 everybody to looking to the east. I'm your host Steve Zercher. Thank you very much for viewing our program today. We have a very special topic that we're exploring having to do with cross-cultural living in Japan. Specifically, we're going to be looking at cross-cultural relationships, marriages, and I have for the second time on my show, Dr. Reggie Paul, who's a practicing clinical psychologist, a counselor, and focuses on cross-cultural matters, specifically on cross-cultural marriages and so forth. So we have an expert on this topic joining us today. Reggie, good morning to you and thank you very much. Yeah, very much for participating. Now, in full disclosure, I think it's important for me to point out that both of us are involved in cross-cultural marriage. It's both of us are married to Japanese women. I've been married for 20, it'll be 24 years now, to my lovely wife. And Reggie, how long have you been married? 14. 14 and counting. So between the two of us, we have decades worth of experience, but mostly we're going to rely on Reggie's clinical research and his observations of cross-cultural relationships because he often counsels couples that are in cross-cultural relationships that need assistance. Okay, so Reggie, why don't we just start with the basic understanding of what you perceive the differences being between a non-cross-cultural marriage. I guess we can look at American to American or Japanese to Japanese and then a mixed marriage like the ones that you and I are in where there's a foreigner and a Japanese partner. Okay. Well, I think the first thing to consider is that you've got two cultures. When you have a cross-cultural marriage, you've got people coming from two different cultures. And so you've got a, in this particular case, you have somebody who's a native Japanese person and then somebody who's a native from another country. And culture is, how do I say, is a very nebulous thing. It's hard to say exactly what culture is, but you can see the effects of culture in a lot of different ways. And how the culture affects relationships, how people do relationships is very much influenced by culture. Yeah, so Reggie, when I lived abroad in Japan when I was a student, so I went through the cultivation process and then later met my wife and my future wife and then we got married. So I was somewhat aware of that. How aware do you think couples are when they begin dating? Let's say an expat comes to Japan or sometimes military people because we have military marriages as well. How aware are they of these issues? My sense is that they're generally not aware of these cultural profound impacts. I would agree with that. And part of the reason for that is because culture, culture is something that you grow up within but you don't, you just learn it kind of by Osmosis by being in the middle of it. You don't think about it. It's not intentional. It just kind of happens. And so there's a lot of things that are part of culture that are just, one culture considers normal or just common sense or it's just the way things are done and whatever. And then all of a sudden you go to a different country where they have different culture and they do things differently. And so the result of this, in particularly when you get into a cross-cultural marriage is that you have a lot of surprises that you things that you don't expect because you don't, you never think about it. It's just kind of ordinary in your own culture. So you only find out these things a lot of the time in a cross-cultural marriage when something happens that creates some kind of a issue or conflict or something you're surprised about or whatever it is, something you know there's a lot of different ways that it can come out. Yeah, so marriage itself has its challenges. Clearly it's not, if you look at it Reggie, I wouldn't consider it to be a successful institution because when it comes to Japanese to Japanese marriages, we were talking before we went on air that the divorce rate there is 38% of the time. So if you bought a car and it failed 38% of the time, it would be taken off the market. And then for foreign and Japanese divorces, the number is slightly higher at about 48% according to what you told me. And then for the Americans that are viewing, is that correct, 48%? 44, 44. 44%. Sorry. So I'm just a little bit higher, six points higher. And then for the Americans that are viewing this, we are divorce rate is easily 50%. So you have this institution where there are challenges built into it already, even for couples where there isn't this cross-cultural issue. So how does the cross-cultural issues, what are some specific examples that you can think of of how the cross-cultural issues compound the challenges of being in a successful marriage? Well, to begin with, I think that one of the basics of culture is values. You learn your values growing up in the culture, values of what you consider to be important. And people have different values about relative to things in marriage. So things like communication, how to do communication, what's important about communication, all the basics of life in a marriage, having the money, living together, the daily routines, sex of course. In cultural surveys, one of the biggest issues that comes up is food. Wow. Doesn't everybody love Japanese food, Richie? Well, if part of it is, yeah, right, part of not everybody loves Japanese food. Part of it is the food itself, but the other part of it is how you do food. Do you sit together? Do you have meals together? Do you talk during meals? Do you not? In some cultures, they separate the men and the women, or they separate the adults and the children, or there's a lot of different ways that you can, when do you eat? All of these different kinds of things are all influenced by culture. So there can be food, it often surprises people, but food is often one of the things that people have issues with in cross-cultural marriage. People get very attached to their kind of food. And how you do food? I see. So given the stresses that are in the marriage, what other kind of focal points come up in a cross-cultural marriage? What are the major stumbling blocks? Food is one of them. Are there other expectations? What you expect of your partner to do? And what you expect, how to handle stress, or how to handle this, all that kind of stuff. Relationships with other people, including family, friends, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, things like this, they come up, I would say raising children, because a lot of cultural aspects to it, and there are often conflicts between Japanese and non-Japanese about how to raise children. A lot of people don't like the foreigners, don't like the Japanese educational system, so this becomes an issue. It sounds like there's a lot of challenges here. Well, indeed. Well, let's look at some of the beneficial aspects of this. I guess we've talked a little bit about some of the challenges. I only have the one marriage that I can reference in my own life, but I think being married to a non-American does provide a cultural richness. I guess it's the opposite side of what we've been talking about so far. There are certainly challenges in terms of differences in values and practices and so forth, but it's also interesting to be married to an individual who does see the world in a different way. Do you agree with that? I would agree with that. So if you agree with the diversity view of life, then living a cross-cultural marriage is very much a part of that, and in that sense it becomes, I say to people, you need to like adventure. You need to like new ways of doing things, looking at things in different kinds of ways. One of the basic things that I think that is required, I mean it's always required in any marriage, I think, but even more in a cross-cultural marriage is flexibility and willingness to consider other viewpoints, other ways of doing things and so on, that kind of thing. So I think that cross-cultural marriages are part of the future of the world if we're going to survive. I wanted to talk with you about that too. I'm referencing a movie called Halfo. This is a movie made about 10 years ago. It's about the children of cross-cultural marriages, and they excited some statistics. Now this is a little bit old, but the number of intercultural marriages in Japan is significantly increasing. In fact, in our region in Kansai, if I remember correctly, it was about 10%. Really? Wow. Yeah, and also that these families, cross-cultural families, are producing more children on average than Japanese families, as everybody knows, they're very low. The demographics in this country are very depressing. So why do you think that's happening, Reggie? Do you have any insight? Also, we both taught at Kansai Gaida University, which is a foreign language school, so we often saw many mixed couples. Traditionally, it's the foreign man and Japanese woman, but that's changing too. I think you see more couples where it's the Japanese man and the foreign woman that are dating. Do you have any ideas on why cross-cultural relationships and cross-cultural marriages are becoming more accepted or more popular in Japan now? I don't know. If I have anything particular idea, it's just the way the world is going. There's more interaction with other cultures and so on. The world is becoming much more in spite of all the resistance to it in the world. The world is becoming much more interactive. Information exchange, well, pre-pandemic, the ability to go to so many different places that my parents hardly ever traveled outside the US when I was a kid. Now people do it all the time or used to do it and probably will again. There's just a lot more of the world that's becoming more interactive. I visited this CEO just a few weeks ago. He's probably maybe in his 60s, so he got married to a foreign woman probably 20 years ago and his family disowned him. His father said, if you marry this foreign woman, who's very attractive, by the way, he showed me her picture, we will kick you out of the family. And he, to his credit, at least from my perspective, he married her anyway and he was kicked out of his family. That happens. I mean, this is one of the possible stresses that there are a lot of, there are stresses in any marriage. It's just that I think you have more options and opportunities for stress in a cross-cultural marriage because of these kinds of things. It's still two people together and I know some people who claim that a cross-cultural marriage is no different from any other marriage. I don't agree with that. I do too, but some people think this. In my experience, the people who think this are the ones who are the same culture person. In other words, in Japan and not Japanese, the people who think that it's the Japanese people who tend to think that way. But the foreigners doing all this, if you're living in Japan, you've got all this constant adaptation to Japan as a culture, things that are not normal to you, things that you get used to, that you adapt to and stuff like this. And your spouse is the person who's the expert in Japanese culture. So that creates a little bit of a hierarchical aspect in the marriage that you have to deal with. So there's a lot of these kinds of things. Do you find that language is a factor as well? For example, if the foreign partner has very strong Japanese skills, maybe the cross-cultural stresses are less as opposed to a foreign partner where maybe their Japanese is not so good? Yeah, I think that every couple develops their couple language. And whether it's basically, it's usually one language or the other, the native language or the foreign language, but there's always some kind of mixture into it. Communication, I think, is very important. It's one of the basic stresses in a cross-cultural marriage because it's when you have stresses, when you have difficulties and stuff, you tend to revert to your learned experience from your past. And if your ways of dealing with stress are different and how you communicate these things is different or has differences, then it becomes very challenging. So you've been to Hawaii and I've been there as well. It's when I see same culture couples in Hawaii, when you see a white woman with a white guy or a black woman with a black guy, it's like, what's going on there? That's the exception to the rules. So Hawaii has mixed culture marriages. I mean, that seems to be from my observation the common pattern, but then they're probably Americans. So even though they made me mixed ethnicity, they still have more or less the same cultural background, unless they're immigrants and so forth. So I guess there's the challenge of cross-cultural marriages in Japan, which would be much, much more distinct and stronger than as opposed to cross-cultural or cross-ethnicity marriages in Hawaii. Well, the person who comes from the foreign country has done some adaptation to American culture as well as Hawaiian culture. So the basis is different than when you're having a cross-cultural marriage in Japan or any other country. Okay. So let's say you have a couple that's in therapy with you right now. How do you help them understand these issues or maybe what advice would you give to people who are viewing this show that maybe are dating a Japanese woman or a foreign woman or a foreign man for that matter? What would you suggest that they think about or do in order to increase the chances of the relationship being successful if it's something that they're thinking about long term? Well, some of this is just basic communication. You need to be able to express yourself as well as hear and have empathy for the other person's position. So this is just kind of, I mean, working with couples, this is one of the basic things that I do is that I just is just trying to be able to listen and say your piece and listen to the other person at the same time, you know, which is a challenge. So this is one of the, this is a basic thing that I do when I'm working with couples. Part of it is just awareness. A lot of the time people get into these things and they don't think it's cultural and they get into a spat or something, you know, some kind of difficulty or whatever it might be and they don't think it's cultural. Just kind of, they just, it doesn't occur to them. Sometimes I'll point things out if I see things that are cultural and so on. Sometimes the cultural thing is obvious, but basically I say you need flexibility. You know, you have to appeal to the, I kind of appealing to the kind of person you need to be to have a successful relationship, you know, you need to have a diversity point of view. Patience, the try, language ability is important. The more you can improve your language and the other person's, each other's language, the easier it's going to be. You know, basic things in life like money, you know, and raising children, these kinds of things, how you live in a daily basis, these sort of things, you know, you need to, you need to sort things things out. I usually say to people that you need to meet in the middle. You have two people, but this is true in any relationship. You have two people who have differences and you've got to find that place in between in the relationship to meet in the relationship and that's what people need to do. Particularly, there's, I think there's, you have it in any relationship but in a cross-cultural relationship you have more of that. So getting back to the divorce statistics, they do seem to be a little higher in the US and also with mixed couples, but a little bit lower for Japanese, Japanese, although it's increasing. Reggie, I remember when the, it was 20% in Japan, so it's changed over the last 20 years or so. It doubled almost. Yeah, exactly. And also when you talk to Japanese people, they have no idea that the divorce rate is as high as it is because there's still this perception that when people get married they tend not to want to divorce or society kind of frowns upon it or certainly if there's children, it's almost impossible from a societal perspective to consider it, although obviously more and more Japanese people are doing it. But you noted that to me before we came on air that even though the divorce rate is higher, there are other differences in terms of why people stay married and so forth. So we talked about having affairs. Well, the divorce rate is higher than it used to be, but it's still lower than what it is in the US. Oh yes, right, correct. And my take on that is that I don't, from, this is just anecdotal evidence just my own personal experience in talking to other Japanese people. It's not statistics, but I think that the percentage of good marriages and bad marriages is about the same in both countries. It's just that Americans get divorced quicker or more or whatever than Japanese people do. And Japanese people tend to stay married more when they have a bad marriage than Americans do. That's my take on it. And there's lots of reasons for why Japanese tend to stay married. It has to, but one of the basic reasons is the culture is that you're supposed to stay married. And they don't think in terms of divorce in a lot of situations, they don't think of it as an option. So how they, but then you end up, it's common for me to meet Japanese people who say, I've got a bad marriage. I'm not my wife or my husband is blah, blah, blah, you know, but we never socialize together. We never do things together. It's like they have a separate life outside the house. And one of the results of this I think is that a fair rate is higher in Japan than it is in the US. I don't have any statistics for that, but that's just my personal talk. I've met more people who are doing this kind of thing in Japan than they stay married because they think they have to. That'd be tied into the defined gender roles that exist in Japan. The role of a man historically is to work and be a provider. And I don't know if it's so true today, but when I was working in the corporate world here in Japan, men identified with their companies more than they identified with their families. That was for sure. Like I'm a Hitachi guy, or I'm a Sumitomo guy. And women's role, I think it's a cultural tent tends to enforce it as a mother and participating in the family. Again, that's changing because there are more women working, but still those cultural patterns still are out there. So maybe this dual life that you're talking about is links to the definition that the culture is setting for what a man should do in society and what a female should do. A woman should do in society. No, I think that's true. Traditionally, the basis of Japanese marriages is family and function. I think it's more of a functional approach to marriage. You do this, roles, and so on. You do this, I do that. Whereas you talk to people in America, in the West, and they feel like that the basis of a marriage is love, often that's one of the things that we'll say. But you don't find that in Japan. Even today, that's rare. I remember once talking with a couple and the man told me all their problems and so on. And then at the end of it, he goes, well, as long as we love each other, we'll be able to get through all of this stuff. And I turned to his wife and I said, what do you think of that? And she hadn't even been listening, so I told her what she said. And I said, do you agree with that? Do you think love is what's going to get through all this? And she said, absolutely not. Wow. No. And I said to her, well, what is going to get through all of it? And she says, well, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it, but I know it's not love. And that's kind of one of the differences, the emotional. I think there's more distance in relationships in Japan. The Tina Turner song is appropriate here. What's love got to do with it? Tina Turner becomes a national idol, right? So Reggie, we're quickly, we're unfortunately running out of time. This went by so quickly. Do you have any recommendations on resources for individuals who are thinking about to cross-cultural relationship or are in one currently? If you need counseling, you can contact Reggie. If you're in a marriage and you're having some issues, or even if you're not, you can... See, this is, I mean, books like this, it says intercultural marriage, promise and pitfall. This book is, oh, it's quite, it's like maybe 20 years old now. I've had it for a long time. But there are books like this that are, it's published by the intercultural press, and it's in the US. And it's not just about, it's about intercultural marriages, issues that come up all around the world. But there are plenty of books, other books, like this. And I mean, so this is one, this is definitely another book. I mean, this is more cultural specific, but this is really for people who, this is for Thais and Western marriages, Thailand fever, right? It's really excellent for the, between the marriages between the two cultures. I mean, between Thai and Western culture. I didn't mention in the intro that Reggie worked at a Thai university for three years. So he has a cultural living experience in Thailand as well. Hey, Reggie, we just have one minute. I got a question that came in. Question, I guess for both of us, would you recommend a cross-cultural marriage? Oh, absolutely. Me too. Despite all the fitfalls and challenges that we talked about over the last It's just that you need to have an open mind and you need to ask questions, because all of the surprises that happen, particularly like in Japan, after you get married, it's very common for the non-Japanese spouse to find out things about their Japanese spouse that they didn't expect. Like one guy was telling me the other day. He did. He never knew his wife had OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. She never told him after they got married. I see. And that's the kind of thing that happens. They consider personal information. They don't tell anybody. They don't tell anybody until they get married. And all of a sudden you realize, like this particular person did, you realize he was in this situation where he's going to have to deal with it. And he didn't have any choice at that point. Interesting. All right, Reggie. Well, thank you so much. This has been interesting. And for any of you who are interested in contacting Reggie, I guess Reggie, they can Google your name. Do you have a website? Yeah, I have a website. Yes. Okay, great. So you can contact if he lives in Kyoto, Japan, but he does counseling also remotely. I mean, he started doing that, I guess, through COVID as everybody has done so. So you can reach him even if you're not in Japan, if you'd like to gain his expertise. All right. So that's the end of our show. Thank you so much, Reggie, once again on talking about this interesting topic. And I'll see you guys all in... I'm not actually... The next show is on Memorial Day, so we'll miss that. So I'll see you in a month or so, and we'll have another interesting topic about looking to the east. Thank you, everyone.