Kate Elwood discusses the Japanese habit of excessive flattery as a form of polite social discourse, in her latest Cultural Conundrums column in The Daily Yomiuri. However, she starts out discussing how Japanese people don’t like to face up to unpleasant tasks like telling neighbors that they were too loud. Hence this example:
When a problem occurs unexpectedly, it can be difficult to come right out and tell the person involved. Some years ago a friend of mine, whom I'll call Emily, moved into a condominium with her family and dog. The dog was unused to the new surroundings and, left alone during the day, she expressed her dissatisfaction loudly, as dogs are prone to do. It was a ticklish situation, and one unhappy neighbor resorted to putting an anonymous message of canine complaint in Emily's mailbox.
The unsigned dog alert was quite stressful for Emily, who would have much preferred a face-to-face, "Hey, do you think you can do something about your dog's barking?" It is possible that a corollary in some countries to "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" goes: "But if you're really compelled to say something not so nice, do it directly."
I agree with Emily here, this sort of thing used of happen when I lived in Koshigaya. There was a super sensitive person on the floor below me who used to take offense to the closing of my metal door and leave little grammatically incorrect English notes. Another time a neighbor had a party and they took photos of bikes not parked properly and vomit outside and reported it to the Board of Education-how humiliating to be treated like children and being told on and then scolded.
Anyway, she goes onto discuss the use of excessive flattery as asign of polite friendliness and decorum:
Mrs. Nomura told Mary that she had heard something nice about her from another woman who has a daughter in the same class as Mary. According to Mrs. Nomura, the other woman had said that whenever there was seki-gae--an exciting school occasion in which assigned seats in class are reallotted--all the girls hoped to sit next to Mary.
Oh, really? When Mary relayed the story to me, we looked at each other, and then burst into laughter.
Of course I think my daughter is a wonderful, charming girl. I'd be very glad to sit next to her if I were her classmate. Nevertheless, the notion that every girl would be similarly thrilled is, well, just not true. Like most girls, Mary has her special friends who are happy if they get assigned to seats near each other, and other girls have their own special friends who they hope to be placed beside. The classmate's mother had said something very nice about Mary to Mrs. Nomura, which was extremely kind of her and I certainly have no complaint with her well-intentioned words, but it seemed strange to me to craft such an inflated, incredible fiction.
I spoke to a few Japanese and American mothers to see what they made of the groundless praise. The Americans said that while they might sometimes exaggerate a bit and, for example, speak of a person's piano ability as "great" when it was merely "good," they found it hard to imagine creating acclaim that went quite that far.
On the other hand, the Japanese mothers were less surprised and admitted that without particularly planning to do so, when talking about someone they sometimes ended up indulging in over-the-top commendations, all in the spirit of being nice to a fellow mother or classmate. The veracity of the content was of less importance than the attempt to positively assess the person in question.
This type of mentality leads to situations where people praise you for relatively simple things. One I told a shop keeper the price of a can of beer He said “ Ni hyuku (200) …” and I finished the sentence “san jyu go (35)” to which he replied “Nihongo jozu! (You’re good at Japanese!). At first I thought he was being ironic and making fun of me, all I said was a number after all. I’ve been turning this one around and telling anyone who attempts English that they are “Jozu”-it’s a sort of revenge. For us foreigners using chopsticks is pretense enough for a compliment, lately I’ve taken tot telling them how crap they are at using chopsticks on occasion. It’s not such a bad custom and in fact can be quite sweet, but like I mentioned before, on occasion it borders on the ridiculous.
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