Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

This past week has been Intro Week here in Sheffield, when the new students come up to register and begin to find their way around the university, sign up for elective modules and, begin to make friends with people on their course. Naturally, there were among the crowds, a number who were coming to our department, ready to start their engagement with the Japanese, Chinese and Korean languages. Standing in front of the new Japanese students at their orientation meeting, I remembered back to my own first experiences with Japanese in the mid-1980s, and realised, not for the first time, that I have been engaging with the Japanese language for longer than most of the young people opposite me had been alive.

Thinking back to those first few weeks of Japanese, I wondered what it was about the language that first brought home to me that I was dealing with a system that conceptualised the world in a very different way, and decided that there were probably three things initially: the fact that copula and existential ‘be’ are different verbs; the threefold demonstrative system; and personal pronouns. All of these are examples of areas where Japanese makes finer distinctions than English, and so indicate to English native speakers that some of the solid categories that we take for granted are not so solid after all.

For example, English ‘be’ can be used in two senses: copula – which is a technical way of saying it marks equivalence – and existential – meaning you could replace ‘be’ with ‘exist’. Thus, ‘this is a book’ could be rewritten ‘this=a book’ and ‘the book is on the table’ could be rewritten ‘the book exists on the table’, and the meanings would remain, more or less, the same. In Japanese, these two different senses have different verbs: ‘this is a book’ would be kore wa hon da (これは本だ), while ‘the book is on the table’ would be hon wa teeburu no ue ni aru (本はテーブルの上にある). In Japanese, existential ‘be’ is further subdivided, so you have different verbs depending whether the subject is animate, or not, so ‘the cat is on the table’ would be neko wa teeburu no ue ni iru (猫はテーブルの上にいる). To begin with, it’s confusing for native English speakers, who are used to just using the one verb in all these senses, but you can get your head around it eventually.

Similarly, English demonstratives have a twofold system: here/there, this/that – where the distal one can indicate a range of distances from the speaker from quite close to far away: ‘the building there on the other side of the street’, ‘the building there on the horizon’. Japanese is more precise, having two distal demonstratives – one for things which are quite close, and one for things which are far away: michi no hantaigawa no sono biru (道の反対側のそのビル), chiheisenjō no ano biru (地平線上のあのビル). One of the challenges for learners of Japanese is to know when to switch from ‘nearby there’ to ‘distant there’, but again, you can work it out with experience.

Personal pronouns, however, are much more complicated. I should say at the outset that if you are talking absolutely accurately in linguistic terms that Japanese doesn’t have personal pronouns  - or pronouns at all, for that matter – because of the way its grammar is structured, but that’s too technical a matter to go into here. What matters is that it does have words which speakers can use to refer to themselves, or others – equivalents to English ‘I’ or ‘you’, and so forth – however, the Japanese words all convey considerably more than their English counterparts.

When you first start learning Japanese, the first word for ‘I’ you are likely to be taught is watashi (私). You learn to use it in simple sentences identifying yourself such as watashi wa gakusei desu (私は学生です) ‘I am a student’ and many others. So far, so good. If, however, you have a good ear, and are listening to your (female) teacher talking, you might notice that she says, not watashi, but atashi. Then, you meet a (male) Japanese student, and he says, ‘Boku mo gakusei desu’ (僕も学生です), which you find out means ‘I’m a student, too!’, and then, watching your favourite anime, you hear a (male) character saying, ‘Ore wa tōdaisei da yo’ (俺は東大生だよ), which the subtitles give as ‘I’m a Tokyo U student!’ and you end up completely confused. Why are there all these different words for something which you though was so simple?

The answer is that Japanese ‘personal pronouns’ convey much more information than just a sense of person. They are words which express both the speaker’s view of him- or herself, and of the social context in which he or she is operating. In other words, they say, ‘this is who I am, and this is what I think of my relationship with you.’ Given that a speaker will operate in quite a number of different social contexts, it makes sense, therefore, that the words are different for different situations and relationships. I’ve said in a previous post that it was impossible to say anything in Japanese without conveying a sense of what you thought of your relationship with the person to whom you are speaking, and pronoun use is another example of this characteristic of the language.

So, then, what do all these words mean? Well, watashi is ‘I, speaking on a polite, formal occasions to someone I may not know well’ – given that this is likely to be the majority of contexts for non-native adult speakers of Japanese, at least in the early stages, this what it makes sense to teach, and learn, first. Atashi conveys a less formal impression and adds the sense that the speaker is female. Boku, generally, is ‘I am a man, speaking on a somewhat casual occasion’. This word was originally a slang term used by male university students to refer to themselves, and developed into a casual male word for ‘I’. It used to be completely avoided by female speakers, but in recent years as women make more inroads into the previously exclusively male worlds of higher education and work, you will occasionally hear a woman use it for herself, although I think this is still a rarity. Ore, though, is strongly masculine, and says, ‘I am a man, speaking on a very casual, informal occasion.’

As if all that variety wasn’t bad enough, there’s still more: watakushi is ‘I, speaking on the most formal of occasions’- there’s a female equivalent for this, too, atakushi, but that’s only likely to be used by a woman who’s in a strongly superior social role and wants to emphasise that fact. There’s also washi – used by elderly male speakers in self-deprecatory situations; and ware (我) – a pre-modern word, now only used for poetic, or literary, effect, or in the first person plural, wareware (nihonjin) 我々（日本人） ‘We (Japanese people)’, when the speaker wants to assert a sense of shared community.

There’s a similar variety of words for addressing other people: anata (貴方) – ‘You, who I don’t know that well’; kimi (君) – ‘You, who I am superior to’: this is used by bosses to address their subordinates, or by men to their (female) lovers, in which case it carries an undertone of affection; omae (お前) – ‘You, who I know well and am speaking casually to’ or ‘You, who I’m being aggressive towards’; and finally, kisama  (貴様) – ‘You, who I am going to hit in a minute’: this term is strongly derogatory in modern Japanese, and could even be translated into English as ‘you bastard’ – or whatever piece of profanity suits. This is why it’s a staple of yakuza films, or any situation where men are in conflict. It would be a highly unusual woman who used it at all – the only TV character I can think of offhand who does so on a regular basis is Kuchiki Rukia 朽木 ルキア, the heroine of top anime series Bleach ブリーチ, but this is a reflection of the fact that she speaks like an ancient samurai warrior most of the time, rather than a modern young woman.

In any case, what is one to do as a learner of Japanese? Which of all of these words should one use, and when? There’s no easy answer, of course, but I have two pieces of advice for you, if you are just starting out: first, you’ll never go wrong with watashi, whoever you are and whenever you are speaking.  Second, rather than worrying about what to use yourself, listen to what the Japanese are using to you, and use that as a clue to tell you what they think of your relationship. As you get more experience with the language, and relationships with the Japanese, you’ll get a sense of who you are when you speak the language and which word, or words, are the best fit.

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

While the extent of the disaster in Tōhoku is such that the immediate response has to be at the level of offering whatever humanitarian and other assistance is required or requested, the aftermath of the earthquake will, of course, provide fertile ground for academic study in a variety of disciplines for many years to come. There will be studies of the disaster relief efforts and programmes, of the ways in which political and economic actors responded, new work done on the rebuilding of the affected regions, health studies of those relocated from, or living near, Fukushima, to say nothing of what can be learnt about radiation crisis management from TEPCO's efforts to deal with the plant. In later years no doubt there will be analyses and critiques of people's literary, or creative, responses to the disaster - I have no doubt that ideas for novels, plays, poems and films are already germinating in many "cultural producers'" minds.

The thing about good quality academic research, of course, is that it generally takes time to produce: time for the necessary information to become available, time to analyse it, and time to produce objective conclusions. With the disaster only a few months behind us, events probably lack the necessary distance for calm reflection to be possible, however, some research projects will already be under way.

One of the more interesting areas, I think, and one where it is already possible to at least begin research is under the general heading of 'Risk', as the evidence of how a wide variety of actors dealt with the immediate aftermath of the crisis and its associated risks is already apparent.

Risks generally fall into two types: actual and perceived. The former are to some extent measurable and demonstrable - if you know the level of flexibility of an iron bar, say, you can calculate quite precisely the chance of it breaking when subjected to a variety of different stresses. Equally, it is possible to calculate the level of danger involved in a wide range of different activities - this is what insurance companies do all the time, when calculating premiums. Perceived risks, however, because they arise from individuals' emotions and mental states, are more difficult to manage. In any crisis situation, where there is little or conflicting information, or events move rapidly, perceived risks tend to become far more significant; much more so than actual risks, and the task of officialdom is often to manage people's responses to perceived risks and be seen to be doing something about them, even if, strictly speaking, it is not necessary. We see this in the immediate aftermath of any terrorist incident: perceptions of the risk associated with terrorism increase and so actors have to emphasise that they are doing something about it, or putting special measures in place to ensure people's safety, even though for any given individual there are likely to be far greater risks associated with simply opening their front door, and crossing the road outside their house, or even, I seem to recall reading recently, of injuring themselves in an accident by falling out of their own chair! (A 1 in 920,000 chance of dying in a chair-related accident compared with 1 in 7,000,000 of becoming a victim of terrorism, I think.)

Anyone who has the slightest connection with Japan in March, or knew someone who did, may have been struck, as I was, by the differences between individuals' responses to the perceived and actual risks of that situation. I don't think there is much doubt, now, that much of the foreign news coverage - particularly of the Fukushima crisis - magnified the perception of risk amongst people exposed to it, and these increased levels of apprehension required official actors, such as foreign governments with nationals in areas which were perceived to be 'dangerous', to be seen to be making appropriate responses. That being said, the 'appropriate responses' varied from nation to nation with some advising their citizens to leave Japan entirely, others suggesting relocation out of the east of Japan on a temporary basis, and others, such as the UK government, simply advising against non-essential travel to the affected areas, but not suggesting that people outside of the immediate exclusion zone, who were already there, should leave. This multiplicity of official responses, of course, did not help matters as there were immediate suspicions that some governments might be concealing 'the truth'.

In the realm of higher education, I was struck by the different responses made by different universities with students in Japan: some recalled all their students immediately, some relocated them, and some encouraged the students to use their own best judgement. Equally, once the immediate crisis was passed responses again differed: some universities allowed students to return, some allowed students to return, but only after signing disclaimers, some obliged students to return, and some gave them a free choice. These differing responses are reflection of the different legal environments in which the various institutions operate, and of the attitudes to risk management taken by their administrative organs. (Putting it that way sounds terribly formal, but I can say from personal experience that the 'administrative organs' consisted of groups of academics and administrators discussing the situation together, and attempting to do what they believed was the best thing for their students.)

There has been much discussion in various media comment pages, and online arenas, of whether it was appropriate, or necessary, for people to make the decision to leave, even if only temporarily. I remember reading articles written by people on both sides of the argument: from those who simply did not trust the official reassurances that there were no risks to their health, or felt concerned by the impact of power and food shortages on their daily lives, and those of their families. Equally, there were articles by people insisting that the situation in Tokyo was essentially normal, and expressing incomprehension, or disdain, for anyone who left. There was even the coinage of the disparaging term 'flyjin' (from a combination of the English word 'fly' and the Japanese word 'gaijin', which means foreigner) for foreign residents who left Japan.

I do not believe that there is a single 'correct' answer to the question of whether or not people should have left Japan in response to the Fukushima crisis - simply put, the right answer is the one that each individual made for themselves. Probably, the best solution is simply to agree to disagree, and to be tolerant of the opposing point of view, but I have no doubt that we shall be seeing articles and monographs analysing both how people perceived the risks, what those risks actually were, and how both actual and perceived risks were managed by governments and other official bodies being published in the next few months and years.

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The above image was created by Danny Choo and is used here under the terms of the Creative Commons license.

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

Like so many other people throughout the world on 11 March this year, I woke up to news of an unfolding disaster underway in Japan. I remember watching early television footage of the tsunami relentlessly sweeping its way inland covering fields with black water, sweeping away houses and barns and filling river channels with debris. Of course, at that point I had no sense of the true scale and impact of the catastrophe.

By the time I had got into the office a couple of hours later, however, it was clear that Japan was facing a truly unprecedented situation, as were we at the University: with a large number of students in the country on their year abroad we needed to ascertain their safety and security as quickly as possible, as the Department had already begun to field telephone calls from concerned parents. While we managed to track everyone down and make sure they were alright quite quickly, it was an anxious time - waiting for e-mailed responses from students, or their host universities in Japan. At the same time, the University needed to provide support to its visiting Japanese students, and Japanese staff members who, quite naturally, were concerned about the safety of friends and relatives back home.

Once the nuclear crisis at Fukushima got underway, there were a series of meetings and discussions between the Department and the Central University administration about how to handle the situation, and within a week I found myself on a plane flying out to Japan in order to coordinate the measures we put in place for our students' support, landing at Kansai International Airport on the morning of Saturday 19 March.

By this time the British media had been awash with sensationalist stories about food shortages, power blackouts and panicking foreign residents fleeing eastern Japan for some days - something which had understandably created feelings of concern amongst the families of many of our students - and even I must confess to feeling a little apprehensive before flying out of the country. However, I think what struck me most about the journey was just how normal it was: there were perhaps slightly fewer obvious non-Japanese aboard the flight out, but the plane was full with the standard combination of returning tour groups, business travellers, and families, and I had the usual experience of waiting in line at Kansai immigration to get my entry permit as a short-term visitor to Japan. The airport itself did not seem any fuller, or busier than usual, and after renting a mobile telephone (a first for me) I was soon on the Haruka express train to Kyoto.

For anyone who doesn't know, the Haruka is an express service that goes from Kansai airport via Osaka to Kyoto, doing the journey in about ninety minutes or so. It's quick, comfortable, and convenient, and is the easiest way to get from the airport and link up with the Shinkansen bullet train network. Again, looking out, jetlagged, from my window seat everything seemed normal: the residential streets had that eerie mid-morning emptiness which will be familiar to anyone who has ever lived in Japan; train platforms were populated by the usual mixture of uniformed schoolchildren, smartly dressed young women, suited salarymen, mothers with children and old folks; the shopping districts by the stations bustled with activity, while supermarket car parks seemed a little empty.

All in all it was just a typical Saturday morning, and I don't think it was until I was aboard the Kyoto city subway that I noticed the first surprising phenomenon: a dearth of advertisements on the train carriages. Anyone who has ever travelled on a Japanese local train will be familiar with the sheer quantity of advertising: there are posters on the walls above the luggage racks (just like on the London Underground, for example), beside the doors, and even hanging at periodic intervals from the ceilings throughout the length of the carriages. This time there were numerous empty spaces where posters has had obviously been taken down, giving the carriage interior a somewhat subdued air. I soon learned that it was not just print advertising in trains which was missing: all television commercials had also been pulled from the screens, leaving a small number of public service announcements to fill-in the dead airtime between, and inside, television programmes.

It seems that there was a general feeling that it was inappropriate to be doing anything so crass as attempting to sell products at a time of unofficial national mourning, and advertisers had withdrawn their wares of their own accord. The Japanese term for this is jishuku 自粛, which translates as 'self-restraint' and since the earthquake there have been many calls for people to show this in a whole range of activities in their daily lives. At the time, though, it was mainly interesting to see which advertisements did remain upon the trains in Kyoto: these were mainly for hotels and restaurants, in keeping with the city’s identity as a major tourist destination, or for events which were due to happen in the next few days, however, I also noticed numerous copies of an advertisement for Kyoto's water utility company (featuring short-skirted high-school girls drinking from a water fountain) and, more bizarrely perhaps, for a pawnbrokers which was selling itself as having a drive-through service, a women only service, with a special entrance solely for the use of female customers, and a special service for first-time users, too! Quite why this particular business felt able to continue advertising I don't know, but it was noticeable.

Within a few days of my arrival in Japan, however, television commercials began to reappear, and in Kansai - the west of Japan - I was really struck by the sheer normality of everything: while I could view the scenes of devastation in the north on television, outside my door people were going to work, school, and out to eat and enjoy themselves just as they always did, and the only real evidence of the disaster were the collection boxes for charitable donations placed in almost every establishment, and the large number of charity collectors out on the streets. I remember seeing beautifully dressed maiko (apprentice geisha) collecting at Kyoto station, and was approached for money myself while waiting to meet a student at the Shijō-Kawaramachi crossroads (for anyone unfamiliar with Kyoto, Shijō-Kawaramachi is one of the city's main shopping and entertainment hubs). Mid to late March is the time when Japanese universities hold the graduation ceremonies, and so Kyoto, which has a large number of such institutions, was filled with young men smart suits, young women in beautiful graduation hakama (a type of loose trousers worn with a kimono), and proud parents. The only deviation from the norm was the news that Kyoto University had banned cosplay (dressing up as a character from an anime or a manga) which is an institutional tradition, from its ceremony this year.

I spent some days contacting students, making travel arrangements for those who wished it and generally being available to offer support as necessary, although in the event the majority of people required remarkably little help. Most of our students felt perfectly safe where they were and were determined to continue their years abroad; and even those who did leave soon returned to continue their studies. Travelling about Kyoto, and later Osaka, to meetings and suchlike I did think on occasion that there were, perhaps, slightly fewer obviously foreign tourists around, but that was about the extent of the obvious deviation from normality. As an academic with an interest in Japan, I have to confess that I found it slightly frustrating: I knew that the situation in much of the country was not normal, but was unable to observe it directly for myself.

As an academic, though, I wonder about the range of possible research responses to the earthquake, and that is something I shall discuss in my next column.

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The above image was created by dugspr - Home for Good  and is used here under the terms of the Creative Commons license.

What if you're just interested in fun, Japanese things?

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

It's not just for serious study of Japan that I think Japanese language is essential. What about if you simply want to find out what the Japanese find entertaining and enjoy it? For example, one of the things the Japanese astronaut Yamazaki Naoko did during her recent visit to the International Space Station was compose haiku, such as:

ruri-iro no/chikyū mo hana mo/uchū no ko
瑠璃色の　地球も花も　宇宙の子

Lapis lazuli-hued
The world and blossoms, too,
Are children of space.

And the Japanese Space Agency ran a competition for ordinary Japanese to submit their own contributions, which Yamazaki judged (the results are here, if you can read Japanese). I’m not aware of any of the other astronauts or space agencies doing something similar, and without access to Japanese language, you miss out on the pleasure. This also serves as a useful illustration of cultural difference.

On a more pop-culture note, there’s the recent satirical monster flick Girara no gyakushū: toyako samitto kiki ippatsu ギララの逆襲・洞爺湖サミット危機一発 (‘The Revenge of Girara: Explosive Crisis at the Toyako Summit’, 2008), where the usual man-in-a-rubber-suit monster from space, provoked by a Chinese space-shot, arrives on Earth and starts laying waste to Hokkaido while the leaders of the G8 are holding their summit there. The world leaders band together to fight it, each reacting according to his or her national stereotype (the US president bosses the Japanese around, takes charge, but is ultimately ineffectual; the Russian President orders the monster assassinated with polonium 210; the German chancellor attempts to have it gassed; the British attempt to brainwash it – not quite sure where that one comes from; and the president of France is too busy seducing his interpreter to care). Eventually, former Japanese prime minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō arrives to take charge, with a suggestion to nuke the beast. The horrified world leaders reject this out of hand, whereupon he reveals himself to be North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in disguise, who has infiltrated the summit, accompanied by his attractive female bodyguards, to make his mark in the world. Even though the world leaders all speak in their own languages, Japanese skills are a must to really make sense of everything. (In case you’re wondering, Girara is eventually defeated by a local Shinto deity, who vaguely resembles popular Japanese comedian Beat Takeshi!)

Speaking more seriously, the sheer volume of Japan and Japanese-related blogs and internet sites is testament to the level of interest in Japan and Japanese culture which already exists. Quite apart from specialists like myself, people of all ages are busily learning Japanese, writing about Japan, and using it in their daily lives. One only has to think of the phenomenal success enjoyed by 15 year-old schoolgirl Rebecca Flint, who started by posting videos of herself dancing and singing along to Japanese songs in a variety of costumes on You Tube, was taken up by a Japanese site, was invited to Japan to perform and now has advertising and recording contracts under the stage name of Beckii Cruel ベッキー・クルエル (her latest You Tube videos seem more professionally done, too. Now, Ms Flint’s success is obviously aided by the fact that she is telegenic, and that some Japanese have a fondness for a quality described as moe 萌え ‘budding’, which is used to describe cute young girls on the cusp of womanhood – supposedly in a pure, protective, non-sexualised way – and I’m not saying that anyone can parlay an interest in Japanese pop culture into a career, but it does show that success can arise from the most unlikely of sources, and, to use the language that seems to be used all to frequently about education these days, that real, measureable, economic benefits can arise from linguistic knowledge.

The quantity of amateur, ‘fan-subs’ of Japanese anime (and dorama) on the web suggests that there are  audiences for Japanese popular culture products for which their makers do not attempt to cater, and that there may be careers to be made in subtitling, as opposed to the usual translator’s path of dealing with technical texts, and having people do it who know the language better may help to avoid howlers such as this!

Finally, to return to my starting point, and the question of why languages should have a place in the higher education curriculum, the answer is obvious: if it’s Japanese we’re talking about, people worldwide are plainly already interested in Japan and things Japanese, and are struggling with knowledge of the language, culture and society. The task of the academy is to help them take their interest in things Japanese, whether it be manga, anime, literature, history, management or economics, and do the best they possibly can with it – and teaching them the language and improving their existing skills will help them individually, produce better understanding between nations, and ultimately be of material benefit. So, how can language not have a place?

Can we get information on Japan without knowing Japanese?

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

Carrying on from last week, in order to get information, or data for research, the best sources in my view are going to be straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, and in the language of the nation’s people, particularly when it’s as geographically and culturally distant from our own as Japan is.

'Ah,' says the sceptic, 'But I’m only interested in statistics – you don’t need language for that! Or I can just work through an interpreter, or read books written in English. Why do I need to learn the language?'

Well, say you are interested in statistics, and are looking for some Japanese data, it’s not very helpful to know that 飯田市 has 225 外国人登録者 who are 就学者 divided into 167 公立学校 and 14 外国人学校, with other numbers in two other categories. You will understand the numbers, of course, but they won’t mean anything unless you can read the accompanying text to know what they refer to. (In case you’re curious, the figures above say that Iida City has 225 registered (school age) foreigners, of whom 167 are attending ordinary Japanese public schools and 14 schools for foreigners.) Admittedly, if you are in possession of a very large research grant, you can hire a Japanese research assistant to deal with the figures for you, but most people aren’t – if you want to get the data, you have to read it for yourself in Japanese.

The same is true of working through an interpreter – it’s just not an option in many circumstances. Even in the world of business, where interpreters are a way of life in interaction between international companies, who’s going to get further when all other things are equal: the person the Japanese can talk to and contact directly if there’s a problem or issue, or the one they have to wait and arrange translation and interpretation for? The one who shows they understand the Japanese expectations of a business relationship, with all the emphasis placed on long-term commitments and reliability that implies, or the one who makes no allowances for the fact that they are not dealing with people from their own country? I know which I would choose, if the situation were reversed.

Finally, what about just reading about Japan in English? Well, there’s no denying you can get a great deal of information this way, but – and this is a big but – you are then at the mercy of the accuracy and reliability of the writers you are reading. I have already described how one of the problems with English language scholarship on Japan in the 1970s and early 80s was an uncritical acceptance of many nihonjinron ideas and theories, resulting in work which gave a distorted picture of what Japanese society and language was really like, particularly when influential nihonjinron texts like Doi’s Amae no kōzō 甘えの構造 (‘The Anatomy of Dependence’) were translated into English and treated as genuine depictions of Japanese reality. Even today, long past nihonjiron’s heyday, nihonjinron writers still pop up and are allowed to make statements having little basis in fact in otherwise trustworthy venues. For example, Tsunoda Tadanobu, who I have mentioned before, was recently in The Japan Times saying:

Japanese communication is more of an exchange of feelings than of information. Our conversation is more like animal sounds, like two birds singing to each other. Ours is not as logical a language as others. (27/6/2006)

There are so many things wrong with this statement, it’s difficult to know where to begin, but suffice it to say, in my experience, when I’m speaking Japanese, or listening to Japanese people speak the language to each other, I’m not particularly aware of squawking out sounds, or of a lack of ability to hold complex, well-argued discussions – although the nature and structure of that argument might be different.

To take more literary example of why Japanese language is important, let’s think of Kawabata Yasunari 川端康成: he was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature ‘for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind’. I have no doubt of Kawabata’s worth as a prize winner, but the fact is that the committee had to read his work in translation, and simply because of the very Japanese-ness of his writing, the English versions are often a very different animal from the original. For example, Edward Seidensticker begins his 1957 translation of Kawabata’s masterwork, Yukiguni 雪国 ('Snow Country') (1935-37) with the following sentence:

The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.

This, in fact, bears remarkably little resemblance to the Japanese original. In fact, none of the elements I’ve boldfaced in the English, above, appear in the Japanese. This is partly for grammatical reasons – Japanese doesn’t have articles, for example, so there is no equivalent for the – but much more important are Seidensticker’s decisions as a translator: what to include, what to omit, and what to insert. The original text starts:

kokkyō no nagai toneru wo nukeru to yukiguni deatta
国境の長いトネルを抜けると雪国であった。

The Japanese sentence consists of two clauses (Seidensticker’s English has just one), neither of which has a subject (Seidensticker inserts the train); the original gives the location of the tunnel – the border between provinces (kokkyō 国境) – (Seidensticker omits this); with the particle to と after the verb in the first clause in the original, there’s a sense of immediacy (‘as soon as’), and change from one thing to another – (again Seidensticker omits this); and finally, the second clause in the original, yukiguni deatta 雪国であった is a copula structure (‘was [the] snow country’), focussing on the result of the change suggested before (Seidensticker makes this a location the train enters). As you can see, there’s quite a difference between the two.

If I were asked to translate the sentence, my version would probably be:

As soon as they emerged from the long, border tunnel, they were in snow country.

But even this involves a conscious change to the text – the introduction of the subject they – which foreshadows the involvement of the protagonists for the English reader, something which is left ambiguous in the original. My version is closer to the Japanese, but it’s still not the same, and the only way to get the full sense is to read it in the original, and for that you need the language.

Or, let’s think about military history: in the introduction to his Japanese Army Operations in the South Pacific Area: New Britain and Papua Campaigns, 1942-43 (2007, Australian War Memorial), which is a translation of an excerpt of the official Japanese military history of the war (Senshi Sōsho 戦史叢書), historian and translator Steve Bullard discusses some of the issues which make the text difficult to translate, for example the use of ideologically loaded euphemisms such as gyokusai 玉砕, ‘shattered jewels’, used when soldiers fought to the death rather than surrender, or the fact that equivalents to ‘withdraw’ or ‘defeat’ simply weren’t part of the Imperial Japanese Army’s vocabulary, and so the most you will get mentioned in despatches and orders from the time is tenshin 転進, ‘alternate advance’ and any move to a defensive position is always framed as a preparation for a future offensive. Interpreting the true state of affairs behind documents such as these, then, requires not only linguistic skills, but also a knowledge of the culture and rhetoric of the Imperial Army, and this can only be gained once you have Japanese language under your belt.

Next week: what if you’re just interested in fun, Japanese things?

Why Japanese language makes a difference

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

A couple of months ago, I was speaking at a conference entitled New directions: how languages promote research and internationalisation in higher education organised by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, in conjunction with the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies – which is a Language Based Area Studies Centre focussing on Russia, and central and eastern Europe, just as the White Rose East Asia Centre does on East Asia. The event was an opportunity to bring together people working in languages in higher education in the UK and discuss the best way to promote the languages agenda in the face of increased pressure on resources and ignorance about the importance of language learning as a part of degree programmes. You can find the full programme for the day here.

My own talk was about why learning the Japanese language was vital for engagement with, and study of, Japan and in the next few columns I’m going to go over some of the same ground, starting with the same quotation which gives them their title:

In the oceans to the east of Cathay lies a large island. The natives have white skins, and their behaviour is most elegant, following strict rules of decorum. They worship, however, idols with the heads of beasts, such as oxen, swine, hounds and sheep, and on occasion eat the flesh of enemies they have captured in battle. They think, moreover, that human flesh is the most delicious of all meats. Of even greater note, however, is the fact that their palaces are all plated with gold. The roofs are tiled with gold, and the floors have gold two fingers thick spread upon them.

This is my own translation of a Japanese account of the first ever description a European gave of Japan – by Marco Polo (c. 1254-1324), in fact. Polo famously visited China, then under the control of the Mongols, and worked for Kublai Khan, and it is most likely from them that he got the information on which he based his description. The Mongols were hardly the most objective describers of Japan, attempting to invade the country twice, in 1274 and again in 1281, while Polo was in China, only to be defeated by a combination of military readiness on the part of the Kamakura Shogunate, and a freak storm which sank much of the invasion fleet – the famous ‘divine wind’ kamikaze 神風 which was to become such a symbol of the defence of Japan in desperate straits that the term was used to refer to the Tokubetsu Kōgeki Tai 特別攻撃隊 (‘Special Attack Group’) suicide pilot squadron during the Pacific War.

Given this, it’s not surprising that the image that Polo conveys bears little connection to reality – only the reference to Japanese decorum seems to have any resonance – having as he did no opportunity to visit Japan or speak to a Japanese person. Even today, however, despite the benefits we enjoy of fast, relatively cheap intercontinental travel, and the instant communication of text, image, sound and video worldwide, it strikes me that non-Japan specialists are confronted with a range of conflicting and often contradictory images of Japan, and so it is unsurprising that they often have difficulties in determining the complex reality of the nation and its people.

To give some examples of common images of Japan, there’s ‘Japan: the ultra-modern urban environment’, familiar from films such as Lost in Translation (2003) or Black Rain (1989), or pictures of the shinkansen 新幹線  bullet train, or the latest robot. Equally, there’s ‘Japan: the bizarre’, where buildings such as love hotels shaped like The Titanic are commonplace, or the people spend their time watching game shows like Za Gaman ザ・ガマン ‘Endurance’. Then there’s ‘Popular Culture Japan’ represented first by monsters such as the mighty Godzilla – incidentally one of the few fictional characters to be granted a statue in Tokyo. You can find a picture of it here (although the caption wrongly positions the statue in Hibiya Park), and also here where my colleague, Graham Healey, faces off against the King of the Monsters. Later incarnations of ‘Popular Culture Japan’, of course, are represented by anime and manga characters, such as the ultra-cute, sailor-suited heroine, Sailor Moon, or even the Akihabara Majokko Princess character played by Kirsten Dunst in a recent video for artist Murakami Takashi’s contribution to the recent Tate Modern exhibition ‘Pop Life’.

Then, finally, there’s ‘Traditional, natural Japan’ represented by images of places like Lake Ashi (Ashinoko 芦ノ湖) in Hakone, with its pine-forested shores, shrine gate (torii 鳥居) and proximity to Mount Fuji. Seeing the photograph in the link you could be forgiven for thinking that Hakone was some kind of natural wonderland, whereas, without discounting the undoubted beauty of the area, anyone with any knowledge of the place knows that a pirate galleon cruises the bay providing sightseeing trips for tourists, and one of the major attractions is the Hakone Garasu no Mori Bijutsukan 箱根ガラスの森美術館, the ‘Hakone Glass Forest Venetian Glass Museum’, which displays all of Maria Callas’ costume stage jewellery, among other things. There’s even a popular culture connection, as Hakone is famously the site of the fictional Tokyo-3 in the classic anime series Shinseiki Ebangerion 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’, and an Evangelion-themed convenience store opened there recently had to close when too many fans of the series congregated to visit it.

Faced with all of these conflicting images of Japan, is it any wonder that there’s confusion and uncertainty about the nation, its people and culture? And, if we want to find out the truth, or truths, about the place, how can we do it unless we can access information about it? The answer is, obviously, that we can’t.

Next week: can we get information on Japan without knowing Japanese?

How the Japanese government provides advice on how to speak

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

In my last column, I talked a little about the social aspect of Japanese honorific speech, and how speakers from certain social groups use it as a linguistic means of projecting an image of themselves to other people. In this they are no different from English speakers, who either consciously or unconsciously adopt different accents: the case of British violinist Nigel Kennedy, who famously adopted a ‘Mockney’ accent in order to appeal to a constituency who wouldn’t normally like classical music, springs to mind. I’ve also outlined how the normal rules (respect from inferiors to superiors) can be suspended in situations where the superior is seeking a favour, or of heightened levels of formality, and how this counts against the argument that honorific usage is solely based upon the obligatory indication of social status. Finally, I’ve mentioned that it’s been suggested that one reason why older speakers often seem to feel that younger ones can’t use honorifics properly is because the latter’s perception of how social relationships should be determined is different from that of their elders, which results in different honorific usage.

This week, I’m going to draw all of these themes together and look briefly at the historical development of the honorific system – from both a grammatical and social perspective – with a view to seeing how the language has ended up with the system it now has. This will be a little linguistics-heavy to start with, but bear with me, as I hope it will be interesting. I’ll start by looking at previous versions of honorifics.

The earliest type of Japanese for which we have a significant amount of information about the honorific system is the language spoken during the Heian period (794-1185). Linguists refer to this as either Late Old Japanese, or Early Middle Japanese, but less technically it’s just ‘Classical Japanese’ – the language in which most of the pre-modern works of literature were composed. In Japanese schools it’s called kogo 古語 ‘old language’, and every Japanese learns the rudiments of it as part of their education.

The language was that variety of Japanese spoken and written by the court aristocracy in Heian-kyō 平安京 (Kyoto 京都) during the Heian period (794-1185). Roughly speaking, it’s grammatically more different from modern Japanese than Chaucer’s is from modern English, but not as different as Beowulf’s Anglo-Saxon is from the modern language. It was, of course, restricted to a tiny proportion of the population – approximately one tenth of one percent, that being the rough numbers of the court aristocracy – and reflects their society and concerns.

The nobility lived in a world where rank and status was all important, and determined partly by family back ground, but also by one’s official rank in the imperial government. This isn’t the place to  go into that in detail, but briefly there was an officially sanctioned system of ranks, promotion in which brought a man increased status and income – benefits which would also reflect upon his family. The system was clear and well-understood, with the Emperor at the apex, followed by the Empress and Crown Prince, then other members of the imperial family, higher nobility, mid-ranking nobility and so on downwards.  The top five non-imperial ranks were the most important, and people below that level were looked down upon by their betters and thought of as not fit to associate with. People outside the rank structure were barely thought of as being the same species.

Given this preoccupation with rank and status, then, it’s not surprising that EMJ should have a well-developed system of honorifics. Formally, of course, it’s very different from the modern system, with the verbs and inflections which indicate respect or deference being entirely different from those in the modern language, and it being possible to combine respectful and deferential forms in the one expression in ways which it is no longer possible to do, but more interesting is the evidence which suggests that the level of honorifics used to address and refer to another person was determined almost entirely by their court rank. So, if one was addressing a Major Councillor (dainagon 大納言) say, one would use one level of honorifics, but if one was talking to a Minister (otodo 大臣) a higher level was required. Talking to or about the Emperor mandated the highest possible level, with a range of terms and forms used only for actions by or in relation to him.

What this means is that the Heian honorific system is much closer to the ‘discernment’ model of honorific usage. Japanese linguists call this zettai 絶対 (‘absolute’) in that honorific speech was determined by the addressee or referent’s position on an absolute, and externally determined, scale of social status. This is contrasted with the modern system, which is characterised as sōtai 相対 (‘relative’), meaning that the speaker’s perception of the relationship is more important. (In fact, even the ‘absolute’ Heian system was not absolute – if it were Emperors would never use honorifics at all – because seniors did use honorifics to juniors, particularly if a debt or obligation was involved.)

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that the system was more absolute than the modern one, and speakers were aware, and critical, of people who used the wrong level of honorifics about people of lower status – Sei Shōnagon complains about it in her Pillow Book. It’s also accurate to say that, leaving aside the formal changes which have been extreme, the major development in Japanese honorifics over the past thousand years has been a progressive increase in the relativisation of the system – particularly once we enter the modern period and a person’s social position became less a product of absolute external criteria. To a certain extent, that is what makes honorific usage more difficult – for both Japanese and foreign speakers – nowadays: it’s no longer enough to simply know what someone is, and use the right honorifics for that position, you have to form your own judgement about the relationship and speak accordingly.

How, though, do Japanese speakers decide which forms to use? Well, in business contexts companies often train new employees in the correct forms to use to clients and customers, but people in everyday life have to rely upon their own instincts, and they are often unsure about them, particularly if they are going to have to speak in a situation, or to someone, outside of their usual patterns of interaction. As an extreme example of this, one of my colleagues related to me an anecdote about what happened when the current Emperor paid a visit to Oxford when he was Crown Prince back in the 1960s. The university wasn’t quite sure what to do about the visit, and so invited a large number of Japanese to a reception to meet His Highness – people who would never have met a member of the imperial family in Japan under normal circumstances. My colleague described his astonishment when most of these people, when introduced to the Prince, chose to speak to him in English rather than Japanese, and when he asked one of them about it afterwards was told, ‘Well, I wasn’t sure what honorifics to use to someone like him, so it was just easier to speak in English.’

I have to say that I, myself, probably wouldn’t be sure of the correct etiquette for addressing the Prince of Wales should I ever get to meet him, but I don’t think that I would choose to speak in French to avoid the issue! Nevertheless, it demonstrates the lack of security people may have about their honorifics, and the lengths they may go to in order to avoid embarrassing themselves with mistakes.  It’s this concern over doing things right which accounts for the large number of ‘How to’ books on honorifics available from any Japanese bookshop (putting the search term ‘correct honorific usage’ (keigo no tadashii tsukaikata 敬語の正しい使い方) in to Amazon Japan’s search engine immediately produced a list of fifty titles). What criteria, though, do the authors of books like these use to provide their readers with information?

Well, one valuable source is, in fact, the Japanese government! Believe it or not, there’s a long tradition of these bodies making prescriptive pronouncements on matters of linguistic usage in Japan, and receiving support from government organs to do so. The most obvious area where the government interferes is, of course, the writing system, by determining which kanji should be learnt during compulsory education and used in public life, but honorifics haven’t escaped attention either. This is some time ago, but in 1957 the Ministry of Education issued a document entitled Kore kara no keigo これからの敬語, ‘Honorifics from now on’ which contained a series of detailed ‘recommendations’ about how the Japanese people should speak to each other in the future.

The document is not particularly lengthy, but it does make interesting reading, as evidence of a belief that it is possible to change linguistic behaviour by fiat (Miller 1967, 284). I don’t have space here to go into all the ‘advice’ the document provides – you can read a summary in Miller (1967, 285-287) if you are interested – but briefly there is instruction about which pronouns should, or shouldn’t be used (watashi 私and anata あなた only, with boku 僕 allowed only for men prior to entering adult society); which suffixes (-san, -sama) should be used after people’s names; appropriate contexts for the honorific prefixes o- and go-; and a prohibition of extended honorific verb forms (where, for example, the ordinary honorific form of the verb yomu 読む ‘read’, o-yomi ni naru お読みになる ‘read(honorific)’, is made even more respectful by the addition of a further honorific inflection: o-yomi ni nareru お読みになれる). Anyone who knows anything about the Japanese language will know that none of these prescriptions has been effective – a wide variety of other pronouns and suffixes is still used, as are extended honorific verb forms – which just serves to demonstrate the persistence of honorific speech as a part of the language and its intrinsic connection to Japanese social relations and organisation and the uselessness of governmental bodies attempting to control how people speak.

There is, however, one set recommendations in Kore kara no keigo which have been effective: the advice provided on what type of honorific vocabulary should be used in referring to the Emperor – not when speaking to him face-to-face, of course, but in writing. The concern then, only a few years after Japan’s defeat, was to eliminate honorific usage which overly exalted the throne, as had been the case during and before the war. Essentially, the recommendations were that ‘ordinary’ levels of honorifics should henceforth be applied to the emperor, and specialised honorific vocabulary should be avoided. These have largely been followed, and so the imperial body is now simply o-karada お体 ‘body(honorific)’ and not gyokutai 玉体 ‘jewelled form’, and his face is simply o-kao お顔 ‘face(honorific)’ and not ryūgan 竜顔 ‘dragon’s visage’, although I remember the headline in the Asahi newspaper when Emperor Shōwa died in 1989 as being Tennō heika go-hōgyo 天皇陛下御崩御 ‘His Majesty the Emperor - Dead’, using an honorific word for ‘dead’ which can only be applied to the imperial person, although the television newscasters used the more common o-nakunari ni narimashita お亡くなりになりました ‘passed away(honorific)’.

The fact, however, that Kore kara no keigo enjoyed even this level of success, and was largely welcomed by the Japanese as a helpful contribution also demonstrates the difference in attitude to official ‘advice’ on language between the Japanese and the British, say: can you imagine the public reaction if the British prime minister held a press conference and announced that the government was abolishing the use of  ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’ and ‘Ms’ before people’s names  when addressing each other? I have absolutely no doubt that the response would be a resounding ‘Get lost!’ and it would be seen as a ridiculous infringement on personal relations.

In conclusion, then, despite the generational changes in usage, there’s no evidence to suggest that honorifics will disappear from Japanese any time soon, and they will continue to both delight and frustrate foreign learners of the language for many years to come. All that you can do is do your best to learn them, use them, understand and accept them – look upon them not as a barrier to communication, but an additional resource, a way of both smoothing relations and shielding yourself in talking to and with the Japanese. And if you get frustrated, just think of all those self-help books for the Japanese themselves, and realise that there are a great many native speakers in the same boat!

References:

Miller, Roy Andrew (1967) The Japanese Language. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you say, but how you say it...

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

Recently, I’ve been talking about the motivations for Japanese speakers to use honorific language, and how those motivations have been theoretically explained by linguists interested in Pragmatics. This week, I’m going to move away from the theory and take a look at how honorifics have been considered by socio-linguists – people who are interested in language use as a social activity, and in the links between language and different social groups – groups based on age, sex, affiliation, region, class, and so forth.

In any language, speakers adjust what they say, and how they say it, depending upon the situation in which they find themselves, and what image they wish to project. Do they wish to assert solidarity with their addressees? Do they wish to emphasise superiority? Level of education? Identity? And so forth. All of this can be done, and is done, through language use: the accent, use of dialect, type of vocabulary, intonation, etc. Sometimes, it’s a conscious decision, and sometimes it’s done unconsciously. British readers in their forties may remember the 1980s Nat West commercial starring Adrian Edmonson, in which he alters his appearance and speech in order to apply for a bank account.

It is, of course, a showcase for Adrian Edmonson’s clowning, but the fact that he endeavours to ‘Talk proper’ in order to get a bank account is evidence of the importance placed upon the right language for the right situation in British society – and the ending is evidence of how things were changing in the 1980s.

There’s been a great deal of work done on English speakers’ attitudes to, and use of, language – some of which seems to identify general cross-linguistic tendencies, and some which is country-specific. In England, for example, there’s a very close relationship between accent and social class, and listeners tend to assign people to classes depending upon what they sound like, and then have stereotyped expectations of how they will behave, and what sort of people they are. So, people with who speak RP – the standard middle class accent spoken by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady are: intelligent, unfriendly, trustworthy and, believe it or not, tall! Whereas people with accents from the larger metropoli (London, Birmingham, etc.) are friendly, devious and short, and people with rural accents are backward, uneducated, warm, and direct. As you can see, a lot of these are nonsense – accent has nothing to do with body size, for example – but the attitudes are pervasive. One of the most famous experiments a linguist did to test this was to have someone go into a cinema and shout, ‘Fire! Everybody leave via the emergency exits!’ during a performance, in an RP accent, and then at a different showing in a regional accent, and time how long it took the audience to leave. The audience were noticeably slower to get moving with the latter than with the former – evidence that an RP accent was regarded as more trustworthy and authoritative.

In Japan, of course, which lacks a class-system along English lines, accent is much less important as a social marker – even dialect use doesn’t convey as much information about background and education. As Fukuda and Asato (2004, 2000) say, however, ‘use [of] elaborate honorifics’ by people from particular groups is one of the things which serves as a badge of identity.

One of the best examples of this is given by Miller (1967, 289-90) in his description of the difference between women’s and men’s Japanese speech. The following exchange he describes as (for the time) ‘fairly elegant, but otherwise quite run-of-the-mill women’s speech’:

A
ma, go-rippa na o-niwa degozāmasu wa nē. shibafu ga hirobiro to shite ite, kekkō degozāmasu wa nē.
まあ、ご立派なお庭でござあますわねえ。芝生が広々としていて、結構でござあますわねえ。

A
My, what a splendid garden you have here-the lawn is so nice and big, it's certainly wonderful, isn't it!

B
iie, nan desu ka, chitto mo teire ga yukitodokimasen mono degozaimasu kara, mō, nakanaka itsumo kirei ni shite oku wake ni wa mairimasen no degozāmasu yo.
いいえ、何ですか、ちっとも手入れが行き届きませんものでございますから、もう、中々いつも綺麗にしておくわけには参りませんのでござあますよ。

B
Oh no, not at all, we don't take care of it at all any more, so it simply doesn't always look as nice as we would like it to.

A
ā, sai degozaimashō nē. kore dake o-hiroin degozāmasu kara, hitotōri o-teire asobasu no ni datte taihen degozaimasho nē. demo mā, sore de mo, itsumo yoku o-teire ga yukitodoite irasshaimasu wa. itsumo hontō ni o-kirei de kekkō degozāmasu wa.
ああ、さいでございましょうねえ。これだけお広いんでござあますから、一通りお手入れ遊ばすのにだって大変でございましょうねえ。でもまあ、それでも、いつもよくお手入れが行き届いていらっしゃいますわ。いつも本当にお綺麗で結構でござあますわ。

A
Oh no, I don't think so at all -but since it's such a big garden, of course it must be quite a tremendous task to take care of it all by yourself; but even so, you certainly do manage to
make it look nice all the time: it certainly is nice and pretty any time one sees it.

B
iie, chitto mo sonna koto gozāmasen wa.
いいえ、ちっともそんなことござあませんわ。

B
No. I'm afraid not, not at all...

All of the boldfaced elements in the above exchange are honorific, in one way or another, and the conversation is less about the content – which is relatively trivial – than about the two women affirming their relationship and common background, and the elaborate honorifics are a significant part of that. Miller goes on to remark humorously that the same exchange between two men would consist of Ii niwa da nā いい庭だなあ (‘Nice garden’) and ‘a sub-linguistic grunt, as a sign of acknowledgement or of polite denial’ (1967, 290), which contains no honorifics at all. This is not to say that male speakers don’t use honorifics – they do, of course – but that they use them less for asserting solidarity with friends and acquaintances than women do.

Given the pronunciation of the deferential copula degozaimasu as degozāmasu, the ladies are from the Yamanote area of Tokyo – then and now a wealthy district – and when I was last discussing this extract with some Japanese (about twenty years ago now) my informants said the language was a bit old-fashioned, but they wouldn’t be too surprised to hear it on the streets there, if the two women were quite elderly. I wonder what people would say today?

Next week, I’ll continue on the social side of honorifics, and consider some of the reasons why usage changes over time.

References:

Fukada, Atsushi and Asato, Noriko (2004), “Universal politeness theory: application to the use of Japanese honorifics” Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (11), 1991-2002.

Martin, Samuel E. (1964) “Speech levels in Japan and Korea”, 407-414 in Dell Hymes (ed.), Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper & Row.

Miller, Roy Andrew (1967) The Japanese Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Politeness theory and the language learner

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

Last week, I described how Brown and Levinson (1978; 1987) laid out a universal politeness theory, and how this had been criticised as being inapplicable to Japanese by a variety of linguists (Matsumoto 1988; Ide 1989), who prefer to analyse Japanese honorifics as being based upon ‘discernment’ or indication of social relationships. It might have seemed from this that the face-based account of honorific usage was discredited by this but – and this will come as no surprise to you if you think about how science works – other linguists have recently been criticising the discernment account, and relating how the theory of face could be adjusted to fit the linguistic facts of Japanese.

One of the most cogent of these criticisms comes from Fukuda and Asato (2004), who argue that Brown and Levinson’s theory works perfectly well for Japanese, as long as one important fact is taken into account:

When a person of higher status is involved, distance and power are given markedly high values, which in turn, elevates…the weightiness of the FTA. Thus, any act, whether intrinsically face-threatening or not (meaning, regardless of the value of imposition), will be counted as face-threatening.

(Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1997)

Thus, saying anything in the presence of a social superior can require the use of politeness strategies, and hence the use of honorifics. This does seem like a sensible adjustment to the theory, given the well-documented awareness that Japanese people display of status differences between individuals – even in contexts where a difference wouldn’t exist, or be considered to be important, most English-speaking countries. As an example of this, we only have to think of the fact that one of the most important relations Japanese can have is between senpai 先輩 (‘seniors’) and kōhai 後輩 (‘juniors’) – whether it’s at school, or in a club, or at a company. Those who enter an organisation later will accord respect to those who were there before them, who, in turn, will feel obligated to look after, or instruct, (or take advantage of) those younger than themselves. The relations can be extremely long-lasting, and require use of honorifics by the kōhai to the senpai – if you see two Japanese meet at a school reunion you can often spot who was in which position by listening to who is using honorifics and who isn’t.

Fukuda and Asato (2004) also provide five arguments for the applicability of their account, and against Ide and Matsumoto’s version.

First, correct honorific usage does have much to do with face-preservation, as if speakers fail to use honorifics when expected, they can sound presumptuous – threatening the addressee’s face – or, they can embarrass themselves, threatening their own (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1997). This is obviously a concern for non-Japanese trying to speak the language, as you want to avoid causing offence, although – particularly if you don’t look Japanese – you can get away with mistakes native speakers can’t. The most important thing is to try and avoid obvious mistakes – like using honorific expressions to refer to your own actions, and humble ones to refer to a superior’s – and try and develop your honorific fluency by observing how Japanese speakers talk to each other.

Although that being said, it’s also best to avoid talking ‘down’ to your Japanese juniors (people younger than you, or who work for, or under you) too much, as it’s difficult to adopt the mannerisms of a Japanese senior without sounding offensive, unless your language skills are very high, and even then, they may not ‘fit’ with your Japanese personality.

Second, the fact that it sounds odd to use honorifics about social superiors if they have done something dishonourable (Sensei ga dōkyūsei o gōkan nasatta 先生が同級生を強姦なさった ‘My teacher raped(honorific) my classmate’ – sounds bizarre in the extreme), means that obligatory indication of the social relationship is not the only criterion for honorific usage (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1998). Third, superiors do use honorifics to juniors if they are asking them a favour. This usage cannot be to indicate the social ranking between them, as that is maintained (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1998). Fourth, in more formal situations, too, superiors will use honorifics to juniors, which again cannot be to indicate social ranking (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1999).

These arguments, in fact, contain useful lessons for the Japanese language learner – not about what honorifics to use, but when to use them: making requests and impositions, and in any formal situation, and to anyone who’s a superior – either in the sense of having some authority over you, or simply that they are older.

Finally, if saying anything in the presence of a superior is intrinsically face-threatening, then one of the most sensible options for juniors is Brown and Levinson’s (5) don’t do the FTA – in other words, keep quiet – and this accounts for the tendency of juniors in Japan not to say very much in the presence of their superiors. It is not the case, after all, that it is considered polite for them to talk as much as they want, even if they do use honorifics (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 2000).

All in all, then, it seems like the face-based account of honorifics might well have something to recommend it, doesn’t it? What you need to remember, though, is that no theory can entirely account for the complexities of human interactions or behaviour: just as it’s possible to find weaknesses in the ‘face’ account, it’s also possible to find weakness in the ‘discernment’ one, and even Fukuda and Asato’s revised version is unlikely to be the final word. It’s likely that someone else will come up with a new account in a few years which will provide a different approach, and there’s nothing wrong with this, because each new version provides different insights into the language and takes a step closer to the reality.

So, is that the final word on honorifics? Well, no, another interesting area, and one which Fukuda and Asato themselves acknowledge is that ‘sex, age, education, and regional origin of the speaker are related to the use of honorifics…Women, the well-educated, the aged, and urbanites like to speak a refined, elegant language and use elaborate honorifics to serve their own face wants, such as being perceived as having had a good upbringing, and being intelligent, decent or sophisticated persons’ (Fukuda and Asato.2004, 2000). This is moving more into the socio-linguistic analysis of honorifics, and is something I’ll talk about next week.

References:

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1978) ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena’, 56-311 in

Goody, E. (ed.) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fukada, Atsushi and Asato, Noriko (2004), “Universal politeness theory: application to the use of Japanese honorifics” Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (11), 1991-2002.

Ide, Sachiko (1989) ‘Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness’ Multilingua 8 (2/3), 223–248.

Matsumoto, Yoshiko (1988) ‘Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese’ Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4), 403–426.

How does politeness theory relate to Japanese?

Author: Dr Thomas McAuley

Last week, I was talking about the use of honorifics in Japanese, and speculated a little about why speakers might use them. This week and next week, I’m going to continue in that vein, but from a more technical angle by considering how linguists have analysed and theorised about them, and see whether this has any practical lessons for someone who wants to learn, and speak, Japanese.

There are, of course, any number of different fields within linguistics where honorifics could be studied – syntax, semantics, historical, and so on – but the area which I’m going to talk about falls under the general heading of Pragmatics. This covers quite a wide range of theoretical areas, but what I am interested in here are the reasons why certain language forms are used in particular contexts, and how these phenomena can be described theoretically. (If you want to know more about Pragmatics in general, then there are any number of good introductory textbooks, with Huang (2006) being the most recent.)

In Pragmatics, then, honorifics are generally considered to fall under what is called Politeness Theory, which was first laid out by Brown and Levinson (1978; 1987) in an attempt to come up with a way to describe the theoretical basis for polite language usage cross-linguistically. Their theory – which they claimed was universally applicable – (1987, 57-76) was to posit that all human beings have both positive and negative ‘face’, with the former being essentially the desire to be liked and approved of by other people, and the latter the claim that individuals make for their personal prerogatives, such as the desire that their own actions and wishes should not be impeded. Any action which impinged upon one’s own, or another person’s face was described as a ‘face threatening act’ (FTA) and potentially required a politeness strategy to minimise its effect. Brown and Levinson posited five possible actions, depending upon how serious the speaker judges the FTA to be: (1) Use no politeness; (2) use positive politeness – stressing one’s community with the addressee, for example; (3) use negative politeness – minimising the level of the imposition, or degrading one’s own position vis á vis the addressee; (4) use other means, such as getting a third party to initiate the FTA; and (5) don’t do the FTA at all. They further posited that speakers determine how serious an individual FTA is by summing the social distance between speaker and hearer, the amount of power the hearer has over the speaker, and a culture-based ranking of impositions (asking for a reference from a superior is more serious in Japan, for example, where the writer is expected to put his or her personal status behind the junior, than it is in the UK, where the reference is a more objective evaluation of the person’s qualities). They represented this with the following equation:

W(eightiness of the FTA)= D(istance between Speaker-Hearer)+P(ower of Hearer over Speaker)+R(ank of Imposition)

Having laid out the basis of their theory, Brown and Levinson then proceeded to apply it to politeness phenomena in a variety of the world’s languages in an attempt to demonstrate its universality. Use of honorifics – in any language, not just Japanese – is categorised as a negative politeness strategy, as it is seen as giving deference by lowering the speaker’s position, and exalting the hearer.

Obviously, in the above I’ve simplified things quite a bit, but that’s the basis of universal politeness theory and its application to honorifics. Simple, isn’t it?

If your answer is ‘No!’, and you feel that describing honorifics as simple markers of deference used when initiating requests doesn’t quite fit with your understanding of them, you would not be alone. In fact, Brown and Levinson almost immediately came under attack from linguists who questioned the universality of ‘face’, and claimed that the theory was based upon an overly-Eurocentric concept of social relations between individuals, or even of the notion of the individual. One of the first to do this was Matsumoto (1988), who denies the applicability of the idea that individuals want to be unimpeded in their actions to a Japanese context. Instead, ‘acknowledgement and maintenance of the relative position of others, rather than preservation of an individual’s proper territory, governs all social interaction’ (1988, 405). The sources she cites in support of this, such as Nakane (1970) and Doi (1973) would probably now be considered as part of the nihonjinron (even Matsumoto acknowledges that Doi may be over-stating the point (1988: 407)), which weakens her overall argument, but there is no doubt that honorifics are used in Japanese in situations which do not involve a face-threatening act, such as Kyō wa doyōbi degozaimasu 今日は土曜日でございます (‘Today is Saturday’), where the copula verb degozaimasu (‘be (deferential)’) indicates a high level of politeness and formality, but the statement itself cannot possibly impinge on anyone’s prerogatives. Furthermore, in some contexts imposing upon a person is actually considered the polite thing to do. For example, a wife may say to her husband’s boss, Shujin o dōzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu 主人をどうぞよろしくお願いします (‘Please take care of my husband’). This is a request to the boss, and hence an imposition upon him, but is considered polite in Japan because it’s an acknowledgement that the superior has the power to perform the action requested (Matsumoto 1988, 410). Given these, and other, issues, Matsumoto (1988, 411) claims that Japanese honorifics are essentially ‘relation-acknowledging devices’, a description which comes closer to my own reference to them as markers of social deixis. She also rejects Brown and Levinson’s theory entirely, and prefers to see politeness as motivated by culturally-determined concepts of deference, which ‘in Japanese culture focuses on the ranking difference between the conversational participants…Conventional Japanese Deference would say ‘Leave it to someone higher’’(Matsumoto 1988, 424). Further criticisms, and an alternative theory, were proposed by Ide (1989), who argues that honorifics are governed by ‘discernment’ of the social position of the addressee, and this is based upon the speaker’s understanding of the social conventions governing interaction in Japanese culture. Again, this is broadly similar to Matsumoto’s description of honorifics as ‘relation-acknowledging devices’.

So, is the face-based account of Japanese politeness discredited? Not entirely, and I’ll tell you why, next week.

References:

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1978) ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena’, 56-311 in Goody, E. (ed.) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Doi, Takeo (1973) The anatomy of dependence. Tokyo: Kodansha.

Huang, Yan (2006) Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ide, Sachiko (1989) ‘Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness’ Multilingua 8 (2/3), 223–248.

Matsumoto, Yoshiko (1988) ‘Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese’ Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4), 403–426.

Nakane, Chie (1970) Japanese society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.