Hierarchy +

A little while ago I had the really cool opportunity to visit a local university and talk with a college class. I became friends with a Gaijin that I randomly met at the Starbucks near my house and as it turned out he was a college English teacher who invited me to speak to his class as someone 'fresh' from America (he's been here for 7 years). The students asked me about a number of things, including environmentalism, lifestyle, gun control/ownership, and equality.

At first I didn't understand what they were getting at with equality. I knew that Japanese society was very hierarchical but I thought, are people not born equal in Japan? Then my friend explained to me that they were asking about the Sempai/Kohai relationship. The best approximation of the Sempai/Kohai is a mentor and mentee, but in Japan it goes deeper than that. A Sempai is someone in a social group who is older than you and who most likely entered the group before you did; it's more or less automatic. Generally this means that there is always a person to whom you must defer, and a person who must defer to you. Hierarchy is built into everything. For example, a friend told me the story of another teacher at her Nova branch. This teacher was leaving Japan and so she was having a good-bye party. She invited the Japanese staff from her school to the party, but because the Sempai wasn't going, the other staff, considered to be his Kohai, didn't feel that they could go.

I thought about this a little further after a conversation with a student. She was telling me that she really liked the other students in Nova (businessmen, students, office workers, housewives, etc), but if she saw them in public she wouldn't speak to them. "I'm too shy," she said. "I wouldn't know what to say."

Politeness is essential in Japanese culture and society, and it's built into the language as well. In every language there is friendly or street language that differs from words you use in business or in the classroom. In many languages it's common to find one or two polite declensions or pronouns, like the French 'vous' or the Spanish 'ustedes.' But in Japanese there are entirely different sets of language for being polite and friendly; in addition to that there is a system of bowing where the depth of your bow indicates your position relative to the other person. As there are so many rules, I would also imagine there is a lot of room for mistakes; except mistakes in this area aren't socially acceptable.

A lot of Japanese people claim shyness, but given all the rules, if I were Japanese I'd probably be too shy too!