subject: Sky is limitless or boundary is limitless [print this page] Sky is limitless or Boundary is limitlesswhich is better for Japanese?
Japanese generally envision, when he or she is told that "sky is limitless", that the sky is over some established paradigm (see the picture below), where the paradigm is give by someone else. As a result, he or she takes it for granted that the paradigm is something that can not be touched or changed, leading to a tendency to endeavor to make improvements only within the same paradigm, and never imagine to change the paradigm per se or push the boundary instead, where paradigm has, for Japanese, a connotation of standards.
(Here should bea schematic drawing representing the foregoing message, but due to system constraint, the drawing is omitted.)
This schematic representation of mentality of Japanese in general explains some of the peculiar behavior of Japanese business enterprise to open its own new shop in the vicinity of a competing store or shop which has been doing the same business in the same neighborhood, even right next to the latter, in an extreme case.
Europeans, especially Americans, on the contrary, never think that the paradigm remains the same all the time, and considers that the paradigm should be revised or changed from time to time to accommodate its own customers. This mentality is depicted schematically in the right hand side of the attached drawing, where each party pushes the paradigm boundary in the direction of its own interest and endeavors to excel in the newly formed paradigm.
