Manners Maketh Man (and Woman?)

The beginning of March marked our six month anniversary of living in Tokyo. While six months is not long enough to really get to know a city like this and its people, I have been struck over and over again by two observations. Firstly, that people here are unflinching in their commitment to manners and politeness. Secondly, that Tokyo is a city full of contradictions.

Manners and politeness are codified within the language. Japanese, like many languages, has a formal and an informal version. The use of these depends on your audience e.g. a stranger, a colleague, a child, a family member, a friend, a teacher etc. It also has an honorific form, used when a person has a higher social status than the speaker. Interestingly, the informal, formal and honorific versions of the same verb are often so different that they can appear to be totally unrelated. I have not really tackled the honorific in my language lessons yet – your average foreigner will not need to use it very often at all – but I have been grappling with the formal and informal. The fact that they are confusing is not an excuse for shirking; as my teacher said to me, ‘yes this is difficult. But it’s important so we need to learn it properly.’ I see this as a kind of good manners – showing respect to the language in which I want to be able to communicate and to the long-suffering teacher who is helping me learn. On a daily basis Japanese people show this respect to their friends, their co-workers, their family.

The emphasis on manners can also be seen in numerous places while out and about. When you get on a train, you are asked to switch your mobile phone to ‘manner mode’ (silent) and people rarely infringe on others’ thoughts by talking on the phone. Instead, train carriages are largely silent, with travellers reading books or playing games on their phones. On most staircases in public areas there are signs telling you which side to use to go up, and which to go down, and at a local station I observed a notice at the top of the stairs asking people to pay attention to these directions. It roughly translated as ‘Because of manners there are rules. If the rules are there, the manners are there.’

There is also an overriding sense that your actions should not in any way inconvenience others. It has been interesting when I’ve held a door for someone, or let them pass on a narrow path, that instead of the response being a straight out ‘thank you’, it has been a word that equates to ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘excuse me’, i.e. apologising that they’ve in some way put me out. When entering or leaving a room, or ending a phone conversation, it is customary to use a word that literally translates as ‘I’m being rude’ and implies a request for forgiveness.

I spent a very interesting morning at a ‘Manners Salon’, where I began to learn some of the finer points of Japanese etiquette, especially as it relates to social occasions. Sensei, immaculate in attire and deportment, took a roomful of confused but willing participants through the correct way to wrap and present your host’s gift; fold your coat before you arrive at your host’s house; remove your shoes and tidy them, entering the house without turning your back on your host; enter and leave the entertaining room; pull apart your chopsticks and make a rest for them; get on and off your cushion at the table. As sensei put it, ‘manners equal love’. My mind was whirling with all the instructions I received and I was horrified by the thought that I may unknowingly have offended someone prior to learning all of this. However when speaking to my Japanese friends after the salon (mainly women of a similar age to me), they all laughed and said that I knew more about traditional manners than they did. Part of this response was Japanese manners in action – it is polite to claim that you know less than someone, even if it’s not the case – but partly it was an indication that in today’s Japan, many of the old ways of doing things are slowly being phased out. Not all of them though – my friends still dip their head to me in an almost-bow when we part (it’s not a full bow because I’m a foreigner and I think they think I’d find it weird!)

One of the old ways of doing things that I would not mind seeing phased out is the attitude towards women, especially in large companies. This is one of those contradictions that I mentioned earlier: everyone deserves respect and to be treated politely, but if you are a man, women should respect you even more whereas you do not have to reciprocate. Of course, this is not the case in all companies, or with all men or women. But in what I have so far seen and heard, women are often consigned to the role of secretary or receptionist and are consistently spoken down to by their male colleagues. One of my Japanese friends says she believes that Japanese women are also perceived in a certain way by foreign men – as submissive, quiet and grateful for male attention.  Sadly, I have observed this kind of attitude in action, although I did seek to persuade my friend that not all men are like this. I also suggested she take up a martial art; men are less likely to treat you like a doormat if they know you can kick them in the head. Not that we should have to prove ourselves like this in the first place, and it wouldn’t be terribly good manners either…

Another contradiction of good manners I have occasionally observed and experienced is the treatment of foreigners. Attitudes towards me have bounced from hyper-politeness because I am often in the role of visitor, guest or customer, to healthy curiosity and amusement because I’m different, to dislike or rudeness because I’m an intruder, an unwelcome addition. Without a doubt, the best way I have found of dealing with the less-welcoming situations is to keep learning and trying to use the language, and maintain my own manners and politeness at all times. It’s not rocket science really, just good communication and common sense and I don’t think this is different anywhere in the world.

For the most part however, I am still struck on a daily basis by the politeness and good manners of the vast majority of people with whom I come into contact. The person who welcomes me into a shop and takes my basket to the checkout for me; the complete strangers who have offered me assistance finding places when I’ve been lost; the never-ending patience of my Japanese teacher who apologises when I don’t understand something; the ground crew at the airport who bowed to our plane as we took off to go on holiday: this is a country where politeness and manners matter and can be found all over the place.

Before I came to Japan I had been noticing in the UK for a while an increasing tendency towards complaining and being rude. I am not for a second suggesting that we should always put up and shut up because it’s more polite that way, but would it not be better to put this negative energy to more constructive use by getting on with things, showing respect for our fellow human beings, and employing good manners at all times? In my experience, being happy and polite is far less exhausting than being miserable and rude. And, as my grandmothers both used to say to me, manners cost nothing.

I think we can definitely learn a lot from the Japanese approach to politeness and manners. Life here isn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but there are some really interesting ideas and attitudes that I want to retain after I return to the UK, which is also far from perfect. But perfection is possibly neither achievable nor desirable. If it were life wouldn’t be nearly as fascinating.

またね!