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> It’s generally a bad idea to use the word “you”—too intrusive—and there are said to be 20 ways of saying “I.” See formal "you" and informal "you" in European

> It’s generally a bad idea to use the word “you”—too intrusive—and there are said to be 20 ways of saying “I.” See formal "you" and informal "you" in European languages for a related phenomenon. It's ironic that English "thou", the informal, singular "you", became so impolite that it fell out of general use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou . > Women are expected to refer to themselves in the third person, men not. It is interesting that J has women's language and men's language, but that does not make it exceptional in its uniqueness. > A single verb in Yasunari Kawabata’s short novel Snow Country is translated in 29 different ways because what we would render as “I think” can in Japan mean “I remember,” “I long for” or 27 other things. For comparison, I present the E verb whose Proto-IE ancestor has had the most success in surviving among its daughter languages https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bear#Verb_2 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bear#Verb_2 , and all the shades of meaning in E that it has acquired in its storied history. > One prince in Genji has never been allowed to speak with his own sister except through curtains or behind a screen. Yet men in Genji’s world think nothing of going to bed with women with whom they’ve never exchanged a word. Rather than reflecting on some essential role of silence in Japanese culture, it reflects primarily the court customs and the religious significance of the Japanese royalty. There may be an argument that this is reflective of silence and that this role of silence survives in some form in contemporary Japan, but it needs a more comprehensive argument with more evidence. > You can tell a Japanese restaurant in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris, my wife points out, by the fact that (unlike the places run by Koreans or Chinese) it never says “Japanese” at the entrance. On the other hand, many Japanese restaurants advertise that they serve ramen/udon/sushi out front. In Japan, many restaurants have a greeter actively soliciting customers that you won't find in the West. > In Japan, more than anywhere, nothing is more fatal than thinking you know what’s being said. The English word “hip” in Japan refers to the buttocks, and “smart” means slender. “Naïve” is a good word in Japan, and so is “tension.” A “mansion” refers to a thick-walled, modern and often small apartment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend False friends are a perpetual source of embarassment, and is no way exceptionally fatal in Japan.

jhanschoo 7y ago
> In Japan, I never forget that a great conversationalist is one who listens. This is true everywhere, and not exceptionally more true in Japan than anywhere else. Perhaps Japanese are raised in a way that they have more good listeners. > A couple that got married in Nagasaki soon after the bomb was dropped on the city, Susan Southard reports, would mention the transfiguring event once, and then never again. I think this refers to a specific couple from this book? (https://www.amazon.com/Nagasaki-Life-After-Nuclear-War/dp/0143109421 https://www.amazon.com/Nagasaki-Life-After-Nuclear-War/dp/01...) It's a stretch to say that this is indicative of a general attitude toward silence. > “If you think, ‘I breathe,’ ” said Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher, “the ‘I’ is extra.” Zen is just about as reflective of Japan in general as the Amish are of the US. > Perhaps the most celebrated poem in Japan is Basho’s gasp of delight at seeing the island of Matsushima. The author overstates its high-brow-ness. It's just fun to quote. There are a lot of haiku that are primarily funny. ==== I can go on, but it's more of the same. All these observations are isolated from various contexts and loosely tied together into a theme of Japanese silence. It's fun and doing something like this helps organize things into something readable, but for the theme to reflect something innately Japanese and more than an ad-hoc organization of prima facie similar thoughts would require a proper argument. ==== > One sign that Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is a Japanese movie is the fact that the audience never hears its last, and presumably most important, sentence. Surely this is satire? ==== > A Beginner’s Guide to Japan by Pico Iyer is now available from Knopf. Featured with permission of the publisher, Knopf. Copyright © 2019 by Pico Iyer. Presumably this article consists of excerpts from the book. In terms of literary form, it's very fun, reminding of epigrams and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. But the person who picks up this book based on its title expecting some nuanced reflection on Japan would find the author's dogmatic ignorance most discernible in it, and nothing remotely hinting at the wisdom behind Meditations. Note that I find that Meditations suffers similarly; the observations do not exhibit blinding ignorance as some do here, but they are terribly lacking in context for many to be more universally useful than just "notes to oneself".
- Cpoll 7y ago
  > dogmatic ignorance What a fantastic phrase and way of putting it, thank you.

jhanschoo 7y ago

> In Japan, I never forget that a great conversationalist is one who listens. This is true everywhere, and not exceptionally more true in Japan than anywhere else. Perhaps Japanese are raised in a way that they have more good listeners. > A couple that got married in Nagasaki soon after the bomb was dropped on the city, Susan Southard reports, would mention the transfiguring event once, and then never again. I think this refers to a specific couple from this book? (https://www.amazon.com/Nagasaki-Life-After-Nuclear-War/dp/0143109421 https://www.amazon.com/Nagasaki-Life-After-Nuclear-War/dp/01...) It's a stretch to say that this is indicative of a general attitude toward silence. > “If you think, ‘I breathe,’ ” said Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher, “the ‘I’ is extra.” Zen is just about as reflective of Japan in general as the Amish are of the US. > Perhaps the most celebrated poem in Japan is Basho’s gasp of delight at seeing the island of Matsushima. The author overstates its high-brow-ness. It's just fun to quote. There are a lot of haiku that are primarily funny. ==== I can go on, but it's more of the same. All these observations are isolated from various contexts and loosely tied together into a theme of Japanese silence. It's fun and doing something like this helps organize things into something readable, but for the theme to reflect something innately Japanese and more than an ad-hoc organization of prima facie similar thoughts would require a proper argument. ==== > One sign that Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is a Japanese movie is the fact that the audience never hears its last, and presumably most important, sentence. Surely this is satire? ==== > A Beginner’s Guide to Japan by Pico Iyer is now available from Knopf. Featured with permission of the publisher, Knopf. Copyright © 2019 by Pico Iyer. Presumably this article consists of excerpts from the book. In terms of literary form, it's very fun, reminding of epigrams and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. But the person who picks up this book based on its title expecting some nuanced reflection on Japan would find the author's dogmatic ignorance most discernible in it, and nothing remotely hinting at the wisdom behind Meditations. Note that I find that Meditations suffers similarly; the observations do not exhibit blinding ignorance as some do here, but they are terribly lacking in context for many to be more universally useful than just "notes to oneself".

Cpoll 7y ago
> dogmatic ignorance What a fantastic phrase and way of putting it, thank you.