Creativity and ways of thinking: the Japanese style

SEP 01, 1981

Nonlinear modes of thought using pattern‐recognition rather than Western “digital” approaches and a highly formalized education contribute to the Japanese scientific method.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2914749

Makoto Kikuchi

The other day I asked a friend of mine, a Frenchman who is the executive officer of a large, well‐known company, what were his first impressions of Japanese people and society. “For me,” he said, “Japanese society is full of contradictions. One day I saw Japanese golfers almost running around the golf course, and this fitted the descriptions of Japanese people I had heard and read. But another time, when I was leaving Japan from Narita International Airport, I found that the Japanese official at the emigration counter was doing his work very, very slowly.”

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References

1. C. J. Lynch, “Thermoelectricity, the breakthrough that never came,” Innovation, page 47 (1972).
2. W. Shockley, in Proc. Conf. on the Public Need and the Role of the Inventor, NBS Special Publication 388, Washington, D.C. (1972).
W. Shockley, IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices ED‐23, 597 (1976).
W. Shockley, W. Gong, Mechanics, Merrill, Columbus, Ohio (1967).

More about the authors

Makoto Kikuchi, Sony Research Center, Yokohama, Japan.