Inside and Outside Archives - understand-culture

Demons Out, Fortune In

At Setsubun, people throw beans and call out Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi: demons out, fortune in.

Some places change the words. The Kobe Shimbun reported in 2022 that in Sanda, in Hyōgo Prefecture, people are known to say oni wa uchi, demons in. They do so out of consideration for the Kuki family (九鬼), lords of the Sanda domain in the Edo period. The family name, 九鬼, contains the character 鬼, demon.

In the Tomatsu area of Amagasaki, the call ends with “the home of Ibaraki Dōji, demons in!” The demon Ibaraki Dōji is said to have been born there.

Our President Said

A Japanese business manners guide gives a rule for talking with people from other companies. Everyone in one’s own company, whatever their position, counts as miuchi, one’s own people, and is not raised in speech. Its example: (Shachō no) ○○ mo tanoshimi ni shite iru to mōshite orimashita. Our president, ○○, also said that he was looking forward to it.

The example uses a humble verb, mōshite orimashita, for the words of the speaker’s own president.

The Frame and the Attribute

In Tate shakai no ningen kankei (Human Relations in a Vertical Society), published in 1967, Nakane Chie set shikaku, an attribute such as an occupation, against ba, a frame such as a company.

The publisher, Kōdansha, sums up the book’s question: why do Japanese people value sharing a frame more than sharing an attribute? Its description says that the book examines a social structure that stresses the frame and is strongly aware of uchi and soto, inside and outside.

Fine Among Colleagues

On October 1, 2021, Mitsubishi Electric published the report of an investigation committee of outside lawyers on years of improper inspections at its plants. At a briefing, the committee chair repeated what he had heard at the sites: Kyoten no nakamauchi de wa yoi ga, soto ni wa mono ga iinikui. Among colleagues at the site it is fine, but it is hard to speak to those outside. Some also found it hard to speak to their bosses.

He said that employees at the Kani plant and the Nagasaki Works got along well. In his view, this closeness fed a mindset of kyoten atte kaisha nashi: the site exists, the company does not.

Acting Like a Stranger

Mizukusai (水臭い): watery-smelling. Distant and formal, like a stranger, toward someone close. Tanin gyōgi (他人行儀): behaving like an outsider. A usage example: Onaji chīmu no menbā nan dakara, tanin gyōgi wa yose yo. We are on the same team, so drop the formality.

Press Clubs

Japanese ministries and other public offices house kisha kurabu, press clubs. The encyclopedia Imidas calls them a system specific to Japan: voluntary organizations of reporters based in government offices. It notes criticism of their exclusiveness, their closed nature and their sense of privilege, and reports that the European Union called for their abolition.

In 2002, the Japan Newspaper Association revised its view of the clubs. It dropped their old description as social bodies and called them open organizations.

Elders of Sumo

In professional sumo, a foreign-born wrestler must acquire Japanese nationality to become a stablemaster. Only wrestlers with Japanese nationality have the right to become an elder, toshiyori.

Stables are also limited in their foreign-born members. Since a revision of the rule in 2010, each stable may have only one wrestler of foreign birth.

School Cliques

Gakubatsu (学閥): a school clique. The dictionary defines it as an exclusive group formed by people from the same school or the same academic school.

In the spring 2023 examination for career-track national civil servants, the University of Tokyo had more successful candidates than any other university, 193. That was 24 fewer than the year before.

Ten Generations in Kyoto

A popular saying holds that a person must live in Kyoto for ten generations to count as a Kyoto person. An essay in the journal of the Japan Society of Plasma Science and Fusion Research repeats it: “It is commonly said, Kyoto ten generations. Unless one has lived in Kyoto for ten generations, one is apparently not a Kyoto person.”

The Vocabulary of Belonging

Soto (外): outside. The Daijisen dictionary also defines it as people or places other than those concerned, an outsider, another person. One of its examples is kimitsu ga soto ni moreru, a secret leaks outside.

Miuchi (身内): followers of the same boss. Also, members of the same organization. A dictionary example: miuchi no fushōji o inpei suru, to cover up a scandal among one’s own.

Haenuki (生え抜き): born and bred. An HR glossary explains a haenuki employee as one hired as a new graduate, not a mid-career hire or an employee on loan from elsewhere.