The Land od the Rising Yen

agrees with your
question as if to say: ‘Yes-I am not.’
    (Many Europeans are misled by the
English habit of negative questions. The question: ‘You don’t mind coming for a
walk?’ gets the ready reply: ‘Yes.’ Not meaning that he minds coming but yes,
he will come with pleasure.)
     
    Even the young are well-mannered in Japan which is saying a lot. Revolutionary student leaders conform by being ill-mannered
when the occasion requires it; but in private they will be as courteous as
anyone else. Sometimes too polite for my liking. I found myself more than once
in the company of young students, all under twenty-five and some of them
notorious agitators. They were always embarrassingly polite to me. I suddenly
grasped the sad truth: this reverence was due to my age. 'Good gracious,’ I
thought, ‘they venerate me.’
     
    ‘Yes, they are courteous enough but
their politeness is only skin-deep.’
    This is a comment resident Europeans
and Americans keep whispering into your ear. The remark is untrue on different levels.
    Japanese courtesy is an ancient
tradition. Francis Xavier, the Christian missionary, one of the first
Westerners to reach Japan, wrote home in the middle of the sixteenth century:
‘They are people of very good manners, good in general, and not malicious; they
are men of honour to a marvel, and prize honour above all else in the world.’ 8
    So Japanese courtesy has a long
tradition. Nor is it ‘skin-deep’ in the sense that it is purely formal and they
do not really care. They often go out of their way to be helpful. This is
obvious from brief encounters in the street (they run after you to redirect
you, having noticed that you took the wrong turning) as well as on more
complicated levels.
    Sometimes it is explained by the
whispering foreign residents that what they mean is something more élaborée.
The Japanese are, at heart, temperamental, even violent people and they — much
more than other peoples — have to force themselves to be courteous,
indeed over-courteous, otherwise they would behave like savages.
    This is a strange argument. Forced
self-discipline is the very meaning of courtesy and of civilization. We are all
savages underneath; civilization is a veneer (see the history of the present
century); civilization teaches us not to behave as we are naturally inclined:
not to grab, not to push, not to shout, not to kill — but to bow and hiss and
smile. Skin-deep courtesy is a lot of courtesy, particularly if you remember
how thick some people’s skin is. And skin-deep courtesy is infinitely better
than the thick, undisguised, robust rudeness you meet in many other countries.
The gist of the whispered criticism is simply: Japanese courtesy is useless
because they would be terribly rude if only they were not so polite.

SOUP AND HAGGIS
     
    Just two more brief notes on Japanese manners.
    (1) Eating soup has more dangers than
almost anything else. When eating soup you must make a fearful noise. It is a
sign of appreciation. If you don’t, your hostess will think: ‘What an
ill-mannered lout.’ But if you do, she will think: ‘No reasonably well
brought-up European makes such disgusting noises when eating soup. He
must be an ill-mannered lout.’
    ( 2 ) It has happened only once
that I felt very strongly, almost passionately, that politeness was overdone. A
Japanese industrialist once told me that he had been in Scotland and loved it. I nodded and agreed that Scotland was a lovely country.
    ‘I love haggis,’ he added.
    ‘That’s overdoing it a bit,’ I
thought, but said nothing.
    ‘I grew very fond of haggis,’ he went
on.
    I kept quiet but my soul frowned.
    ‘Very, very fond.’
    ‘I am not a Scotsman,’ I said at
last, softly. I meant to convey that I appreciated his effort to be flattering
about haggis but there is a limit to everything. And by stating that I wasn’t a
Scotsman I was hinting that he should enthuse about steak and kidney pie
instead. Or goulash. But he went on: ‘I miss haggis. I miss it very much.’ And,
after a short pause, romantically: ‘I miss it all the time.’
    Then the incredible truth dawned on
me. He was not being polite: he was speaking the unvarnished truth. Here he
was, a Japanese gentleman of fifty-three, a manufacturer of men’s underwear,
rich in material goods, yet a little unhappy because he could not get a haggis
in Yokohama.

BEAUTY AND UGLINESS
     
    When I was in Japan, the Japanese were
gravely insulted. They had been