The Myth of Japanese Indirectness and “Subtlety”

Drawing of two business people without facial details - a man (left) and woman (right) - bowing.
Stereotypes of Japan as a land of vague meaning and blunted expression are just straight up Orientalism that obscure a complex reality.

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It has a bad reputation (mainly because it’s…bad), but I like Japanese drama. As I’ve said before, it’s a great way to gauge cultural trends and what’s weighing on people’s minds.

It’s also a raucous display of bad behavior.

Japanese workaday life can be stressful. And that comes out (admittedly, in an exaggerated format) in drama. Hardly a season passes without a tale of a monster boss from hell.

These bosses are anything but polite and subtle. They’re nasty and vicious. They don’t mince words. And they do everything in their power to make those under them feel small, lesser, and insignificant.

Like I said, it’s drama, so it’s exaggerated. You can’t grab your subordinate by their testicles and expect that HR won’t have a word.

But it’s based on real-life experiences of power harassment in Japan. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor receives consultations on some 1.3 million cases of workplace abuse yearly. Of those cases, the majority involve power harassment or bullying[1].

Which brings me to the myth of Japanese indirectness and “subtlety”. I brought this up in a tweet on my personal Twitter recently because it’s a myth that really needs to die.

In their reply to another tweet, OP stated: “Japanese culture is very concerned about the feelings of others, so they often speak in euphemisms and expect others to read between the lines.”

This is wrong on so many levels.

First of all I can declare, as an American, that even the depiction of the United States is wrong. “Bluntness” differs by region. I grew up in New York State (not New York City – yes, there’s an entire state north of the Bronx, folks). I lived in the Seattle region for 20+years. There’s a good deal more passive-aggressiveness and blunting of one’s true feelings in the Pacific Northwest than there is on the east coast.

Ask a Seattle person what it means when someone tells you “That was fun, let’s do it again sometime.” Or what a Southerner means when they say “bless her heart.”

Furthermore, that regionality also holds true for Japan. Statements like the OP’s treat Japan like a monoculture when it’s anything but. For example, people in Japan’s Kansai region – for better or worse – have a reputation for being more blunt and “rude” than “ordinary” Japanese people[2].

People in Japan can be as blunt, rude, and inconsiderate as another human being’s feelings as anyone else on the planet. This is especially true in retail. The mentality in Japan that “the customer is god” leads to some outright despicable abuses of staff. Like the business owner who relates how a customer once threw her high heel at them. Just as in the US, Japan has its own class of Karens (or 可憐, if you will).

I’m not saying people in Japan are commonly blunt and rude. I’m saying people should stop making generalizations based in Orientalist fantasies just so they can sound smart at parties. Such generalizations obscure the complex underlying reality.

It’s important to get this right. Because people who hear tales of Japanese “politeness” and “indirectness” move there expecting to find a mythical fairyland of deep bows and endless moushiwake nais. And that never ends well.

It’s true that there’s a level of indirectness in the Japanese language. But there is in every language. And it’s situational. I can be as vague and as indirect as I need to be in English when the situation warrants. (Anyone who’s ever sent a business email understands this[3].) Conversely, you can be as direct, blunt, rude, and inconsiderate of someone else’s feelings in Japanese as you can in any other language.

The West stereotypes Asia as an “exotic” land billowing with incense and flowery phrases. This is just another example of that strain of Orientalism. Such stereotypes build up barriers between people when we should be working to tear them down.

What to read next

Sources

[1] 引き続きトップとなった「いじめ・嫌がらせ」の相談件数. Advance

[2] 大阪人が一般の日本人に比べて、無礼(失礼)でマナーがないように見える理由【海外の反応】. Multilingirl

[3] 26 Email Phrases That Seem Polite, But Actually Have A Different Meaning. Bored Panda

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