Thoughts on Japan

Kingaku kara no omoi - 金額からの思い

Thoughts on Japan from the National Institute of Japanese Studies. University of Sheffield

In my last column, I talked a little about the social aspect of Japanese honorific speech, and how speakers from certain social groups use it as a linguistic means of projecting an image of themselves to other people. In this they are no different from English speakers, who either consciously or unconsciously adopt different accents: the case of British violinist Nigel Kennedy, who famously adopted a ‘Mockney’ accent in order to appeal to a constituency who wouldn’t normally like classical music, springs to mind. I’ve also outlined how the normal rules (respect from inferiors to superiors) can be suspended in situations where the superior is seeking a favour, or of heightened levels of formality, and how this counts against the argument that honorific usage is solely based upon the obligatory indication of social status. Finally, I’ve mentioned that it’s been suggested that one reason why older speakers often seem to feel that younger ones can’t use honorifics properly is because the latter’s perception of how social relationships should be determined is different from that of their elders, which results in different honorific usage.

This week, I’m going to draw all of these themes together and look briefly at the historical development of the honorific system – from both a grammatical and social perspective – with a view to seeing how the language has ended up with the system it now has. This will be a little linguistics-heavy to start with, but bear with me, as I hope it will be interesting. I’ll start by looking at previous versions of honorifics.

The earliest type of Japanese for which we have a significant amount of information about the honorific system is the language spoken during the Heian period (794-1185). Linguists refer to this as either Late Old Japanese, or Early Middle Japanese, but less technically it’s just ‘Classical Japanese’ – the language in which most of the pre-modern works of literature were composed. In Japanese schools it’s called kogo 古語 ‘old language’, and every Japanese learns the rudiments of it as part of their education.

The language was that variety of Japanese spoken and written by the court aristocracy in Heian-kyō 平安京 (Kyoto 京都) during the Heian period (794-1185). Roughly speaking, it’s grammatically more different from modern Japanese than Chaucer’s is from modern English, but not as different as Beowulf’s Anglo-Saxon is from the modern language. It was, of course, restricted to a tiny proportion of the population – approximately one tenth of one percent, that being the rough numbers of the court aristocracy – and reflects their society and concerns.

The nobility lived in a world where rank and status was all important, and determined partly by family back ground, but also by one’s official rank in the imperial government. This isn’t the place to go into that in detail, but briefly there was an officially sanctioned system of ranks, promotion in which brought a man increased status and income – benefits which would also reflect upon his family. The system was clear and well-understood, with the Emperor at the apex, followed by the Empress and Crown Prince, then other members of the imperial family, higher nobility, mid-ranking nobility and so on downwards. The top five non-imperial ranks were the most important, and people below that level were looked down upon by their betters and thought of as not fit to associate with. People outside the rank structure were barely thought of as being the same species.

Given this preoccupation with rank and status, then, it’s not surprising that EMJ should have a well-developed system of honorifics. Formally, of course, it’s very different from the modern system, with the verbs and inflections which indicate respect or deference being entirely different from those in the modern language, and it being possible to combine respectful and deferential forms in the one expression in ways which it is no longer possible to do, but more interesting is the evidence which suggests that the level of honorifics used to address and refer to another person was determined almost entirely by their court rank. So, if one was addressing a Major Councillor (dainagon 大納言) say, one would use one level of honorifics, but if one was talking to a Minister (otodo 大臣) a higher level was required. Talking to or about the Emperor mandated the highest possible level, with a range of terms and forms used only for actions by or in relation to him.

What this means is that the Heian honorific system is much closer to the ‘discernment’ model of honorific usage. Japanese linguists call this zettai 絶対 (‘absolute’) in that honorific speech was determined by the addressee or referent’s position on an absolute, and externally determined, scale of social status. This is contrasted with the modern system, which is characterised as sōtai 相対 (‘relative’), meaning that the speaker’s perception of the relationship is more important. (In fact, even the ‘absolute’ Heian system was not absolute – if it were Emperors would never use honorifics at all – because seniors did use honorifics to juniors, particularly if a debt or obligation was involved.)

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that the system was more absolute than the modern one, and speakers were aware, and critical, of people who used the wrong level of honorifics about people of lower status – Sei Shōnagon complains about it in her Pillow Book. It’s also accurate to say that, leaving aside the formal changes which have been extreme, the major development in Japanese honorifics over the past thousand years has been a progressive increase in the relativisation of the system – particularly once we enter the modern period and a person’s social position became less a product of absolute external criteria. To a certain extent, that is what makes honorific usage more difficult – for both Japanese and foreign speakers – nowadays: it’s no longer enough to simply know what someone is, and use the right honorifics for that position, you have to form your own judgement about the relationship and speak accordingly.

How, though, do Japanese speakers decide which forms to use? Well, in business contexts companies often train new employees in the correct forms to use to clients and customers, but people in everyday life have to rely upon their own instincts, and they are often unsure about them, particularly if they are going to have to speak in a situation, or to someone, outside of their usual patterns of interaction. As an extreme example of this, one of my colleagues related to me an anecdote about what happened when the current Emperor paid a visit to Oxford when he was Crown Prince back in the 1960s. The university wasn’t quite sure what to do about the visit, and so invited a large number of Japanese to a reception to meet His Highness – people who would never have met a member of the imperial family in Japan under normal circumstances. My colleague described his astonishment when most of these people, when introduced to the Prince, chose to speak to him in English rather than Japanese, and when he asked one of them about it afterwards was told, ‘Well, I wasn’t sure what honorifics to use to someone like him, so it was just easier to speak in English.’

I have to say that I, myself, probably wouldn’t be sure of the correct etiquette for addressing the Prince of Wales should I ever get to meet him, but I don’t think that I would choose to speak in French to avoid the issue! Nevertheless, it demonstrates the lack of security people may have about their honorifics, and the lengths they may go to in order to avoid embarrassing themselves with mistakes. It’s this concern over doing things right which accounts for the large number of ‘How to’ books on honorifics available from any Japanese bookshop (putting the search term ‘correct honorific usage’ (keigo no tadashii tsukaikata 敬語の正しい使い方) in to Amazon Japan’s search engine immediately produced a list of fifty titles). What criteria, though, do the authors of books like these use to provide their readers with information?

Well, one valuable source is, in fact, the Japanese government! Believe it or not, there’s a long tradition of these bodies making prescriptive pronouncements on matters of linguistic usage in Japan, and receiving support from government organs to do so. The most obvious area where the government interferes is, of course, the writing system, by determining which kanji should be learnt during compulsory education and used in public life, but honorifics haven’t escaped attention either. This is some time ago, but in 1957 the Ministry of Education issued a document entitled Kore kara no keigo これからの敬語, ‘Honorifics from now on’ which contained a series of detailed ‘recommendations’ about how the Japanese people should speak to each other in the future.

The document is not particularly lengthy, but it does make interesting reading, as evidence of a belief that it is possible to change linguistic behaviour by fiat (Miller 1967, 284). I don’t have space here to go into all the ‘advice’ the document provides – you can read a summary in Miller (1967, 285-287) if you are interested – but briefly there is instruction about which pronouns should, or shouldn’t be used (watashi 私and anata あなた only, with boku 僕 allowed only for men prior to entering adult society); which suffixes (-san, -sama) should be used after people’s names; appropriate contexts for the honorific prefixes o- and go-; and a prohibition of extended honorific verb forms (where, for example, the ordinary honorific form of the verb yomu 読む ‘read’, o-yomi ni naru お読みになる ‘read(honorific)’, is made even more respectful by the addition of a further honorific inflection: o-yomi ni nareru お読みになれる). Anyone who knows anything about the Japanese language will know that none of these prescriptions has been effective – a wide variety of other pronouns and suffixes is still used, as are extended honorific verb forms – which just serves to demonstrate the persistence of honorific speech as a part of the language and its intrinsic connection to Japanese social relations and organisation and the uselessness of governmental bodies attempting to control how people speak.

There is, however, one set recommendations in Kore kara no keigo which have been effective: the advice provided on what type of honorific vocabulary should be used in referring to the Emperor – not when speaking to him face-to-face, of course, but in writing. The concern then, only a few years after Japan’s defeat, was to eliminate honorific usage which overly exalted the throne, as had been the case during and before the war. Essentially, the recommendations were that ‘ordinary’ levels of honorifics should henceforth be applied to the emperor, and specialised honorific vocabulary should be avoided. These have largely been followed, and so the imperial body is now simply o-karada お体 ‘body(honorific)’ and not gyokutai 玉体 ‘jewelled form’, and his face is simply o-kao お顔 ‘face(honorific)’ and not ryūgan 竜顔 ‘dragon’s visage’, although I remember the headline in the Asahi newspaper when Emperor Shōwa died in 1989 as being Tennō heika go-hōgyo 天皇陛下御崩御 ‘His Majesty the Emperor - Dead’, using an honorific word for ‘dead’ which can only be applied to the imperial person, although the television newscasters used the more common o-nakunari ni narimashita お亡くなりになりました ‘passed away(honorific)’.

The fact, however, that Kore kara no keigo enjoyed even this level of success, and was largely welcomed by the Japanese as a helpful contribution also demonstrates the difference in attitude to official ‘advice’ on language between the Japanese and the British, say: can you imagine the public reaction if the British prime minister held a press conference and announced that the government was abolishing the use of ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’ and ‘Ms’ before people’s names when addressing each other? I have absolutely no doubt that the response would be a resounding ‘Get lost!’ and it would be seen as a ridiculous infringement on personal relations.

In conclusion, then, despite the generational changes in usage, there’s no evidence to suggest that honorifics will disappear from Japanese any time soon, and they will continue to both delight and frustrate foreign learners of the language for many years to come. All that you can do is do your best to learn them, use them, understand and accept them – look upon them not as a barrier to communication, but an additional resource, a way of both smoothing relations and shielding yourself in talking to and with the Japanese. And if you get frustrated, just think of all those self-help books for the Japanese themselves, and realise that there are a great many native speakers in the same boat!

References:

Miller, Roy Andrew (1967), The Japanese Language, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

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