From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Date: 25 Jul 92 09:03:11 GMT
Reply-To: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Distribution: fj
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

A while back I said:

  Dave> I think this comes from two reasons. First off, it is pretty much a
  Dave> given in Japanese culture that there is one, and only one, correct
  Dave> way to do everything: thus there must be one, and only one correct
  Dave> English.  

And Magnus Halldorsson <magnus@jaist-east.ac.jp> commented:

  Magnus> I beg to differ. I would say that Japanese culture is much *less*
  Magnus> one-correct-answer oriented than the Occidental culture. The nature
  Magnus> of Japanese interpersonal communication is strongly based on the
  Magnus> idea that truth and morals are relativistic. Conflicting opinions
  Magnus> are not necessarily wrong, incorrect, or immoral, but may be right
  Magnus> for that person or society. 

At the time I was thinking about language and how there seems to be
some de facto one-way-to-do-it rule that says there is only one way
to say everything. I didn't want to get into the question of truth
and morals as I haven't found it easy to have any kind of meaningful
discussion on such abstract subjects. 

I still don't feel qualified to say anything about truth and morals,
but I was walking along past the rice fields this early morning and
the thought occurred to me that one can observe a tendency towards
*both* of these tendencies, depending on how wide a range of people
you talk with. 

For example going back to the RiceReport, when I asked people how
long they kept rice before eating it, they tended to give a "We
Japanese" kind of answer. But I've been playing this game too long
to just let it go and kept asking questions until I had some
concrete answers. And found, as usual, that people keep rice
differing amounts of time. And, as usual, there was great surprise
because after all, "Japan has a homongenous society and everbody does
things the same way" ... actually many times it just isn't so! 

In the beginning, I would ask somebody something and accept the
answer as nobody said otherwise. Finally one day I just couldn't
believe that everybody felt the same way about one particular
subject. I said that, IMHO, if somebody says X and others don't
disagree, then they were giving tacit (unspoken) approval or
agreement. But they said, "No no!" that it was just that when
somebody had said something they didn't like to contradict it. 

So now I am of the opinion that within local groups of
communicators, there is a strong tendency to maintain surface
harmony with people feeling comfortable by using set phrases. The
facts of the matter can be quite different only nobody likes to get
down to the nitty gritty of concrete answers ("OK, you keep rice the
usual amount of time, how long is that, exactly?"). 

And while the Japanese I speak with tend to speak only with the
same, relatively small group of people ("How many people you've
never met before did you speak with this week?") people from other
countries cut across these groups and realize that in the larger
sense just about everything is case-by-case (even though each local
group says this is how "We Japanese" do it). 

So is there one and only one, correct way to say/do everything within 
each local group? I think so. 

And is there one correct answer for the Japanese culture as a whole?
No, I think there are many different ways of doing/saying things,
all of which are called "We Japanese". 

There are still lots of loose ends here, but it brings the two
ideas closer together, I think.

Dave

--
Dave McLane                                       davidg@aegis.or.jp
You're free to copy/quote/translate this as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087