Time Machine: Changing Values in Japanese Etiquette

This story originally appeared in the January 1986 edition of Winds — the inflight magazine of Japan Air Lines.

TOKYO — “It’s nice to be in a civilized country for a change.” Those were the words of a foreign businessman visiting Japan recently, and the multitude of people who annually come to this island nation would no doubt agree. For manners, with a capital M, have long been one of the country’s leading attractions.

From the uniformed department store escalator girls who bow to each customer, to waiters who leap at every command, to smiling white-gloved taxi drivers with lace covers on their seats and color TV for their passengers, and even automatic vending machines that say “ Please and “Thank you” with pre-recorded messages, Japanese politeness is legendary. Indeed, the kindness and courtesy, combined with a low crime rate, have moved some aficionados to describe Japan as modern-day Utopia, crowds and high prices notwithstanding.

There are signs, however, that the nation’s traditional regard for etiquette is slipping. For example, more and more pedestrians can be seen ignoring red lights, dashing across the street like seasoned New Yorkers — unthinkable just a few years ago. Fewer and fewer subway and train riders seem willing to surrender their seats to the elderly and disabled. And the growing number of people who will charge headlong into an elevator before anyone inside has a chance to get out is becoming a problem in Tokyo hotels and office buildings.

Karaoke singers have virtually eliminated quiet evenings at the neighborhood bar, while Japanese pro baseball fans, once regarded as models of restrained behavior, have gotten so obstreperous that the Commissioner’s office has issued a ban on all horns, bells, whistles and taiko drums for the benefit of those who wish to watch a game in relative peace.

At a recent Liberal Democratic Party fund-raising dinner, one speaker, frustrated at trying to make himself heard over the clink of glasses and silverware, finally interrupted his speech and yelled, “Stop eating and wait until I am finished talking. What’s wrong with you people, anyway?”

That’s a question that a great many others are asking themselves these days. According to a recent survey taken by the Prime Minister’s office, 56% of the people in Japan opined that they had bad social manners (as opposed to 25% who thought they were good). In addition to the offenses usually listed in such surveys — littering, polluting, spitting indiscriminately in public, etc. — they cited some relatively new complaints: disturbing others with noise, damaging flowers and lawns in parks and breaking in to queues, among others.

Said Kozo Abe, a veteran reporter with a major daily newspaper. “To me, as a Japanese, the change is really noticeable. When I was 17, people used to let the other guy go first. Now everybody is pushing and shoving, especially in Tokyo. You find more rude women nowadays, too. They brush by you and never say ‘Excuse me.’ ”

Added Teriko Arimatsu, a business executive based in Tokyo for the past 30 years, “You see things today that were simply unimaginable in my time. People walking down the street eating hamburgers. People you meet for the first time who forget to give you their name cards. People who tie up a public phone for half an hour and don’t apologize. There are even cab drivers these days who won’t even answer you. They just grunt.”

Japan, long a fascination mix of modernity and underlying tradition, now appears to be undergoing a significant change in values, triggered obviously by rising national wealth and influx of Western-style thinking. 

According to a report issued by the Health and Welfare Ministry in 1984, this is reflected in an increase in divorce (although the rate is still only one-fifth that of the U.S.), a rise in young workers in their 20s and 30s who are seriously considering a job change, and a marked growth in school dropouts — students alienated by the intense pressure of the notorious “ Exam Hell.”

Although Japan as a whole still works harder than most developed countries, it is clear that the “Neo-Japanese,” as the present generation has been dubbed, have little interest in imitating the self-sacrifice and hard work of their predecessors. For them, tradition, discipline and respect for the company flag are out. Aerobic dancing, wild fashions and “me-ism” are in.

The roots of the present social patterns, many Japanese will tell you, may be traced to the changes that took place immediately following the end of World War II. As Kazuhiro Yamamoto (48), an educational book publisher, explained, “Before the war, the public school system took much of the responsibility for training in ethics and department. The schools taught the kids how to stand, sit and eat properly, and how to address their seniors. It was very strict. But with the end of the war and the Occupation, all that changed. The schools left it up to the parents to start teaching those things, and the parents, faced with a whole new life-style in the introduction of the American culture, rejected the old ways. Suddenly, anything Western was good. Equality and freedom became the fashion. They were kind of overwhelmed by it all. They were also too preoccupied in eking out a living to think about properly disciplining their children. As long as the kids did their studies, and got good grades, everything else was OK.”

That generation grew up pampered in many respects, which in turn influenced the way they taught their own children. The results are being seen now.

“There’s been a distinct change in the social order even since I was a little girl,” says Noriko Kobayashi, 38, a translator. “When I was seven years old and rode in the train with my grandmother, she took the first available seat and I would stand if necessary. She would tell me, ‘I paid full fare. You only paid half, so you stand.’ It was part of my training. Today, however, it’s completely backwards.”

When riding a crowded subway recently, Kobayashi suggested that a 10-year-old boy occupying a seat reserved for senior citizens get up and let one of his grandparents sit down.

“Mind your own business,” snapped the grandmother indignantly.

“Baba” (hag)! cried the boy, “Leave me alone.”

“Don’t mind him,” said the grandfather apologetically, “He’s just spoiled.”

According to guidance counselor Machiko Kondo, the change in housing has also influenced behavior. “The old-style Japanese house was very open and there wasn’t much privacy,” she says. “So people had to mind their manners. But now, many families are living in Western-style houses or apartments and lots of kids have their own rooms. It’s like having their own little castle. They go in and they lock themselves up. They are naturally getting more and more self-centered and individualistic. . . . Moreover, the father has suffered a loss of dignity in postwar years. He has had to work hard and commute long hours. He comes home late at night, sleeps late on Sunday. And that’s all the kids see. They don’t have much of a role model. Now that so many mothers are working, materialism is the only message they are getting.”

One TV commentator, summing up the evolution of manners, has divided it into three eras. “Before the war,” he said, “students bowed deeply in a respectful greeting to their teacher. In the 60s, they just nodded their heads. And these days, they don’t even say hello.”

A writer described the same progression in another way.

Pre-war Era:

Teacher: “Red is green.”

Students: “Yes, teacher. That’s right.”

Post-War Era:

T: “Red is green.”

S: “No, I don’t think so.”

Now:

T: “Red is green.”

S: “How stupid can you be!”

The prospects for the upcoming generation do not appear to be overly promising. In a study conducted by the Ministry of Education last year of several thousand primary school students across the country, it was found that more than half of them rarely made up with friends after an argument, used polite language when talking to their parents, or even threw their trash into garbage bins.

What alarms many purists about the present deterioration of manners is the accompanying loss of “form.” Form has always been an important consideration in Japan, whether it be pouring tea, writing Chinese characters or swinging a baseball bat. “With proper form,” say the martial arts masters, “everything else will follow.” 

Traditionally, there is a prescribed and proper way of doing just about anything in Japan. But, as designer Machiko Kawamura says, “We’re becoming careless about that. When I was young we had to learn how to arrange a dinner tray. The soup went on the right. The rice went on the left. It was unthinkable to do it otherwise. But these days, there are even people working in restaurants who don’t know how to do that properly. I tell my 14-year-old daughter, ‘Put your soup bowl in the right place.’ She says, ‘Why? What difference does it make?’ ”

Says Atsushi Imamura, a monthly magazine editor, “There’s also been a deterioration in writing. Lots of young people don’t know how to write characters in the proper stroke order. They just write them any old way and it’s not very pleasing to the eye. What’s more, we are losing the spoken Japanese language. There is much less respect now, in forms of address, for example, than there used to be. People use first names when they barely know each other. It’s not civilized.”

The list of things that people don’t do properly these days would fill a short book, according to the experts. The major offenders are those who enter a house and leave their shoes strewn in the hallway, instead of neatly lining them up, toes facing the front door. They carelessly flip open the shoji (sliding doors) with one hand, instead of sliding it with two, and step heedlessly on the mimi (edge) of the tatami mat, a practice which eventually causes it to tear.

They handle name cards improperly, dispensing their own upside down, and accepting those of others with their fingers over the person’s name. they occasionally go as far as one thoughtless smoker who used a newly-received name card to scoop up his spilled ashes.

They also pour tea with one hand, spear food with their chopsticks and take the last of the beer without offering it to anyone else at the table. Of course, sitting upright in traditional Japanese fashion for more than a few minutes is absolutely out of the question. (Indeed, a recent movie scene in which young singing idol Seiko Matsuda was unable to get up after sitting primly on the floor through a formal tea because her leg had gone to sleep drew roars of knowing laughter from teenaged audiences all over the country.)

“College students are the worst,” sniffed one critic. “They wear blue jeans to class, sigh right in front of you and carry on a conversation without turning off their Walkman. They’re turning Japan into a nation of barbarians!” 

Improper use of chopsticks has become a particular problem. The Ministry of Education estimates that about one-third of Japanese in their 30s and below, which includes nearly one half of all primary school children, cannot use chopsticks properly. (This compares to 1935, when the average child of three was judged to be competent in their use.) The problem is serious because the Japanese have long believed that using the hands is also good for the brain, and that their use of chopsticks has helped make them an especially dexterous people.

Today many maladroits hold chopsticks as they would a pen. Others cross the sticks, or hold them at the lower end. Some children even use their chopsticks as knife and fork, first cutting their rice into cubes with the sticks, then stabbing them and picking them up. There are also people guilty of the grievous sin of “straying chopsticks,” in which a person who is about to pick up something from one dish on his tray suddenly changes his mind and picks up food from another. According to professor Kimiaki Yatagai of Keihin Women’s University, who has been conducting research on the problem for several years, this sorry state of affairs has come about because Western-style eating is so popular at home. “Parents just don’t take the time to teach their children properly,” he says. 

Nothing has changed more dramatically in Japan than the behavior of women. As recently as 20 to 30 years ago, a well-bred lady was one who deferred to men, who had no profession or aspirations outside the home, and who, upon completing her formal schooling, learned tea ceremony, flower arranging and cooking in preparation for marriage — an act incidentally which she was expected to accomplish by her mid-20s at the very latest.

She had a special combination of grace, gentleness and modesty (known as shito-yakasa) that one can see on the Japanese screen today in such actresses as Yoko Yamamoto.

Now, however, women have made significant gains in the job market and benefit from government legislation to remove sex discrimination in jobs. In fact, the majority of Japanese women — married or single — are now working and a great many of them start right after high school.

The modern young woman is a creature who more than likely does not know how to wear a kimono properly, who smokes and drinks openly, and prefers cohabitation or living alone to marriage, if the latter means sacrificing her independence or her career. Her “grace, gentleness and modesty,” are not always apparent, as is the case with actress Yamamoto off-screen when she cavorts with her boyfriend, a rock singer 22 years her junior, at one of Tokyo’s pulsing hi-tech discos.

Not all men are overjoyed at this turn of events. Said one young salaryman with some disgust, “The women I know all talk like men. They walk like men. And they have no compunction about being drunk in public. If you take one out to dinner, you are really lucky if she has the courtesy to say thank you. They’re all trying hard to imitate American women. But they’re imitating all of the very worst parts.”

Said an editor of a leading women’s magazine, “Women are saying, ‘I’m free to do what I want.’ Perhaps there’s an element of showing off in their behavior, but if you’re not smoking or drinking, or kissing your boyfriend in public, then you’re considered behind the times … The movie Kramer vs. Kramer had a big impact on women in Japan. About 50% of the married women I talk to want a divorce.”

All in all, some Japanese see the new attitudes on manners as necessary to break up an old code of deportment that was just too strict. As one business executive said, “I like being able to wear a pink shirt to work. Ten years ago it would have been unimaginable for a person like me to do that, but now I can. In some ways, I feel sorry about the passing of our old system of manners. It’s the end of an era. But maybe it is better this way.”

Still others, however, fear that the situation may be getting out of hand. “I think people have misunderstood because of the newness of things,” says the executive’s boss. “We’ve gone too far. I’d like to see the trend reversed and balanced out a bit before we lose our sense of delicacy and decorum altogether.”

Fortunately for advocates of traditional etiquette, something is being done. Corporate executives, for example, alarmed at the ill manners of the younger generation, have begun sending new employees for special training at places like the Japan Air Lines Etiquette School. Here, stewardesses drill students — mostly young ladies — on such subjects as how to stand, how to bow, and how to greet people.

Established in 1981, the JAL school now trains several thousand workers a year and publishes an etiquette videotape which is selling quite well. Other etiquette schools have sprung up in the wake of JAL’s success and the etiquette business is already said to be worth a good sum of money each year.

Television has joined the effort. Public service ads urge people to show more consideration for others, and exhort parents to spend more time teaching their children how to behave. Last winter, a nationwide TV network aired a nightly five-minute series on manners. Included in the aminated programs were lessons on how to sit on the train (don’t sprawl), how to exit and elevator (push the close button for the benefit of those staying inside), and how to enter a room, even one you’ve just left (always knock; you never know what may be going on inside).

In a particularly meaningful development, a manufacturer has begun marketing “trainer chopsticks” with rings and hooks in the right places for the fingers and ridged edges for easily picking up things.

Furthermore, the government of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has recently called for a return to “Moral Education” and the teaching of traditional culture in the nation’s public school system.

The result of these moves is as yet uncertain, but it should be noted that, despite the recent dip in deportment, Japan still has an abundance to offer in that department when compared to other countries. Japan’s service industry, for example, is still second to none, and the nation boasts what must surely be the world’s most effusively polite receptionists, telephone operators and hotel workers.

If the recent experience of one visiting foreigner from New York is any indication, there is still enough old-fashioned Japanese hospitality around to satisfy even the most discerning tourist.

“Sure, I’ve noticed a decline in manners in the 20 years I’ve been coming to Japan, particularly in Tokyo. But I’m still pretty impressed at how polite the people are in general compared to other places I have been. I was standing in Shinjuku Station last June, trying to figure out how to get to Harajuku, when a young Japanese man came up and offered to help, in English. Not only did he go and get directions from a station worker, he also helped me buy my ticket. I don’t think you’d find that kind of courtesy at the West 4^th Street Station in Manhattan … or anywhere else for that matter.”