Indirect Disagreement Archives - understand-culture

The Seas on All Sides

At the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941, the cabinet of Konoe Fumimaro confirmed its policy. If there was no prospect of Japan’s demands being met by late October, Japan would go to war with the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. At the conference, Emperor Shōwa read aloud a poem by Emperor Meiji.

Yomo no umi mina harakara to omou yo ni nado namikaze no tachisawaguramu. In a world where I think of all the seas on every side as brothers, why do the winds and waves rise so?

Emperor Meiji had written the poem before the Russo-Japanese War, in a wish for peace. The Emperor’s recital is generally read as a sign of his wish for peace. One author reads it instead as bitter irony from an Emperor who saw war as unavoidable.

That Is My Heart

In July 2006, the Nikkei newspaper published part of a memo by Tomita Tomohiko, a former head of the Imperial Household Agency. It recorded words of Emperor Shōwa about the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine: Dakara watashi are irai sanpai shite inai. Sore ga watashi no kokoro da. That is why I have not visited since. That is my heart.

The last visit of an emperor to Yasukuni took place in 1975. Some questioned whether the memo was genuine. A committee appointed by the Nikkei concluded that the words could only be read as displeasure.

The Vocabulary of Objection

Ikan (遺憾): regret. A dictionary defines it as feeling regret because something did not turn out as expected or intended. The government uses the phrase ikan no i, an expression of regret, when it protests the actions of another country.

Okotoba o kaesu yō desu ga (お言葉を返すようですが): it may seem that I am returning your words. A phrase placed before disagreeing with someone’s opinion.

Sen’etsu nagara (僭越ながら): though it is presumptuous of me. Another phrase used in the same place.

What a Fine Player

A common story about Kyoto describes a resident who finds the neighbor’s piano too loud. The resident does not say urusai, it is noisy. Instead, the resident says o-jōzu desu nā, how well you play. The magazine Gendai Business presents this as an example of Kyoto speech, along with the offer of bubuzuke, rice with tea, which means it is time to go home.

The same article admits that the image of Kyoto people as ikezu, spiteful, has become a fixed stereotype. A Kyoto shopkeeper describes real ikezu differently. In the shopkeeper’s view, it means saying what one wants to say while caring for the other person.

Delayed Responses

A study published in 2016 in a bulletin of Hiroshima University examined how speakers reach agreement in discussion. When native speakers of Japanese gave a negative response, they used demo or kedo, but, only once, and almost no other connecting words. They often delayed their responses instead. The study suggests that they delayed in order to prompt the other person to adjust their opinion.

In one example from the study, a native speaker softens a rejection with nanka, a filler, and a pause, and then proposes an alternative instead of stating the disagreement.

The Katō Rebellion

In November 2000, the factions of Katō Kōichi and Yamasaki Taku in the governing Liberal Democratic Party planned to vote for the opposition’s no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Mori Yoshirō. On November 20, the two factions changed their position from voting in favor to staying away from the vote.

Katō proposed that the others stay away while he and Yamasaki alone attended and voted for the motion. Members of his faction pressed him to stay on as their leader instead. The motion was rejected shortly after 3 a.m. on November 21.

The open revolt became known as Katō no ran, the Katō Rebellion. It ended in an absence.

Sixteen Ways

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.

Unfinished Refusals

Chotto… (ちょっと…): a little… A sentence left unfinished, as in Sono hi wa chotto…, that day is a little…

A Japanese study of refusals calls such forms iisashi, sentences left unfinished. It explains that leaving the end of the sentence unsaid keeps one’s opinion from striking the other person directly. Among the unfinished forms in the study, chotto stood out as especially frequent.