Bow to Tradition
In a Japanese corporation, proper employees know who is superior and who is subordinate. They use different words and sentence structures depending on the relative social status of those who are being talked to or talked about. They even know who must bow lower when two people meet. These rules of bowing are summarized below.
- Older is superior to younger; the Japanese language classifies such distinctions – and in a family one refers to brothers and sisters (or even sons and daughters) by their relative age names (such as “nisan,” “older brother”) not by their personal names.
- Men are superior to women, father is superior to mother. Effectively women maybe more powerful, but socially they defer to men.
- The teacher (sensei) is superior;…And if some day one of the teacher’s students becomes Prime Minister and happens to meet his old teacher, the former student will still bow low.
- Guest is superior to host, most obviously in professional hotels but elsewhere, too.
- The seller bows low to the buyer, merchant to customer, the borrower to the lender. The analogy is perfect: the greater the favor, the lower the bow.
- Where school, club, or organization ranks are fixed, as in school grades, the lower member bows to his superior fellows. In many high schools, collar buttons will identify who is in what year.
Today the rules are becoming looser, but some rules must exist. For in Japan without knowing one’s relative status it is difficult to know how to say a proper “good morning.” The vertical gesture of bowing is ever-present. In listening to a respected superior speaker, the heads of the audience are bowed. In saying yes, which seems to be said so very often in Japan, the head moves on the vertical in a nod or with a quick snap. “No” is gestured horizontally, the shaking of the head, but this is rarely seen. Instead, disagreement is more likely to be a kind of diagonal, somewhere between nodding and shaking, or more often yet another vertical nod which seems to say “yes” but is known to mean “no.”
Directions: After reading the passage, answer the following questions.
- What is the meaning of the Japanese custom of bowing?
- What might have led the Japanese to adopt such a rigid custom of social status?
- If you were going to live in Japan, which of the six rules would you find most difficult to follow? Why?
- How do Americans show respect in American society?
- How might adopting this method of deferring to age or superiors improve American society?