The Change Mariner

Japanese Workers Get Word From on High: Drop Formality

NYT

... The 1,366 workers at Elpida's factory here were told to stop addressing each other by their titles and simply to add the suffix -san to their names.

Yukio Sakamoto, the president and chief executive in Tokyo, believes that using titles like "department chief" impedes decision-making and innovation.

"To call someone `president' is to deify him," said Mr. Sakamoto, who was influenced by the 28 years he worked at Texas Instruments. "It's part of Japan's hierarchical society. Now that has no meaning. If you have ability, you can rise to the top and show your ability."

Many Japanese companies, traditionally divided rigidly by age and seniority, have dropped the use of titles to create a more open — and, they hope, competitive — culture.

The long economic slump has forced companies to abandon seniority in favor of performance, upsetting the traditional order. This has led to confusion in the use of titles as well as honorific language, experts say.

The shift also mirrors profound changes in Japanese society, experts say. Equality-minded parents no longer emphasize honorific language to their children, and most schools no longer expect children to use honorific language to their teachers. As a result, young Japanese have a poor command of honorific language and do not feel compelled to use it.

"There's confusion and embarrassment," said Rika Oshima, the 43-year-old president of Speaking Essay, a school that instructs new employees on the use of honorific language. "Junior staffers aren't strict about using respectful forms to their bosses, whereas bosses want their staffers to use respectful forms to them, but bosses cannot say that."

What is clear is that the use of honorific language, called keigo, to elevate a person or humble oneself, has especially fallen out of use among young Japanese.

Japanese, perhaps more than any other language, has long taken account of social standing. While French speakers must decide between the familiar "tu" and the formal "vous" in addressing someone in the second person, in Japanese, there are many ways to say I or you, calibrated by age, circumstance, gender, social position and other factors. Verb endings, adjectives and entire words also shift according to the situation.

Posted by Norm M. Wada at October 30, 2003 10:08 AM | TrackBack
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