Japanese People and Apologizing

It's important to say you're sorry in most countries, but in Japan apologizing is a cultural must that is non-negotiable for Japanese.

The interesting aspect of Japan's "apology first" culture is that it doesn't necessarily mean you have some interior sense of sorrow when you apologize - quite often it is simply a way of smoothing over social situations in Japan.

Even if a person didn't do anything wrong, saying "I'm sorry," is a way to maintain harmony and avoid needless embarrassment or awkwardness at work or in some other Japanese social situation.

The apology culture of Japan is also on display in a unique way in corporate leadership. If, for example, two factory workers die on the job because of company negligence , the c.e.o. is expected to go to the home of deceased family and apologize profusely by bowing and appearing very contrite; and the event will be covered on TV and done in a very public way.

This aspect of Japanese culture exploded on the shores of America a few years back when a U.S. Navy ship mistakenly rammed into a Japanese ship with several school children on board. It was a tragic situation and several people died.

Justice ran its course during a court martial in Hawaii, but for the Japanese a court decision wasn't enough. There was a clamor for the American Navy Captain to fly to Japan and personally apologize to the family of the people he accidentaly killed.

Yet the irony of this is that in much of Asia (mostly among the political class), there is still anger toward Japan and the Japanese government for not apologizing for Japan's Word War II aggression.

There are a few lessons from this that foreigners, and ESL teachers in Japan can take from this apology culture. Toshiya Enomoto writes about the Japanese language and apologizing:

"Japan's 'apology first' culture makes it possible for gaijins (foreigners) to get out of most jams with sumimasen. Sumimasen...is equivalent to 'excuse me.' It is, however, just as useful for apologies and some Japanese prefer to say sumimasen as they think it is a more refined apology 'for grown ups' than gomen 'nasai. Saying sumimasen is also a clever way for gaijins to hide their limited vocabulary."

The English Language in Japan

Ah, the Japanese and English...Japan is probably the only place in the world where the people can accurately write an English sentence in the present perfect tense, but cannot understand an American when he asks in English: "Which train goes to Kyoto?"

And no one is more aware of this irony than the Japanese people themselves, because they slavishly studied the English language for years in school; when push comes to shove, they really can't speak or understand English in any practical way.

Some of this may be the fault of the written Japanese language itself, which is composed of Chinese characters (kanji) along with two kinds of Japanese characters to accommodate foreign words, concepts, etc. The way that Japanese young children learn to read and write Japanese is by methodically memorizing large groups of characters until they have a working vocabulary.

In many ways it's this method of learning the Japanese language that has informed the way that the Japanese people learn English.

Japanese people (who do not speak English) are largely responsible for teaching young Japanese English. And they do this by emphasizing grammar almost to the complete exclusion of speaking. For as one wise man once said, "you can't pass on what you don't have. "

Exposure to "spoken English" might be from JET program teachers, who are largely American ESL teachers employed by the state to swoop into junior high classes and have fun with the students using English. It's all fun and games, but Japanese young people are mostly concerned with passing their high school and university entrance exams, which require an expertise grammar knowledge.

All and all, the Japanese people are slightly uncomfortable in situations where they might be expected to use English with a foreigner. Perhaps they feel they were short changed when it came to their adolescent English lessons, or perhaps it's more about Japanese "shame culture," where losing face is a dreaded prospect.

In the end, the best bet when you're lost somewhere in Japan is to bumble through using your travel book Japanese, and hope that a sympathetic Japanese person realizes that their unused English is positively Shakespearean compared to your mangled Japanese.