The Japanese abandon “jishuku”. And about time
There’s been a lot of talk about “jishuku” in Japan, especially for the first month after the earthquake. Although the word simply means “self-restraint”, as usual in Japan the term is intimately linked to “what other people (might) think”. So jishuku, like so many things in Japan, has a tendency to turn out to be a [...]
BBC News – Japanese unite in show of self-restraint
“Solidarity” is the word used in some news articles to express or explain the respect for the feelings of others that characterizes much Japanese behaviour, and that puzzles so many Western observers. I’m not sure it is the best English word: in Japan, solidarity is more than a spontaneous expression of empathy, it is closer [...]
