The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

72 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 R EFLECTIONS Thank You B Y S TEVEN M ENDEL W hat does it say about a coun- try when the one indispens- able phrase is “thank you”? Let me explain. My wife and I just got back from a two-week visit in Japan. The crucial phrase for the European countries that we had visited over the years was “where is.” As in, where is the museum/church/bath- room, etc? We assumed the same would be true in Japan. Wrong. Saying “thank you” and being polite are the keys for getting along in Japan. This is true throughout the entire country. Japan is a country that functions. The streets are spotless, the trains run on time and the crime rate is infinitesimally small. The people are helpful, friendly and always polite. At every restaurant, in uni- son, the waitresses, the bus boys and the cashier shout out “welcome.” When we left an eating establish- ment the entire staff once again became a chorus thanking us. We responded with our one word of Japanese, an enthusiastic “arigoto!” When we asked for directions, the Japanese would unfailingly do their best to help, sometimes leading us to our destination. Other times they would walk blocks out of their way or insist on driving us. We live in New York City, so we’re used to crowds, but in Tokyo the crowds were denser, yet somehow less intrusive. For instance, when a sub- way car was already jam-packed with riders and someone wanted to get on, they would back their way into the crowd. This was done in such a non-confrontational way that none of the other riders took offense. Everyone else would just squeeze in tighter to make room. So Japan works — but only up to a certain point. The high value placed on being polite is a force for conformity. There is a beauty in Japan in the minutiae of everyday interactions, but these rituals can become oppressive and have had far-reaching consequences for Japanese society. It seems that all the major social changes in Japan have come from the top down. Buddhism became the state religion with the conversion of the emperor. The contemporary version of this fealty to power is the fierce loyalty to one’s employer. People talk about their employer or “the company” with a reverence that Westerners reserve for God and country. Back when the Japanese econo- my was touted as the wave of the future, the assumption was that cor- porations would guarantee lifetime employment in exchange for total dedication — a sort of corporate noblesse oblige. The government was part of this social contract, too, establishing an industrial policy to assist the corporations in their growth. The partnership worked because it linked the two institu- tions at the top of Japanese society. But this contract broke down when the economic bubble burst in the 1990s, and corporations did the unthinkable: they fired employees. People, young and old, we talked to still spoke of “the company” in rev- erential tones, although I sometimes detected a hint of irony absent before. I am not so naïve as to say that changes in American society come only from below. It is usually an alliance between elites and mass movements that produce change in our country. But the inability of popular opinion to drive the process of change in Japan is striking. This may be slowly evolving, however. We talked to several young people who said that they did not intend to work for the same company their whole life. They also said they envied what they perceived to be the relative ease of starting your own business in the West. Others decried the erosion of tradition in Japan among young people and the declining importance of being polite. There seemed to be a widely shared concern among all ages that Japan continue to develop economi- cally, while retaining its Japanese- ness. The fundamental question for this unique country that works so well is how to retain the aspects of being polite that make things run so smoothly while at the same time loosening the ties that restrict cre- ativity and initiative. n Steven Mendel is a psychologist and free-lance writer who lives in New York City. The stamp is courtesy of the AAFSW Bookfair “Stamp Corner.”