The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture

Read 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture' and stumbled across an interesting realisation that the different ways of saying Thank-you in Japanese stems from the fact that they all have different meanings and are in fact used in different circumstances. Well, I have often found it amusing that the Japanese seems to have many version of Thank-you and now I finally discovered how shallow I was in thinking this. The Japanese culture is certainly one fantasy that exist in reality. People can be so good-natured that they actually devised different ways of thanking one another depending on the level of indebtedness, burden and inconveniences they have caused, as well as the size of the benefits and good-will that they have received. On is certainly an entity that is worth developing in modern society and in all parts of the world.

Below is the extract from 'The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture' :

On is in all its uses a load, indebtedness, a burden, which one carries as best one may.

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture. Pg 99. Ruth Benedict. Tuttle Publishing, Berkeley Books.

The Japanese have many ways of saying 'Thank You' which express this same uneasiness in receiving on. The least ambivalent, the phrase that has been adopted in modern city department stores means 'Oh, this difficult thing' (arigato). The Japanese usually say that this 'difficult thing' is the great and rare benefit the customer is bestowing on the store in buying. It is a compliment. It is used also when the customer receives a present and in countless circumstances. Other just as common words for 'thank you' refer like kinodoku to the difficulty of receiving. Shopkeepers who run their own shops must commonly say literally: 'Oh, this doesn't end, '(sumimasen), i.e. , 'I have received on from you and under modern economic arrangements I can never repay you; I am sorry to be placed in such a position.' In English sumimasen is translated 'Thank You, 'I'm grateful,' or 'I'm sorry,' 'I apologize.' You use the word, for instance, in preference to all other thank-you's if anyone chases the hat you lost on a windy street. When he returns it to you politeness requires that you acknowledge your own internal discomfort in receiving. 'He is offering me an on and I never saw him before. I never had a chance to offer him the first on. I feel guilty about it but I feel better if I apologize to him. Sumimasen is probably the commonest word for thank you in Japan. I tell him that I recognize that I have received on from him and it doesn’t end with the act of taking back the hat. But what can I do about it? We are strangers.'

The same attitude about indebtedness is expressed even more strongly from the Japanese standpoint. By another word for thank-you, katajikenai, which is written with the character 'insult,' 'loss of fact.': It means both 'I am insulted,' and 'I am grateful.' The all-Japanese dictionary says that by this term you say that by the extraordinary benefit you have received you are shamed and insulted because you are not worthy of the benefaction. In this phrase you explicitly acknowledge your shame in receiving on, and shame, haji, is as we shall see, a thing bitterly felt in Japan. Katajikenai, 'I am insulted,' is still used by conservative shopkeepers in thanking their customers and customers use it when they ask to have their purchases changed. It is the word found constantly in pre-Meiji romances. A beautiful girl of low class who serves in the court and is chosen by the lord as his mistress, says to him katajikenai; that is, 'I am shamed in unworthily accepting this on; I am awed by your graciousness.' Or the samurai in a feudal brawl who is let go scot-free by the authorities says katajikenai, 'I have lost face that I accept this on; it is not proper for me to place myself in such a humble position; I am sorry 'I humbly thank you.'

These phrases tell, better than any generalizations, the 'power of on.' One wears it constantly with ambivalence. In accepted structuralized relations the great indebtedness it implies often stimulates a man only to put forward in repayment all that is in him. But it is hard to be a debtor and resentments come easily.

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Patterns of Japanese Culture. Pg 105 – 107. Ruth Benedict. Tuttle Publishing, Berkeley Books.