I haven’t even been back at work for a full week yet, but I’m already starting to slide back into my old routine of working 13-hour days. I cannot let that happen.

The reason for my overtime tonight relates to a little something known as “the challenges of cross-cultural communication,” also commonly referred to as “dealing with gobbledygook-talkin’ weirdos who smell funny.”

You see, two years ago one of the managers in my company — my former boss, in fact — was dispatched to our joint venture company in the States to help improve operations. Yesterday we received a letter from the American president of said venture containing an extensive list of employee complaints against the manager from my company; apparently he has been undertaking his role as Executive Vice President a bit, shall we say, “unconventionally.”

I’m not at liberty to get into specifics, but as I read through the incident reports in preparation for helping to draw up a response from our side, I couldn’t help but chuckle at how poorly the Japanese management style doesn’t work in America. Sure, you have sucessful management practices that took the business world by storm in the 80s, such as just-in-time production, kaizen (continuous improvement) and the 5S, but beneath the stoic exterior of the typical Japanese businessman lies an uncharacteristicly immature and erratic underbelly.

Therefore, whereas the American side of our joint venture decried actions such as shouting at and shoving employees, throwing objects and wildly striking machinery with a hammer as “unacceptable conduct,” I see them as what they are: aspects of Japanese management that are little-known outside of Japan (well, except for the hitting-things-with-a-hammer part).

By now, most of the world is familiar with the rigid hierarchy in Japanese society. The adherence to theis hierarchy is even more severe within a Japanese company: underlings kowtow to their superiors’ merciless demands and superiors berate and scold their underlings like misbehaving children (mid-level managers can go from superior to underling and back within an instant without even so much as a bat of an eye).

While I personally have never been on the receiving end of such treatment (I reckon I would react in a most un-Japanese of ways), I have beared witness to maniacal displays of managerial tyranny time and time again throughout my company. There’s nothing worse than sitting quietly while your coworker is subject to a five-minute public tirade. . . um, except maybe being on the receiving end on one yourself, I suppose.

Anyway, my company finally created a generic response to the letter, which of course had to be translated by yours truly (once again, despite the fact that my company has an official translator and it’s not me). None of the people on the Japanese side seem to have any problem with the manager’s behavior, but rather are trying to focus on why he chose to act in such a manner, i.e., what the American employees did wrong to evoke the manager’s reaction.

Ironically, during the course of the entire year that I worked under that manager, not once did I ever see him put on a display such as those mentioned in the list of complaints. Maybe he’s just dealing with culture shock as a result of being forced to live in the midwest.