The Not-so-art of Bowing

My mom sent me a link to this article about the way the Toyota corporation, in particular the president Toyoda-san, has been criticized for his failure to show proper contrition over his company's failure, in particular with respect to the apology bow he made. It also talks a lot about bowing in general, and it is actually a very well written article with some interesting information, which I feel is framed in a kind of unfortunate, destructive way. She asked me what I thought of it, and my e-mail response kind of turned into an article, which I figured some of you might be interested in. You should go read the article at any rate, but if you're in a hurry the gist of it is "Toyoda-san has been accused of offering a short, insincere bow for a fairly serious f-up, and the company has suffered for his failed bow."

Sigh. I mean, there are certainly parts of it which I agree with, but as I said I think the way the article as a whole is framed is kind of problematic. The truth is bowing, almost all of it, is pretty involuntary. You don't really sit around going "Oh gosh, I really should hit about 80 degrees on this one", you just bow to a level and duration, and in a style, appropriate to the situation.

For big, awkward foreigners this seems like it would (and does) take a fair amount of thinking, which is coincidentally why big, awkward foreigners are not expected to bow appropriately. But for Japanese people, they've witnessed these complex hierarchical interactions like...a hundred billion times by the time they are an adult. That number is probably not an exaggeration. You bow like, every 30 seconds. It means "hello", "let's begin", "thank you", "I'm sorry" or sometimes it's just an acknowledgment that the other person exists. We do the same thing in America, nodding at someone on the street if you make eye-contact.

The problem is that when you read articles like this, you get the idea that Toyoda-san f-ed up his bow. Like, he was thinking too hard and screwed up the gesture. That seems to be what the article is focusing on, but this just isn't what happened. Toyoda-san misread the severity of the situation, and his bow reflected this misread. It wasn't "his bow wasn't deep enough" it was "His apology wasn't deep enough. His mortification wasn't deep enough. His shame for his company wasn't deep enough." The bow merely reflected this.

So what the article does is it portrays the situation from a big, awkward foreigner's viewpoint, and ultimately ends up doing the whole "Ohh, Japan is so exotic and foreign. Look at the elaborate social custom of bowing, you sure couldn't understand that could you?" shtick which is ultimately harmful to the general cause of mutual understanding. Think of some of the JETs over here who haven't been studying the country for years now. They feel awkward as hell just about every day because they're not used to bowing, I sure did at first, and when they read something like this and it just reinforces their belief that they can never learn how to bow properly because it's just too complicated. Trust me, you could, if you spent 20 years growing up in Japan.

Anyone could.

Shit, I understand bowing for the most part and I've been here a combined year at this point. I even know how to bow sarcastically. It's not that hard, and you can always always get away with the gaijin "basically a head-nod" bow. Eventually you will start to get instincts for "oooh, I f-ed that up, they're all way lower than I am", and your bows start to instinctively reflect the social situation, along with your way of speaking, and your way of moving. We do the last 2 in America, we just don't realize it because it's not as much of an overt part of our culture. You don't talk to your boss the same way you talk to your kids. You also don't bow to your boss the same way you bow to your kids. Eventually, you'll learn. And chances are you are significantly smarter than the average gradeschooler, which means that you'll be able to learn it faster.

Nothing in the world is so complicated that you cannot learn it with enough time and exposure. The danger, perhaps the only danger, is in convincing yourself that you cannot.