Japanese Communication: Language and Thought in Context

5 Relationality and the Concept of Self

37 5 Relationality and the Concept of Self The Concept of Self The concepts of self and society shape all other sociocultural concepts . For this reason we cannot ignore how these notions are understood in Japan. But before we begin, let me quote from an American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, because what he has to say is relevant to my position on self and society. The concept of person is, in fact, an excellent vehicle by means of which to examine this whole question of how to go about poking into another people’s turn of mind. . . . The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment , and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures. Rather than attempting to place the experience of others within the framework of such a conception, which is what the extolled “empathy” in fact usually comes down to, understanding them demands setting that conception aside and seeing their experiences within the framework of their own idea of what selfhood is. And for Java, Bali, and Morocco, at least, that idea differs markedly not only from our own but, no less dramatically and no less instructively, from one to the other. (Geertz 1984, 126) The case of Japan is no exception. Although similarities exist in the Japanese and American concepts of self and society, we also face some profound differences. 38 The Context of Japanese Communication The differences in the concept of self that I am going to discuss should not be viewed as differences in the civilizations’ level of sophistication. Unfortunately, differences between the United States and Japan—or more broadly between the West and the East or the North and the South—have been viewed as different stages of civilization . For example, one may think of the Japanese self as something that should be encouraged to mature so that it resembles more closely the view of self in the West. The concept of the American self has tended to be viewed as something more valuable and readily justifiable. The cultural differences that I discuss in this book do not arise from one culture’s superiority or its greater value or sophistication . The differences must be viewed simply as differences. Japanese Selves and American Self To start with, let us look into the etymology of the term for “self ” in Japanese, jibun. Jibun literally means “portion given to self,” that is, a portion appropriately distributed to a person out of a larger whole, a piece of a pie, so to speak. At the level of etymology, jibun implies that the self is not an autonomous entity disconnected from society. The Japanese self is a part of society, perhaps a concept existing only in relation to society. Here one must be careful not to view self and society as opposing entities, as Americans tend to do. Self and society can be viewed as interacting and complementary, and placing importance on their relationality is useful for understanding Japan. Belief in the tendency of the Japanese to view the self in relation to others is widely accepted. Tetsuroo Watsuji’s position of defining self in “betweenness” is a case in point. In his work Watsuji (1937) develops the concept that the social human relationship is that of aidagara ‘betweenness.’ The term aida ‘betweenness’ refers to the distance separating two items. Watsuji developed the concept of space that makes the notion of betweenness operative earlier, in his work Fuudo (1935). In Fuudo, Watsuji proposes that a person is realized as he or she closely interacts with fuudo ‘climate (and mores),’ and that this process of interaction and integration serves as the basis of human ontology. For Watsuji, a person is also a betweenness in the social network, as the Japanese word for person, ningen (lit., nin ‘person’ and gen ‘between’) implies. Watsuji emphasizes that the concept of self cannot be defined without sufficiently Relationality and the Concept of Self 39 considering the social relationship between the self and others, which in fact are definable only in their betweenness. Watsuji’s suggestion that a direct causal relationship exists between nature and culture is perhaps too simplistic. As Augustin Berque points...