In Japanese, there’s a four kanji idiom that really confirms this theory for me: 以心伝心, or ishin denshin. One of the more accurate translations of ishin denshin is something like “what the mind thinks, the heart transmits,” but what does it actually mean?
Some people call ishin denshin a kind of telepathy which, while dramatic, is functionally similar. While the end result of telepathy and ishin denshin may seem similar, the process is obviously different.
Whereas telepathy uses some kind of unexplained (or poorly explained) supernatural power to probe another person’s mind, ishin denshin is fairly lazy; it works on the premise that everybody’s on the same page. You don’t need to read somebody’s mind because the two of you have a shared set of assumptions, as anybody in a high context culture would.
Ishin denshin isn’t the only concept like this in Japanese culture—another, similar similar concept, haragei (腹芸) covers many of the same principals, but has different applications. Different martial arts use this term to refer to anticipating your opponent’s next move.
(Haragei can also, as I learned while researching this post, refer to “stomach art,” i.e. painting faces on your gut. The more you know!)