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Compiling a list of cultural values, beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions would be an almost endless and quite unrewarding endeavor.
Writers in the field of intercultural communication have generally adopted the concept of value orientations suggested by Florence Kluckhohn and Fred
Strodtbeck (1961).

In setting forth a value orientation approach to cross-cultural variation, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961:10) pointed out that such a theory was based upon three assumptions:

1. There are a limited number of human problems to which all cultures must find solutions.

2. The limited number of solutions may be charted along a range or
Continuum of variations.

3. Certain solutions are favored by members in any given culture group but all potential solutions are present in every culture.

In their schema, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck suggested that values around five universal human problems involving man's relationship to the environment, human nature, time, activity, and human interaction. The authors further proposed that the orientations of any society could be charted along these dimensions. Although variability could be found within a group, there were always dominant or preferred positions. Culture- specific profiles could be constructed. Such profiles should not be regarded as statements about individual behavior, but rather as tendencies around which social behavioral norms rules values, beliefs, and assumptions are clustered. As such, they might influence individual behavior as other cultural givens do; like other rules, they may be broken, changed, or ignored.

In the Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck classification, three focal points in the range of variations are posited for each type of orientation. In the man-to-nature continuum variations range from a position of human mastery over nature, to harmony with nature, to subjugation to nature. Most industrialized societies represent the mastery orientation; the back-to- nature counterculture of young adults during the 1960s and 1970s, the harmonious stance; and many peasant populations, the subjugation orientation.

The time dimension offers stops at the past, present, and future.
Human nature orientation is charted along a continuum stretching from good to evil with some of both in the middle. The activity orientation moves from doing to being-becoming to being. Finally, the relational orientation ranges from the individual to the group with concern with the continuation of the group, as an intermediate focal point.

Value orientations only represent" good guesses" about why people act the way they do. Statements made or scales constructed are only part of an
"as if" game. That is to say, people act as if they believed in a given set of value. Because the individuals in any cultural group exhibit great variation, any of the orientations suggested might well be found in nearly every culture. It is the general pattern that is sought. Value orientations are important to us as intercultural communicators because often whatever one believes, values, and assumes are the crucial factors in communication.

CONTRASTIVE ORIENTATlONS

Let us take some American cultural patterns that have been identified as crucial in cross-cultural communication and consider what assumptions, values, and attitudes support them. Edward C. Stewart was a pioneer in examining such American behavior in a cross-cultural perspective. His book
- American Cultural Patterns. This book describes dominant characteristics of middle class Americans. Stewart distinguishes between cultural assumptions and values and what he called cultural norms. Cultural norms are explicit a repeatedly invoked by people to describe or justify their actions. They represent instances in which the behavior and the value attached to it seem at odds. Stewart writes, “Because cultural norms are related to behavior as cliches, rituals or as cultural platitudes, they provide inaccurate descriptions of behavior”. He points out that Americans are devoted to the concept of self-reliance but accept social security, borrow money, and expect a little help from their friends. Culture bearers are usually more aware of their cultural norms than their systems of values and assumptions. As Stewart explains, "being fundamental to the individual's outlook, they [the assumptions and values] are likely to be considered as a part of the real world and therefore remain unquestioned".

Table 1, illustrates some of the general value orientations identified with North Americans. The left-hand column indicates what the polar point of the orientational axis might represent. The Contrast American column does not describe any particular culture, but rather represents an opposite orientation. Of course, the American profile is drawn in broad strokes and describes the mainstream culture; ethnic diversity is of necessity blurred in this sweeping treatment.

Thus, with the reservations noted above, it can be said that in the relationship of human beings and nature, Americans assume and thus value and believe in doing something about environmental problems. Nature can and should be changed. In addition, change is right and good and to be encouraged. That toe pace of change has increased to a bewildering point in the United States at the present time presents problems, but, as yet, change has not been seen as particularly detrimental.

Equality of opportunity is linked to individualism, lack of rigid hierarchies informality, and other cultural givens. It is manifested in
American laws regarding social conduct, privacy, and opportunity. This contrasts with an ascriptive social order in which class and birth provide the bases for social control and interaction.

The achievement orientation calls for assessment of personal achievement, a latter-day Horatio Alger (Lee Iacocca) orientation. A future orientation is joined to the positive value accorded change and action.
Directness and openness are contrasted to a more consensus-seeking approach in which group harmony is placed above solving problems.

Cause-and-effect logic joined to a problem-solving orientation and a pragmatic approach to problems defines the much-vaunted scientific method.
Intuition and other approaches to evidence, fact, and "truth" are associated with being orientations and philosophical approaches to knowledge and knowing. Competition and a do-it-yourself approach to life are well served by a future orientation, individualism, and the desire for change.

The statements above simply point out some very general orientations that have driven and, to some degree, still guide North American society.
Change is always in the air. Many have pointed out, as Stewart himself does, that these orientations represent white middle class American values.
They do. They serve the purpose, however, of providing a frame of reference for cross-cultural comparison.

Table 2 offers a contrastive look at some American and Japanese values.

Such culture-specific contrast alerts us to the need to examine our cultural values and assumptions from the perspective of others. As one studies the dimensions of contrast, one cannot help but marvel at the communication that does take place despite such diversity. Okabe, in drawing upon Japanese observations about some well-known American values, reveals a new perspective to us. For example, the bamboo whisk and octopus pot metaphors refer to a reaching out tendency in the United States as opposed to the drawing inward of the Japanese.

Omote means outside and omote / ura combines both the inside and outside world. In the heterogeneous, egalitarian, sasara-type, doing, pushing culture of the United States, there is no distinction between the omote and the ura aspects of culture. In the hierarchical takotsubo-type, being, pulling culture of Japan, a clear-cut distinction should always be made between the omote and the ura dimensions of culture, the former being public, formal, and conventional, and the latter private, informal, and unconventional. The Japanese tend to conceive of the ura world as being more real, more meaningful.

Interpersonal relationships contrast on the basis of the role of the individual and group interaction. Japanese patterns are characterized by formality and complementary relationships that stress the value of dependence or amae. Amae is the key to understanding Japanese society. The concept of amae underlies the Japanese emphasis on the group over the individual, the acceptance of constituted authority, and the stress on particularistic rather than universalistic relationships. In the homogenous, vertical society of Japan the dominant value is conformity to or identity with the group. The Japanese insist upon the insignificance of the individual. Symmetrical relationships focus on the similarities of individuals; complementary relationships exploit differences in age, sex, role and status. There are many ways in which the Japanese publicly acknowledge a social hierarchy-in the use of language, in seating arrangements at social gatherings, in bowing to one another and hundreds of others. Watch Japanese each other and the principles will become quite apparent. Notice who bows lower, who waits for the other to go first, who apologizes more: (1) younger defers to older; (2) female defers to male;
(3) student defers to teacher; (4); the seller's bow is lower than the buyer's; and (6) in a school club or organization where ranks are fixed, the lower ranked is, of course, subordinate. These features of interpersonal relationships lead to an emphasis on the public self in the
United States and on the private self in Japan, Americans being more open in the demonstration of personal feelings and attitudes than the Japanese.

Let us look to this question in detail.

JAPANESE INTERPERSONAL NORMS

Numerous studies by social scientists of national character or culture have appeared in recent years, initially as a response to the need for knowledge of enemy countries in World War II. Most of these studies have is asked a substantive question: what is the nature of the behavior shared by all, or a majority, of the members of a national society? Once this shared behavior is "discovered," its written description becomes an outline of the national culture of that country. This approach has been extensively criticized on the grounds that the behavior of the members of any complex society is so variable that any attempt to describe the shared items results in superficial generalization. Critics have also pointed out that descriptions of national cultures frequently consist of statements of norms only, and do not denote actual behavior.

At this point in the account of our own research it is necessary to raise questions about the nature of national cultures. However, we shall not attempt to claim that our answer to these will be valid for all members of the Japanese nation. We do claim validity for our own subjects and are also willing to guess that much of what we say will apply to the majority of Japanese men who were socialized in prewar and wartime Japan in families of the middle and upper income brackets. We shall not claim that our subjects necessarily behaved in the manner suggested, for the description itself pertains to norms or principles and not to behavior. In a subsequent section we shall provide a description and analysis of the behavior of our subjects with reference to these norms.

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