How Japanese Writers Make the Point

Japanese Rhetoric explained

Dr Thomas McAuley is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield with interests in Japanese language teaching, Japanese-English translation methodology, and pre-modern Japanese literature and poetry.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have about the talked about how difficulty native English speakers often have in working out what a Japanese text is attempting to say is frequently a combination of a lack of familiarity with the Japanese quasi-inductive style of discourse, and with the idea of relying upon something which is not explicitly present in the text in order to understand it, given that the network holding Japanese texts together tends to be one of explicit and implicit topics. There is one further difficulty, however, which is what I am going to talk about this week.

Beyond linguistic structure, and general ideas about the appropriate format for a discourse, texts are also organised according to rhetorical principles – broadly speaking, what parts a texts should have, and what type of things you should say in order to make your point. Most English texts, for example, have a three part organisation: introduction, main body, and conclusion, al though there are others. Japanese, too, has a three-part rhetorical structure: joron 序論, honron 本論, ketsuron 結論, and the Japanese terms translate literally as ‘introduction’, ‘main argument’ and, unsurprisingly, ‘conclusion’, which, on the surface, is identical to the English one.

Problems can arise, however, because the Japanese concept of what an ‘introduction’ or a ‘conclusion’ should be is different from the English one. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how an effective way for a Japanese writer to begin a text is with an idiosyncratic statement, and that a question is good way to conclude, because the former captures the reader’s attention, and the latter demonstrates respect, indicating that the writer is allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind about the topic of the text. These demonstrations of deference can go to extreme lengths: an equally effective Japanese conclusion might be ‘shikashi kono kangae jitai ga kontei kara ayamatteiru kamoshirenai’ しかし、この考え自体が根底から誤っているかもしれない  ‘I may, however, be fundamentally mistaken in my views’, a statement which might be calculated to annoy readers, if used to conclude an English text. So, if you are reading something written by a Japanese, and they suddenly seem to backtrack, or become tentative in their statements, always bear in mind that it might not necessarily be an indication that they are uncertain of the correctness of their argument, but instead, it might be simply that they are following an effective, Japanese, rhetorical strategy.

There are other types of Japanese text organisation besides the three-part one. If you recall, I also mentioned that one thing that may have puzzled you is why a Japanese writer might suddenly start talking about something completely unrelated to the main topic of their text. This has its origin in an extremely common writing style which is held up as a good model for Japanese writers to follow when producing short, expository texts: ki shō ten ketsu 起承転結. This is a four-part organisation for a piece of writing: an introduction of a topic (ki 起), a development of the topic (shō 承), a sudden switch away from the topic (ten 転), and a conclusion (ketsu 結). Despite now being regarded as a typically Japanese style, in fact, it’s derived from the pattern of a four-line classical Chinese poem, a shih 詩, which had its heyday in the seventh century. Kanshi 漢詩 (‘Chinese poems’), as the shih were called in Japan, were very popular among the aristocracy of Japan’s classical age, and at some point in mediaeval times, the pattern began to be used to write essays, and still is. (If you want to know more about ki shō ten ketsu, just ask a kokugo teacher, or one of your students.)

Maynard (1998: 33) uses the following short text to exemplify this pattern:

Ki: Ōsaka Motomachi Itoya no musume 大阪本町糸屋の娘。

‘The daughters of Itoya in Ōsaka Motomachi:’

Here, we have topic introduced: the daughters of Ito, the thread seller, in one small district of Osaka.

Shō: Ane wa jūroku, imōto wa jūgo 姉は十六、妹は十五。

‘The elder is sixteen, the younger: fifteen.’

Next, the topic is developed further, with information about the two girls’ ages. Thus far, there is nothing to confuse an English reader.

Ten: Taikoku daimyō wa yumiya de korosu 大国大名は弓矢で殺す。

‘The Great Lords of the mighty domains slay with bows and arrows.’

It is at this point that the English reader would start getting confused: why is the writer suddenly talking about something unrelated to the topic of the text? The fact, however, is that this diversion is not random, but has been carefully chosen. The ki and shō talk about the daughters of a single merchant in a single part of a single city – the lord of his own, tiny, domain. The ten sets up a semantic contrast with what has gone before by referring to feudal lords, in command of many thousands of warriors, instead of a single shop. It also makes a reference to killing, which is taken up in the ketsu:

Ketsu: Itoya no musume wa me de korosu 糸屋の娘は目で殺す。

‘The daughters of Itoya slay with their eyes.’

Here, the writer combines elements from all the previous sections of the text to make their final point – about the devastating attractiveness of the two girls. This type of carefully constructed, contrasting structure, is typical of ki shō ten ketsu-patterned texts, and the diversion from the main topic is key to their impact and effectiveness.

The text above has only a single line per section, but the same principles apply to longer ones, where each section can last over several paragraphs, or more. So, the next time you are reading something written by a Japanese, and it seems to go off on a tangent, look for semantic contrasts with what has been mentioned before – if you find it, the likelihood is that the writer, far from wandering randomly off the topic, is doing it deliberately, and you can look for the various elements to be tied together in the subsequent, concluding, section. (If you want to read more texts structured like this, try reading the Asahi Shinbun’s Tensei Jingo 天声人語 column, and if you want to read more about all aspects of Japanese text organisation, Maynard (1998) is by far the best source.)

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