Behind The Paper Screen: Hinkaku

Sawa Kurotani examines the "hinkaku" boom going on in Japan at the moment in her column for The Daily Yomiuri:

Hinkaku, the "nobility or dignity that is felt in a person or a thing" (my translation of the definition in the Daijisen Japanese Dictionary), has become a buzzword in Japan in the past couple of years. Although the dictionary definition sounds straightforward enough, hinkaku is a slippery concept.

First of all, hinkaku is socially relative. That is, actions and characteristics that are considered "noble," "classy" or "respectable" differ according to one's station and what is expected of that particular social position. Furthermore, the definition of classiness widely varies from culture to culture and one historical era to another. Therefore there is no one universal model of hinkaku that applies to everyone.

Secondly, hinkaku is all about the perception of others who observe and pass judgment. These "others" are usually not an identifiable group of people, but something more generalized and harder to pinpoint, often recognized as "public opinion" or "common sense." This perception of hinkaku may, furthermore, be manipulated. For example, a person can increase their hinkaku by wearing items of clothing that are considered "classy" or by joining an organization with a good reputation. In turn, an organization can raise its respectability by recruiting members with recognized hinkaku. Advertisements frequently associate their products with celebrities to generate a sense of classiness.

The recent barrage of hinkaku puts forward different standards of hinkaku for nations and corporations, women and men, children, company presidents, sumo champions and so on. However, there is one critical commonality among them: the reference to the idealized past at the core of hinkaku.

Comments

[Edward]

That last sentence made me think of the Classic period of Western culture being our 'idealized past' - and of course she used the word 'classy' as one of the adjectives to describe hinkaku. I guess many cultures suffer from this association of some aspect of their past with idealised behaviour and standing. I wonder what the Classical Greeks thought was ideal - I suspect they were a confident bunch and considered themselves as creating the ideal as they went along.

[MC]

I think she means people who look back fondly to the 50s as a simpler time or even the Reagan 80s. Both are fictions of people's short sighted memory.

I'm sure there were Greeks sitting around saying that things were SO much better 40 years ago as well...

[Edward]

I didn't think it would be such a recent time that would evoke hinkaku - surely the pre-industrial days would represent the Japanese ideal of class and dignitiy? Perhaps as an American you don't naturally think so far back, but most Europeans would think back prior to the last century if they were looking for their own version of hinkaku. I'd be surprised if some of the old bushido values (the non-violent bits) weren't finding their way into the various hinkaku attributes.