European identity

The future of British hospitality industry

Now almost all restrictions on social distancing have been lifted in England, we can start to see what changes have happened in our cities, and take a guess to whether these changes are permanent.

Some trends were already apparent before March 2020. For example, many of the large chain stores were struggling for years, and are now permanently closed. New, smaller shops have started up, mainly selling interior goods or takeaway food.

The restaurants and pubs have reopened, but often for only a few days a week. There is a staff shortage, not just due to employees having to stay away from work because of coronavirus. For some restaurants, half their staff had come from EU countries, and those staff have now returned home. Young, British people are not interested in the long hours and low pay, and lack of career prospects in the hospitality sector.

People are very happy to be able to eat and drink out again, of course, but nervous about being in crowded indoor spaces. Many cities decided to take advantage of the lockdown period, to set up more so-called “low traffic neighbourhoods”. This means that large plant containers and railings are erected, narrowing the roads and enabling the cafes and bars to put tables and chairs on the wider pavements.

Low traffic neighbourhoods have not been universally welcomed. There are concerns that business will be affected if customers cannot now park nearby. There have been incidents where fire engines and ambulances have to take longer routes to get to emergencies. The British weather is not ideal for eating outside, but the British have been so determined that they just wrap up more warmly and sit outside under umbrellas and tents put up by the cafes, even in the wind and the rain.

British cities are starting to look more like continental European cities, as a café culture emerges. A property developer confirmed to me that this was also a pre-coronavirus trend. He used to be a nightclub owner, but realised that clubbing was a dying industry. Supermarkets selling cheap alcohol means that young people “pre-load” on alcohol at home before going out, rather than spend a lot of money on expensive drinks at nightclubs. They would rather meet in pubs and cafes with no entrance fees. They find people outside their friendship group through online dating sites rather than nightclubs.

Our city council had tried to create a “night-time economy zone” ten years’ ago, clustering the nightclubs on one road, so that they could be policed more easily, and the noise contained within one area. We live not far away from this road, and when we first moved to this city 7 years’ ago, we used to suffer from music being played too loudly, later than allowed, from various venues. Now one of the nightclubs is a vegan restaurant, another is being converted back into apartments and a third has become a serviced office building – with a café on the ground floor.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku News on 8th September 2021

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Why Germans are happier than the Japanese

Japanese people need to take longer holidays, is the answer to why Germans are happier than the Japanese, according to Japanese freelance journalist Toru Kumagai in his new book “Why do Germans feel rich on only Y2.9m (£20,000) a year?”

Japanese people see shopping as a leisure activity that they can do in just a few hours or a day for pleasure or stress release, and are too busy working. Germans can take holidays as they please, and will take 2 or 3 weeks off work at a time.

When Germans go on holiday, they will go to the seaside or countryside, with their family. In a recent insurance company survey, “sunshine and nature” was seen as the most attractive element of a holiday. Kumagai points out that as a Northern European country, Germany does not get as many hours of sunshine as Portugal or Southern France. So holidays are an important moment to refresh and recharge.

I’ve often thought that golf continues to be popular in Japan because it provides distant horizons and greenery. Respectable research in the West has shown a link between greenspace and mental health, although the causality is not yet clear. Although there is a lack of greenspace in Japanese cities, Japanese are good at taking mini breaks that let them refresh and recharge in natural surroundings, such as hiking in the mountains and staying in hot spring resorts.

Compared to Germany, there are far more advertisements and TV commercials aimed at selling something new and leading edge – whether it’s smartphones, beer or sweets, Kumagai notes. Japanese throw away old things even if they are still usable, as their homes are overflowing with new purchases. Whereas according to Kumagai, Germans will treasure old items and are used to buying second hand items. They are also very environmentally conscious and one of the major recycling nations of the world.

Kumagai also points the finger at the overservicing of customers in Japan, placing burdens on employees. He quickly adds that he doesn’t want German bad customer service to be imported into Japan, but just that Japan has gone too far in trying to please. For example, when you buy bread rolls in Japan, each one is put in a separate bag, and then all the bags put in another bag. If this kind of overservicing and customer expectations were reduced, Japanese workers could take longer holidays, Kumagai suggests.

Japanese consumers need to accept that a delivery might take a day longer, so more people can take Sundays off, or that delivery time windows will not be quite so narrow. Customers in Germany get thrown out of the shop when it’s closing time, but not in Japan.

I watched Spirited Away for the second time recently, which made me more aware of the environmental message in it – such as the river spirit spewing up old bicycles and trash. I also realised the Shinto element was a strong motif – the idea of spirits in natural things and the need to simplify life by not being unnecessarily greedy and accumulative. Much has been written, often snide, about the Shinto influence on Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” approach to decluttering, but as Kumagai says, Japan could benefit from a richer spiritual life if it went back to those Shinto ways (and also Buddhist) of not demanding so much and enduring so much in terms of long hours of work.

April – a time for cleaning and renewal in Japan and Europe

Japanese people living in northern Europe tell me they miss the distinctive four seasons of Japan. At first this seems a strange thing to say to most Europeans, as we believe we have four distinct seasons too. But it is true that changes in the season are far less predictable than in Japan, and from autumn through to spring there can be a succession of indistinguishable grey, wet, cold days.

Spring has come earlier than normal this year thanks to an unusually warm winter. The daffodils and crocuses are already beginning to bloom in the parks where I walk my dog and this weekend my husband and I remarked how busy and energised the town seemed. Although the end of season sales are still dragging on, the new spring stock is in, with fresh, lighter colours in the window. The bright sunshine pushed me outdoors to clean the outside of our windows of the winter grime and my husband has nearly finished repainting the kitchen.

Spring cleaning vs the Big Clean

We call this “spring cleaning” in the UK – similar to the Osoji (Big Cleaning) that happens in Japan for the New Year. We don’t do much cleaning around New Year partly because the days are so short – getting dark by 4pm with the sun rising as late as 8am at the end of December. Even in the daylight hours it is too gloomy to see the dirt.

Spring is also a time of rebirth and renewal in the Christian calendar. From February 10^th to March 24^th this year is a period called Lent, when you are meant to give up vices such as drinking alcohol or smoking or eating favourite foods such as chocolate. This is a way of remembering the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert and is supposed to be a spiritual preparation for Easter (the weekend of 26^th and 27^th March this year), which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus. These dates change from year to year – Easter and Lent in 2017 will be three weeks later than 2016.

Pre-Christian origins of Easter

Actually the word “Easter” has pre-Christian origins – deriving from an old Germanic word for dawn. According to the 8^th century historian, Bede, there was a northern European pagan goddess of dawn, Eostre, whose symbol was a hare or rabbit – which is thought to be why so many Easter decorations feature rabbits. Another symbol of Easter, the egg, either made from chocolate or painted hen’s eggs, is also pre-Christian, when people gave each other eggs as gifts around the time of the spring equinox.

A time for cleansing and renewal in Japan and Europe

So, while the financial year of April 1^st to March 31^st is not as universal in Europe as it is in Japan, and our academic year actually starts in September/October, March and April are still a good time to renew and refresh the company. The rhythms of a cleansing and preparation period in February and March, followed by a new lease of life in April have deep roots in the European psyche.

This article was originally published in the Teikoku Databank News in March 2016 and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Poland, migration and the future of the EU

It has just been announced that Polish immigrants now represent the largest group of foreigners living in the UK. There were around 831,000 Polish born residents in the UK in 2015, overtaking Indian born residents. This represents a ¾ million increase on 2004 when Poland joined the EU, showing the scale and speed of the increase in immigrants from Eastern Europe – one of the root causes of the British vote to leave the EU.

Poland’s connections to the UK go back further than this, however. A large group of Poles settled in the UK after WWII, and were welcomed because of the well-known heroism of Polish pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain.

Trading links with Poland date back even further, to medieval times and the Hanseatic League of merchants who did business with each other from Russia through the Baltics to Germany, the Low Countries and into the UK.

But it would be wrong to think of this as a European Union style alliance of nation states. League membership was by city. Many of the European countries as we know them now did not exist then. Member cities such as Gdansk or the Hanse capital of Luebeck were semi-autonomous, or controlled by the Holy Roman Empire, or Prussia, or Denmark. And of course more recently the eastern part was under the domain of Soviet communism.

If you visit Gdansk now, the old part of the city is in fact a beautiful, partly imaginary, post-war reconstruction of a pre-Germanic past. The actual old city had been obliterated by WWII. Also worth a visit is the European Solidarity Centre which commemorates the Gdansk shipyard union Solidarnosc and asserts that its strike in 1980/1 started the process which culminated in the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989.

British people who are sceptical about the European Union say it should only be about trade, and that they want control back of UK borders, money and laws. For other EU members, the EU was a way of regaining control of their lives, by ensuring peace and democracy. This aim was not so appealing to the UK, who had no such recent experience of ground wars, dictatorships or being occupied by other countries.

Many people and political leaders in other EU member countries – including Poland – are beginning to say the EU represents a threat to their national sovereignty too. Border controls are being reinstated and there is a strong possibility eventually the EU itself will disintegrate.

Polish residents in the UK are worrying what will happen to them post Brexit and the millions of British who live elsewhere in the EU are also nervous for their future.

Many of the people working for Japanese companies in the EU are migrants, so I think the best thing Japanese companies can do right now is reassure them that they will look after them, and if necessary offer relocation to subsidiaries in other countries, including Japan.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 11th October 2016 and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Overcoming British negativity

According to a FT/ICSA Boardroom Bellwether poll in 2015, only 7% of UK companies were willing to speak out in favour of the UK staying in the European Union, even though two thirds believed leaving the EU would be damaging for them. Of course the Greek crisis made it difficult to say anything positive about Europe, but I also think the British have a strong preference for talking negatively rather than positively, when asked to make a commitment to something, particularly if they feel there are plenty of downsides to getting involved.

Then, like the British professor of economics I met recently – who not only forecast the 2008 Lehman shock but also advised the UK against joining the euro – we can say, smugly, “I told you so”, when things go wrong. This apparent wisdom does not, however, take into account what might have happened if we British had got involved. Maybe the Eurozone would have been better structured and managed, or a more balanced approach taken to Greece’s membership conditions and current difficulties if the UK had participated, not only to point out the problems, but find solutions.

I’ve noticed when working in European teams that British pragmatism acts as a good counterbalance to French rhetoric and German methodological rigour. Both Japanese and American managers are united however, in finding the British urge to be upfront about all the likely problems and obstacles, without suggesting any solutions, very frustrating.

Americans want to “just do it” and are not interested in the past, whereas the British look to history and their own experience, so as not to repeat mistakes. A Japanese manager who had become used to the American management style said to me recently “how do I motivate British staff? In the US, my team will do as I ask, because I can promise them a bonus or threaten to fire them if they don’t do it, but the British team don’t seem to be so motivated by money, and they know it’s a lot harder to fire them here than in the US.”

Some British employees are of course motivated by money, particularly in the financial sector, but for most British workers the motivation is more around self-fulfilment, a chance to put their expertise and experience into practice, to make a difference. So if they believe that they will not be able to do something, they won’t even try, as they know how demotivating and humiliating failure will be.

I discussed with the Japanese manager the concept of “jinji wo tsukushite, tenmei wo matsu” (do all that is humanly possible, then wait for the heavens to decide) – that Japanese also have a sense of fatalism, but that does not preclude doing whatever you can to make something work. I described this conversation to a senior British executive, and she started smiling ruefully. It turned out she had insisted to a Japanese boss that a particular course of action was not feasible. He had persuaded her (I expect through appealing to her expertise and experience) and so she eventually went ahead, and to her surprise, she succeeded.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Bank News on 12 August 2015 and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

The European love of argument

I was looking at my diaries from when I was 11 years’ old and living in Japan, and was amused to see that I had written in them that my burning ambition was to be a politician. Quite a few of the people I knew at university have become politicians, so I suppose on reflection this was not an impossible dream for me.

I then wondered why I did not try to realise this ambition. I think it is because I really don’t like confrontation and I take it too personally. This might be rooted in my childhood in Japan – Japanese schools do not offer as many opportunities to debate as they do in the UK. But I also spent my teenage years in British schools, where, like many schools in the UK and Europe, there were plenty of opportunities to become good at arguing, such as school debating societies and public speaking competitions.

By the time I reached university, I preferred to watch rather than participate in debates. I still enjoyed writing logical, reasoned essays, which are the core of a liberal arts education in Europe, but I did not want to become a journalist either.

Journalism and politics in the UK are very “adversarial” – always insisting that there are two opposed sides to every story and trying to set up a confrontation or show who is to blame. Journalists claim this is a necessary approach, to get to the truth.

However, a common way that politicians and journalists try to dominate the other is by using what are known as “ad hominem” attacks – a Latin phrase which is used in English, meaning “to the man”. In other words, they try to undermine the validity of the other person’s argument by attacking the personal characteristics of the opponent.

This is not considered a good debating technique, as it is not actually addressing the facts or logic behind the viewpoint or idea being expressed. People try to avoid this kind of technique in the workplace, as it would be seen as discriminatory. Plenty of arguments do take place however, about the definitions, logic, theories, profitability and justifications behind taking various business decisions.

This does not seem to work well with the traditional Japanese approach, which is more Confucian and “ascriptive”. It’s not seen as unfair to assume that someone is more likely to be right because they have a higher status. To the European question of “why?” a Japanese person senses a personal attack and a questioning of authority.

Surprisingly, the nation which is most famous for philosophical rhetoric – France – has an education system which, like Japan, discourages questioning of teachers and therefore of superiors in the workplace. But then France is also famous for its strikes and bloody revolutions. Perhaps this is why in many Northern European workplaces, debate is considered to be “healthy”. Japanese managers in Europe need to be prepared to argue their case logically to ensure good employee relations.

This article can be found in “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

A local solution to breaking the Brexit deadlock

The only things we can be sure that the EU referendum was about was that it was a majority vote for leaving the European Union and an endorsement of the main promise offered by the Leavers to “take back control”. However the economically non-damaging options (for example staying in the European Economic Area, the so-called Norway option, which business favours) need the UK to sign up to free movement of people.

My cross cultural professional insight on this being that the French and German leadership are likely to be highly rules/principles – and no exceptions – based about this, as one of the fundamentals of Europe.

So. The bottom line to what I am proposing is – we leave the EU, join the EEA and accept free movement of people between nations but not between regional authorities. We harness the power of Big Data (something the Brexit True Believers like Steve Hilton, Daniel Hannan and Michael Gove – although I doubt he has the faintest idea what that is – should be happy about in their dreams for a digital democratic 21st century nation) to be far more hands on about the movement of people within our country.

I’m thinking that National Insurance numbers should be devolved to a local level. Local communities vote on how many NI numbers they are willing to offer per year, and this should be cross checked against hiring plans, school places, available housing, NHS capacity – and plans/funding made accordingly. There will be no benefits, no school places, no jobs, no housing without an NI number.

It will need an investment in administrative resources to back this up and enforce – it will be like when the national census was first introduced in 1841. And really, the fact that we still only do a national census every 10 years a full 175 years later is quite bizarre in our rapidly changing, globalizing world.

It addresses the issue that the unexpectedly large influx of EU people into the UK since 2004 has been very unevenly distributed, particularly amongst communities that have never really recovered since the 1980s collapse of traditional industries.

It actually may turn out to be unnecessary, as I agree with Jonathan Portes at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research that we might have reached peak immigration anyway. Brexit will certainly help push this trend further. But at least it gives people a sense that they are back in control again.

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Estonia & European identity

I have been wanting to visit Estonia for a while. Although it is a tiny country, with only 1.3 million population, I knew from the research that had been done on my family history in the Baltic region that Estonia’s story would help me understand more about the development of Europe and whether there could be such a thing as a European identity or common culture.

So when I had an opportunity to visit the Estonian capital, Tallinn, for a conference recently, I made sure I had plenty of time for sightseeing. I know Japanese people often think of Europe as having a “stone culture” – buildings built to last, as opposed to buildings made of wood which can be pulled down as needed, and Estonia certainly fits that category, with plenty of beautiful churches and medieval houses built from the local limestone to visit.
However there were other aspects of Estonia which did not fit my usual concept of a European country. For example, Christianity came very late to Estonia, in the 13^th century, a thousand years after it arrived in Western Europe. It was a pagan country until it was conquered by the Northern Crusades, led by the Christian Kings of Denmark and Sweden and the Germany Livonian and Teutonic military orders (which is where my mother’s family had their roots). To this day Estonia is one of Europe’s least religious countries.

The late arrival of Christianity was partly because Estonia was never occupied by the Romans – unlike most other Western and Southern European countries. Estonia was, however, occupied by other countries for the past 700 years; Sweden, then Russia, then a brief moment of independency in the 1920 and 1930s, then Germany and then most recently by Communist Russia, when it was part of the Soviet Union.

The Russians tried to industrialise what was basically an agricultural and trading economy, setting up factories and mines, bringing in many Russians to work in them. Initially Estonia was seen as a prosperous place to emigrate to but the industrialization was not successful, and the Estonian economy suffered, particularly as its usual trade routes to the West had been cut off.

It was when I wandered around the old merchant houses of Tallinn that I felt I was in a recognisably European environment. The merchants of Tallinn were part of the Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchants and towns that stretched across many countries of Northern Europe, from the UK to Russia from the 13^th to the 17^th centuries.

Even now, with the rise of anti-European movements in the UK and the Netherlands, most people would want to stay in some kind of trade federation. The region’s history of trading and shipping, travelling and migrating around Europe and a love of doing deals with each other is still very strong. It’s an identity nobody in Europe wants to lose.

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in Japanese in the 7th November 2013 edition of Teikoku Databank News and also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

France

The clampdown on non-EU immigration by the UK government has been causing plenty of concern amongst the Japanese business community for some time now. As we approach a general election in May 2015, the coalition government is under pressure to explain how it is going to meet its commitment to cut immigration to the UK to tens of thousands. The government can control non-EU immigration, but not the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who come from EU countries to the UK each year, because of the EU commitment to the principle of free movement of labour. This is why Japanese companies are finding it so hard to get visas for their Japanese expatriate staff.

If the UK tries to undermine this principle of the free movement of labour within Europe, the coalition government could even find themselves having to leave the EU, as Angela Merkel has stated. Pro Europeans and most businesspeople in the UK would rather further reforms were made to the EU, which address the causes of pan-European movements of people, but this would mean further harmonisation of business and labour regulations. Anti Europeans are antagonistic towards any imposition of unified regulations and the unions in countries such as France or Germany would resist any reforms which would threaten protection of employment of their members, or reduce state benefits.

For example, it is estimated there are over 300,000 French people living in London, making it the sixth biggest French city in terms of population. The usual explanation for this is that young people have found it hard to get a permanent job or start a business in France. There are more opportunities for them in the UK.

I’ve certainly found, as I have been expanding my business in France this year, that the bureaucracy and barriers to efficiency in France are quite bewildering compared to the UK. For example, in order to sell training courses to a French company, I have to hire an agent who is a registered company in France, and also is an approved training provider. This agent then has to provide all kinds of paperwork to the customer, so they can claim back from a state training fund the training taxes they have contributed. This adds considerable expense and delays to my business.

A Japanese company told me recently that when they tried to acquire a French software company that was about to go bankrupt, the employees decided they would prefer the company go bankrupt even though they would lose their jobs, because then they would have 80% of their salary, benefits and even mortgages paid for the next three years.

I can see that from the French perspective these regulations and taxes can be justified as ways of creating and retaining jobs and ensuring development of skills, but in reality all it has done is deter foreign companies from making any significant investments in France. So despite the visa difficulties, the UK is still the destination of choice in Europe, for businesses and people.

A 2017 update to this article appears here – A second look at France

This article was originally published in Japanese in the 10 December 2014 edition of the Teikoku Databank News. It also appears in Pernille Rudlin’s new book “Shinrai: Japanese Corporate Integrity in a Disintegrating Europe” – available as a paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2022-05-12.

Category: European identity