Surface Harmony Archives - understand-culture

The Handkerchief

In Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s story Hankechi (The Handkerchief), written in 1916, a mother visits Professor Hasegawa Kinzō to tell him that her son has died. She speaks calmly and smiles. Then the professor sees her hands under the table. They are trembling and grip her handkerchief so hard that it almost tears.

Fujin wa, kao de koso waratte ita ga, jitsu wa sakki kara, zenshin de naite ita no de aru. The woman was smiling with her face, but in truth she had been weeping with her whole body all along.

Later, the professor reads a passage by Strindberg. It calls this double performance, a smiling face while the hands tear a handkerchief, a mannerism.

The Vocabulary of Hidden Intent

Menjū fukuhai (面従腹背): obedient in the face, opposed in the belly. To appear to obey while resisting inwardly.

Hara ni ichimotsu (腹に一物): one thing in the belly. To have a hidden scheme in one’s mind.

Anonymous Verses

In the eighth month of 1334, an anonymous text was posted on the riverbank at Nijō in Kyoto. It opens: Konogoro miyako ni hayaru mono, youchi, gōtō, nise rinji. What is in fashion in the capital these days: night raids, robbery, forged imperial orders. It mocks the disorder under the new Kenmu government. Its only surviving copy is in the Kenmu nenkanki.

In 1853, a comic verse is said to have mocked the arrival of Perry’s ships: Taihei no nemuri o samasu jōkisen, tatta shihai de yoru mo nerarezu. Jōkisen, a fine tea, wakes us from the sleep of peace. Just four cups, and no sleep at night. Jōkisen sounds like the word for steamship.

Salaryman Senryū

Since 1987, the life insurer Dai-ichi Life has invited the public to send in senryū, short comic verses, about life as an office worker. The 28th contest received 40,138 entries. A verse from 1998 reads: Kosuto daun sakebu anta ga kosuto daka. The one shouting for cost cuts is the one who costs too much.

The first-place verse of 2020 reads: Kaisha e wa kuru na to jōshi, ike to tsuma. My boss says do not come to the office. My wife says go.

Good Morning

In Ozu Yasujirō’s film Ohayō (Good Morning), released in 1959, two brothers want a television set. In an argument with his mother, the brother Minoru mocks the way adults talk: Otona datte yokei na koto o itteru ja nai ka! Konnichiwa, ohayō, ii o-tenki desu ne, ā sō desu ne. Adults say useless things too! Hello, good morning, nice weather, isn’t it, oh yes, it is. His father tells him to be quiet.

Later in the film, two young adults, Setsuko and Fukui, make the same kind of small talk about the weather at a station.

Public Stance and True Feelings

Tatemae (建前): the principle one officially stands by. The outward view. A dictionary gives the example Ano hito wa tatemae to honne ga mattaku chigau, that person’s public stance and true feelings are completely different.

Honne (本音): one’s true thoughts or feelings, as opposed to what one says in public for the sake of harmony.

Deru kui wa utareru (出る杭は打たれる): the stake that sticks out gets hammered. A person who stands out or oversteps tends to be resented and criticized by others.

Party Without Rank

A bureikō is a banquet held without regard to rank or etiquette. The most famous one in Japanese history was held by Emperor Go-Daigo in the Kamakura period. He used it to gather people of different ranks and plot in secret. One guest told his wife, and the plot leaked.

The same source notes that, in practice, rank does not disappear at a bureikō. Communication at company drinking parties has its own coined word, nominication, from nomu (to drink). It first appeared in the media in the 1980s.