kuwayama (1992)

/soto

The outside, literally and figuratively. Opposite to /uchi q.v.

/tanin

The other. Outsider. People with whom one has no direct contact, or at least no recurring direct contact. ‘Passing strangers.’ Equivalent to /muen no hito

/tatemae

Outwardly expressed feelings; stated motivation. See also /uso. Opposite to /honne q.v.

/uchi

The inside, literally and figuratively. Opposite to /soto q.v.

/uchiwabanashi

Private discussion; insider’s discussion

/ura

Back; rear. Internal (figuratively). Opposite to /omote q.v.

/uso

Lie; falsehood. In Japanese, this is not as insulting as the English word ‘lie’

/watashi

(Also, and more formally, watakushi). One of multiple Japanese words/characters for ‘I’. Used by both men and women in formal but not humble circumstances. May also be used as an implicit plural ‘we’, also referring to the speaker’s family or close social group, but only where this is unambiguous.

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Adams, A.A., Murata, K. & Orito, Y. The Japanese sense of information privacy. AI & Soc 24, 327–341 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0228-z

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