[Blog] Institutional Experience and Interpersonal Experience — Two Points of Contact That Shape Trust —

2026-08-20

1. Where Does Trust Begin?

Trust does not arise from ideals alone. People use institutions, interact with others, and understand society through these concrete experiences. This is true for both foreign and Japanese residents. An administrative procedure may have been easy to understand. An employer may have kept its promises. A neighbor may have offered help in a difficult situation. Conversely, there may have been no explanation, treatment may have seemed unfair, or communication with another person may have failed. As such experiences accumulate, trust or distrust toward society begins to take shape.

The Balanced Coexistence Model divides these experiences broadly into two categories. The first is “institutional experience,” and the second is “interpersonal experience.” Institutional experience refers to what people encounter when dealing with systems such as public administration, employment, social insurance, banking, housing, and education. Interpersonal experience refers to what people encounter in relationships with specific individuals, including supervisors, colleagues, public officials, neighbors, support providers, and foreign residents.

These two forms of experience are different, but they cannot be separated. Institutions become visible through the people who operate them, while human relationships are strongly influenced by institutional conditions. To understand how trust is formed, we must therefore consider both institutions and interpersonal relationships.

2. Institutional Experience Creates Trust in Institutions

Institutional experience is the practical sense of how an institution actually works for the individual. Necessary information was clear when an application was submitted. Answers to inquiries were consistent. Eligibility requirements for benefits could be understood. When a problem arose, the person knew where to seek assistance. Experiences such as these gradually create trust in institutions.

Conversely, distrust develops when explanations differ depending on the office or official, the reasons behind procedures remain unclear, the status of an application cannot be understood, or no one appears willing to take responsibility for providing an answer. People do not evaluate institutions only by reading statutes and regulations. They evaluate them through actual use: whether they could understand the system, anticipate what would happen, and rely upon it when necessary.

Trust in institutions is therefore formed not merely by the existence of laws or by the ideals behind them, but by the quality of institutional experience received by those who use them.

3. Interpersonal Experience Creates Trust in People

Interpersonal experience, by contrast, is formed through relationships with specific individuals. When foreign residents are considered only in the abstract, they may appear simply as members of the broad category of “foreigners.” Yet when people work together, talk, cooperate, make mistakes, and help one another, the other person gradually ceases to be a category and becomes an individual.

For both Japanese and foreign residents, interpersonal experiences strongly influence perceptions of society. If a foreign worker repeatedly keeps promises, takes responsibility for work, and helps colleagues, trust in that individual develops. If a Japanese supervisor provides careful explanations, offers assistance when problems arise, and treats foreign employees fairly, the foreign employee's perception of Japanese society may also change.

Interpersonal trust develops not from nationality as an attribute, but from accumulated concrete behavior. What matters is not simply who the other person is, but how that person acts.

4. Good Institutions Alone Cannot Create Trust When Human Relationships Fail

Even when institutions are formally well designed, trust in society is difficult to develop if interpersonal experiences are poor. Labor laws and social insurance systems, for example, may provide appropriate protections, but if a workplace supervisor provides no explanation and treats foreign workers with contempt, those workers may come to distrust not only the supervisor but the broader system around them.

The same applies to public administration. Multilingual guidance may be institutionally available, but if a person encounters dismissive or unfriendly treatment at a service counter, their perception may be shaped more strongly by that immediate experience than by the principles behind the system. Because institutions are implemented through people, institutional design alone is insufficient.

Designing trustworthy institutions therefore requires attention to the behavior of the people who operate them. Methods of explanation, consultation practices, workplace training, and mechanisms for preventing discriminatory treatment all form part of institutional experience.

5. Kind People Alone Cannot Create Stability When Institutions Fail

The reverse is also true. Even where interpersonal relationships are positive, trust cannot easily be sustained if institutions remain opaque or unpredictable. A foreign resident may have a supportive supervisor and friendly neighbors, but if the outcome of residence procedures is difficult to predict, access to a bank account is unexpectedly restricted, or social insurance procedures cannot be understood, stable daily life becomes difficult.

Individual goodwill is important. Yet a society dependent solely upon goodwill is unstable. Treatment may change when the person in charge changes, and those who happen not to encounter a helpful individual may never receive the support they need.

This is why the Balanced Coexistence Model places such importance on institutions. Society should not depend on the possibility of meeting a kind person. It should create mechanisms that guarantee a certain level of explanation and fair treatment regardless of who is responsible. By supporting interpersonal trust through institutions, individual goodwill can be transformed into broader social trust.

6. Institutional and Interpersonal Experiences Influence Each Other

Institutional and interpersonal experiences do not exist independently. Suppose friction develops between foreign workers and Japanese employees. The cause may not simply be personality or cultural differences. Institutional problems may be contributing to the conflict: the company may have failed to define responsibilities clearly, workplace rules may not have been sufficiently explained, or differences in treatment may have been left unexplained.

Conversely, appropriate institutional arrangements can improve interpersonal relationships. When roles are clear, evaluation criteria are fair, consultation channels exist when problems arise, and everyone understands the same rules, unnecessary suspicion toward others is less likely to develop.

Positive institutional experiences therefore make positive interpersonal experiences more likely. Positive interpersonal experiences, in turn, reinforce confidence in institutions. Through this interaction, trust can expand beyond particular encounters and begin to shape perceptions of society as a whole.

7. One Negative Experience Can Expand into Distrust of Society

People sometimes extend a single experience into a broader judgment about an entire group or institution. A single conflict with a foreign resident may lead someone to conclude that “foreigners cannot be trusted.” Similarly, inappropriate treatment at one government office may lead a foreign resident to conclude that “Japanese public administration cannot be trusted.”

Such generalization is understandable as a feature of human cognition. Yet when a single experience is extended to an entire group, prejudice and distrust can become fixed. What matters when a problem occurs is to separate its causes among the individual, organization, institution, and surrounding environment.

Was the other person's conduct the problem? Was the institution inadequate? Was information insufficient? Did misunderstandings exist on both sides? By distinguishing among these possibilities, society can prevent a single unsuccessful experience from being transformed into generalized distrust.

8. One Positive Experience Can Also Change Social Perception

The same principle applies to positive experiences. Someone who has had little previous contact with foreign residents may change their perceptions after working with a trustworthy foreign colleague. A foreign resident may likewise develop a different understanding of Japanese society after receiving help from Japanese colleagues or neighbors.

Such experiences may appear small. Yet unlike abstract information, they carry the force of personally experienced reality. When impressions obtained from news or social media conflict with direct experience, people gain an opportunity to reconsider their previous assumptions.

Social integration should therefore not seek to require people to feel positively toward foreign residents. What matters is creating opportunities for people to cooperate, observe one another's behavior, and form judgments through their own experiences.

9. Institutions Create the Conditions for Positive Interpersonal Experience

Institutions cannot force people to trust one another. They can, however, create conditions under which positive interpersonal experiences are more likely to occur.

Workplaces can clarify roles and responsibilities. Community rules can be explained in advance in understandable ways. Necessary information about institutional and cultural differences can be provided not only to foreign residents but also to Japanese residents. When problems occur, a fair third party can provide consultation and mediation. Such institutional conditions reduce unnecessary friction and create more opportunities to understand others as concrete individuals.

The role of institutions is therefore not limited to managing people. Institutions can reduce the causes of deteriorating relationships and increase the likelihood that cooperation will succeed.

10. Two Pathways to Trust

The argument so far suggests that trust develops through two pathways.

Institutional experience creates trust in institutions. When explanations can be understood, administration is consistent, outcomes are reasonably predictable, and mistakes can be corrected when necessary, institutions become something on which people can rely.

Interpersonal experience creates trust in people. When behaviors such as keeping promises, explaining clearly, cooperating with others, and correcting mistakes are repeated, people develop a sense of predictability toward one another.

When these two forms of trust overlap, trust in society itself begins to emerge. Institutions are experienced as fair, and people are experienced as generally trustworthy. When such experiences are repeated, society itself comes to be perceived as something on which people can reasonably rely.

11. Balanced Coexistence Means Designing Experience

The Balanced Coexistence Model is not concerned only with designing laws and institutions. It is a model of social design that also asks what kinds of experiences people will have through those institutions.

Foreign residents should be able to use institutions they can understand. Japanese residents should be able to understand the purposes and rules governing the acceptance of foreign residents. Both should be able to cooperate in workplaces and communities under fair conditions. Even when problems occur, there should be ways to identify their causes, make corrections, and rebuild relationships. The accumulation of such institutional and interpersonal experiences creates trust.

Trust in institutions alone is insufficient, and trust in people alone is also insufficient. Even positive institutional experiences cannot eliminate social distrust if interpersonal experiences remain poor. Likewise, positive interpersonal experiences cannot ensure predictability in life if institutional experiences remain unstable.

Trust in institutions grows from institutional experience. Trust in people grows from interpersonal experience. Trust in society emerges where these two forms of experience overlap.

A balanced coexistence society is therefore not simply a society in which different people occupy the same space. It is a society in which positive institutional and interpersonal experiences are repeatedly accumulated, enabling people to develop reasonable trust in both institutions and one another.