Curious About…Politeness.
Every time I come to Japan I notice a change in my own behavior. To state up front, I am English and was brought up by my Scottish mother to have very good manners, but over the years, I have become a bit sloppy, perhaps occasionally dashing out of the elevator before those before me or not holding the door for someone, but when I am here, I immediately tidy up after myself, fold my clothes, never leave the towels scattered on the floor or half-eaten scraps of room service on a tray stashed outside my hotel room. Here in Japan, I respond to the overall elevated politeness by being extra-polite myself. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the connection between a country’s dominant cultural behaviors and its economic prosperity.
The Japanese word Omoiyari in simple terms means: “having a thoughtful and sympathetic regard for others.” Sugiyama Lebra, author of the book “Japanese Patterns of Behavior” defines Omoiyari as “the ability and willingness to feel what others are feeling, to vicariously experience the pleasure or pain that they are undergoing, and to help them satisfy their wishes…without being told verbally.”
Sociologists like Kikuchi Akio have pointed out that although Omoiyari-based behavior and activity are seen across cultures, Japanese people are the ones who put the highest value on Omoiyari all over the world. In his 2006 paper titled “The Concept of Omoiyari (Altruistic Sensitivity) in Japanese Relational Communication”, Kazuya Hara of Meikan University, Japan writes, “To have a sense of omoiyari and to behave with omoiyari are regarded as ideal communication in Japanese society”. He quotes a survey by the Ministry of Education in Japan cited in the Yomiuri-shimbun in 1994, according to which elementary and junior high school teachers in Japan answered that they put the highest value on Omoiyari in moral education. Additionally, he quotes that in a survey on child-birth in Japan by the Yomiuri-shimbun in 2005, 86.7% of the parents expected their children to be a child with Omoiyari.
In his article: “Omoiyari - A Japanese Lesson, Tshering Cigay Dorji states: “Anticipating the other’s needs and desires without being explicitly told is referred to as “kuuki o yomu” in Japanese. It means ‘reading the atmosphere’. Reading the atmosphere is considered very important in a Japanese social setting. A person who cannot read the atmosphere in a given situation is called “KY” derived from the phrase “kuuki yomenai” meaning ‘unable to read the atmosphere’. The term “KY” is said to have been first used by high school girls in their cell phone mails and has recently come into popular usage. Generally, Japanese are very sensitive people. I think this is because they read the atmosphere. For instance, if they visit your house and they sense that you are kind of busy, they very gracefully take their leave of you before it becomes uncomfortable for both the host and visitor.”
What Of It? I’m going to quickly state the obvious here - it’s pretty clear to most of us that having good manners is, on a simple, human empathic level, a life skill worth cultivating and having. What I am more interested in is the effect that his has more broadly on a culture - I am not Japanese but I am convinced that there has to be some positive economic effect of a nation simply being, well nice to itself. Whilst queuing quietly, allowing people to speak rather than interrupting, being punctual and bowing in respect seem like charming, otherworldy customs, the cumulative effect of doing them all the time has to reap positive rewards. Many countries in the the world are looking at new ways to measure themselves - we have Bhtuan’s famed GNH (Gross National Happiness) system that many are trying in some way to emulate, as well as various “soft power” metrics - innovation, prosperity, peacefulness, etc, but I wonder if the concept of a Global Omoiyari Index needs to be more widely upheld - the simple economic value of being polite.
I Am Curious about cultural traditions and the values that they instill, how those can be transferred elsewhere and what we can learn from them, about simple and human expressions that one one hand seem simple, on the other, deeply meaningful.
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