Indirectness: September 25

It is universally taken for granted that the Japanese are indirect, just as it is universally taken for granted that Germans are direct.

Indirectness depends on tacit understanding and consensus. If people do not inhabit the same world, or share the same memories and imagination, neither tacit understanding nor consensus will simply materialize out of thin air.

That is why foreigners cannot read the air around Japanese people, while Japanese people feel that foreigners are disrupting the collective order.

This can create a contradictory phenomenon, and a contradictory feeling.

We often say that within a group, individuality is erased until almost nothing remains.

Yet when facing the exclusionary mood of Japanese society as a whole, or when dealing with a single Japanese person, many foreigners say they frequently feel a powerful awareness of “the other and the self.”

I wonder: could it be that each individual Japanese person is so accustomed to thinking of themselves as part of a group that they also take the group's will as their own, and thus appear personally stubborn, almost impossible to change?

Because Japanese expression is habitually indirect and requires others to read the air, I, as a foreigner, genuinely find it difficult at times to guess what Japanese people are really thinking.

Let me offer two examples.

As I mentioned earlier, I found an iaido dojo that accepts short-term visits and training. In his very first reply, the instructor wrote that the admission fee was 5,000 yen and that subsequent monthly training would also cost 5,000 yen.

I replied with the customary thanks and asked whether these fees had to be paid in cash on the day I visited the dojo.

Naturally, bank transfer is not an option available to a foreigner. But I asked because I am not someone who usually carries cash, and because I remembered, or rather, believed, that a first visit to a dojo generally counted as a “visit to observe.”

So, in the interest of caution, and because I did not want to jump to a conclusion of my own, I asked the question.

When the instructor replied, he confirmed only the time and place. He did not say a single word about the fees.

I could only guess in silence: does this mean I should still bring the money?

The second example is another one I have mentioned before. I was looking for a particular service from a Japanese provider, and in my inquiry email I stated from the outset that meetings would need to be conducted in English. Several companies consequently sent refusals.

At the first company to reply that English would be no problem, the president who answered, if it really was the president, had studied in the United States and founded a start-up in Silicon Valley. To establish our intentions and possible mode of cooperation more clearly, I asked whether we could begin with an online meeting.

The president wrote back to ask whether the online meeting would be in Japanese.

I answered, “No, in English.”

The president replied again: “If the online meeting is to be in English, then that will not work. If it is in English, communicating in writing by email will be fine.”

I wrote back: “In that case, could we meet in person instead? Would we be permitted to use AI-assisted real-time translation, or would your company advise us to bring an interpreter?”

Once again, the president's reply confirmed only the time and place. It said absolutely nothing about whether AI-assisted real-time translation would be permitted or whether bringing an interpreter was advisable.

This left me perplexed all over again.

What exactly did the other party mean? They had initially said that English was possible, but when spoken English was actually required, they said it was not.

Had I misunderstood them from the very beginning? When they said that English was possible, did they mean that English could be used only for written communication?

I was utterly bewildered by all of it.

With correspondence conducted online by email, I cannot even see the other person's expression. That makes decoding Japanese culture still more difficult for a foreigner.

Understanding and communication must both run in two directions. I hope I will have the chance to gain a firmer grasp of the key that unlocks the code.