Cultural Differences – We Westerners live on “Platforms” The Japanese Do not!

“At home the American has different kinds of platforms for sitting in the living room, at the dining table and at his desk. He also has a large platform on which he sleeps at night. When he travels abroad his greatest fear is being caught at night without a platform in a private room, so he makes hotel reservations well ahead of time. People from many parts of the world know that all you need is a blanket and a flat space in order to spend the night, and the world is full of flat places. In the airport, at three in the morning, the American traveler is draped uncomfortably over a chair rather than stretched out on the rug. He would rather be dignified than comfortable. Not only do Americans sit and sleep on platforms, they build their houses on them, hang them on their walls, and put fences around them to hold their children. Why this obsession with platforms? Behind all these behavior patterns is a basic assumption that the ground and floor are dirty. This explains their obsession for getting off the floor. It also explains why they keep their shoes on when they enter the house, and why the mother scolds the child when it picks a potato chip off the floor and eats it. The floor is “dirty” even though it has just been washed, and the instant a piece of food touches it, the food becomes dirty.

On the other hand, in Japan the people believe the floor is clean. Therefore they take their shoes off at the door, and sleep and sit on mats on the floor. When we walk into their home with our shoes on, they feel much like we do when someone walks on our couch with their shoes on.”

(Crucial Dimensions on World Evangelisation, Arthur F. Glasser, Paul G. Hiebert C Peter Wagner, Ralph D. Winter. William Carey Library 1980 pg 48-49)