a sorry development

ok. now instead of posting some jokes or light post for the weekend, i figure i’ll do it for a monday… since to many people it is a blue monday. the first day of the week. the day back to work after having sunday off. i’m posting here again a story from the ‘traveller’s tales’ of the far eastern economic review.

btw, today you notice i’m still up late… because i am taking leave so can afford to sleep late. will be going for the st anne’s feast this afternoon. and might be going again on 1 aug. sunday. for sure i will take lots of pictures and am going to blog on it.

ok, here’s the story.

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From The Far Eastern Economics Review
Issue cover-dated July 29, 2004

TRAVELLERS’ TALES
By Nury Vittachi

A Sorry Development

Politeness is an obsession in Japan, so a new air of freedom in the choice of words is causing heated debate.

THANK YOU for purchasing this magazine or stealing it from an airline.Thank you for reading the previous sentence, this sentence, and the following ones. Thank you for not tearing out this page and using it to line a bird cage.

This columnist has decided to adopt Japanese standards of politenessas an experiment today. You see, there’s ordinary politeness, and then there’s Japanese politeness, which is a different thing altogether.

This becomes clear if you take a ride on the Gomen Nahari Line, a semi-private railway in Kochi prefecture. One station is now called Arigato, which means “thank you,” and another is Gomen, which means”sorry.” Gomen has been around for a long time, but the idea of turning the pair into Thank You Station and Sorry Station came from 85-year-old Takashi Yanase–a man famed for his original thinking. He is, after all, the creator of the cartoon superhero Anpanman, a roll of bread filled with bean paste who fights crime with superhuman(superbread?) powers. I’m serious.

to continue reading, click on ‘jog over for more’.

The obvious question, at least to anyone non-Japanese, is: Why? There’s no answer to this. “Just saying ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ together makes you feel good,” Yanase told the Mainichi Shimbun. “I’d like this to be useful for tourism.”

Imagine the next meeting of the Kochi prefecture stationmasters’association:

Thank You stationmaster: “Thank you for coming. Sorry, but which station do you represent?”

Sorry stationmaster: “Sorry. Thank you, Thank You.”

Thank You stationmaster: “Sorry?”

Sorry stationmaster: “Sorry.”

Thank You stationmaster: “Oh, Sorry! Sorry, Sorry. Thank you.”

Sorry stationmaster: “No need to say sorry, Thank You, but thank you.”

Actually, it’s very Japanese that there is no indication as to what Thank You Station is thankful for, nor what is being apologized for by Sorry Station. The Japanese (like the British) scatter the two terms around willy-nilly to create a general feeling of good breeding. Meetings between Japanese and British delegations often collapse fromthe sheer scale of pleasantries involved.

However, the rigidity of Japanese communication is loosening in one key area: personal names. For decades, parents have only been allowed to choose names from The Official List of Allowed Names. The result is that huge numbers of boys are called Kaito and Takumi, and huge numbers of girls are called Misaki and Aoi. In 1993, a creative (if insensitive) couple tried to call their child Akuma, meaning “Satan,”but officials refused permission.

But now 578 new words have been proposed as additions to the list, to be ratified later this year. These include the kanji characters for “Cancer” and “Corpse.” The government is trying to be non prescriptive, giving members of the population freedom over their own language. But Japan is not America. Critics lambasted the government for enabling parents to curse their own children’s lives–quite literally, since another of the new words is “Cursed.”
Yet the freedom to criticize leaders must also be defended. One thing Japan has developed in common with the West is a refusal to le tpowerful people get away with saying things that are sexist or just plain stupid. State Minister for Disaster Prevention Kiichi Inoue said the recent killing of one schoolgirl by another was an example of how women were be coming “lively participants in Japanese society.” Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki added that in his opinion, arson was a “girly” crime, while cutting someone’s throat was a “manly” offence.Both were criticized.

Japan needs to learn that the freedom to say what you think doesn’t mean that saying what you think is always a good idea. Similarly, being able to choose inappropriate names for one’s offspring doesn’t mean people have to do that. But Asia being Asia, they probably will .In a year’s time, you could easily be visiting Sorry Station and sitting next to a baby named Cursed Corpse.

Thank you for reading this column. You may now approach the bird cage.