A Japanese wedding invitation comes with a reply card. A guest who cannot attend marks the card for absence and adds a short reason.
If the real reason is a death in the family, wedding guides advise against writing it. The guest writes tsugō ga tsukazu, it could not be arranged, or yamu o enai jijō ni yori, due to unavoidable circumstances. One guide says that the right answer is to keep it thoroughly vague. The real reason can be told later, by telephone.
In 1974, the scholar Ueda Keiko described sixteen ways in which Japanese speakers express refusal.
Among the ways she described are a vague answer that is neither yes nor no, an excuse, “yes, but,” and a delayed answer such as kangaete okimasu, I will think about it.
A poem in the Man’yōshū, book 13, number 3253, begins: Ashihara no mizuho no kuni wa kamunagara kotoage senu kuni. The land of reed plains and rice, following the will of the gods, is a land where people do not need to put their wishes into words.
The poem then turns: shikaredomo kotoage zo wa ga suru. But I, for my part, do speak out.
In his treatise Kakyō (The Mirror of the Flower), the Noh master Zeami quotes a remark from the audience: senu tokoro ga omoshiroki, the moments where nothing is done are the interesting ones.
Zeami explains that these moments are the gaps between dance, song, speech and gesture. In them, the actor does not let his mind go. He keeps an inner attention that connects what comes before and after, and he should hide it even from himself.
At the government’s memorial ceremony on March 11, the public is asked to observe a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m., the time the Great East Japan Earthquake struck in 2011. Cities such as Nagoya announce one minute of silence from 2:46.
In Hiroshima on August 6, at 8:15 a.m., the moment the atomic bomb was dropped, the peace bell and sirens sound. At the ceremony, at home and at work, people observe one minute of silence.
Kōgen reishoku sukunashi jin (巧言令色、鮮し仁): clever words and a pleasing face are seldom found with true virtue. The saying comes from the Analects of Confucius.
In Japanese, kōgen reishoku means to decorate one’s words and put on an agreeable face, without meaning it, in order to flatter others.
Yūben wa gin, chinmoku wa kin (雄弁は銀、沈黙は金): eloquence is silver, silence is gold. The Daijisen dictionary explains: eloquence matters, but knowing when to stay silent matters more.
The dictionary notes that the words appear in Sartor Resartus, by the British thinker Thomas Carlyle.
Haragei (腹芸): belly art. On the stage, acting that shows a character’s inner state without words or movements, by holding the feelings inside.
Scheming inwardly without putting the plan into words or actions. Also handling matters through nerve and presence instead of giving direct instructions. The dictionary’s example: haragei no dekiru seijika, a politician capable of haragei.
The composer Takemitsu Tōru titled a collection of his essays Oto, chinmoku to hakariaeru hodo ni: sound, strong enough to be measured against silence. He wrote that poetry and music were born when sound was voiced against silence.
In Japanese kitchens and workshops, newcomers are told waza o nusume, steal the skill. The expert does not walk the newcomer through the know-how step by step. He keeps working where the newcomer can watch, and expects the newcomer to master the skill over a long time. Cooks, craftsmen and technicians are among the trades that train this way. Sushi chefs say meshitaki sannen, nigiri hachinen: three years cooking rice, eight years shaping sushi.
In 2023, a debate on social media asked whether the method is outdated. A worker in the shipping industry wrote that those who say it do not teach because they have no theory of teaching.