Originally this blog post was a section of another post, about honne and tatemae (https://psndoadan.wixsite.com/website/post/honne-vs-tatemae). I will begin this post with the same paragraph I used to acknowledge the research I am now going to comment on, and relate to the theme of my previous publication.
To western ears, ignoring one's true feelings to speak of things one doesn't really agree with, just in order to conform, may sound like lying, or being hypocritical. And that is often the case, when it comes to the way that some westerners portray Japan. In fact, a research was conducted on the subject, and I believe it would be relevant to comment on it on this post.
The Japanese TV show "Nep & Imoto’s World Rankings" conducted a survey on people's tendencies to lie, and ranked countries according to the results obtained. I learned of this research through the blog "Japantoday". They describe the premise of the research and its results as follows:
"Producers asked 100 people from 39 countries, “Do you often tell lies?” The countries were then ranked by the percentage of people who answered yes."
"Peru took the top spot on the list with 39.1%, followed by Argentina (33.6%) and Mexico (32.7%). (...) Japan came in fourth, at 31.8%".
The producers and the panel of guests apparently were quite surprised with the results. Newscaster Jiro Shinbo believed that the explanation for the results lied in honne and tatemae, and on the understanding that japanese people had of the word "lie":
“In Japanese culture, we have the concepts of honne and tatemae, or the contrast between one’s behavior and one’s opinions. So, it’s probably not malicious lies, but white lies that protect the other person's feelings that the respondents are thinking of when they say yes."
Another commentator argued, more relativistically:
“About honne and tatemae, they can’t be disentangled from the culture, so even if other countries see that as lying, it can’t be helped.”
“Japanese tell a lot of lies because they are always thinking of others’ feelings.”
Paradoxically, admitting your lies is in fact telling the truth, whereas omitting them is lying, although the effect of omitting that you lie, on the survey, would tend to indicate the opposite- that you don't lie… when, in fact, that is what you just did. So at least the japanese are more honest about his dishonesty 😉. Nevertheless, this would be the case to all countries, so such reasoning cannot explain why Japan had such results in comparison to other countries.
I agree with the author of the Japantoday post, when he states that what counts as "true" or "lie" depends on one's culture. In the same way that, to my absolute misery, bakon can be considered as a condiment and not as a meat product in Japan, some episodes a westerner would consider as a lie can be viewed as something else to the eyes of a japanese. The other way around may also be true.
The way that I think about it, tatemae is not always lying. I thought that this was a very western interpretation of what tatemae is. So it was surprising to me to read that the japanese commentator, and the japanese people themselves considered their behavior as telling lies.
Without a doubt, tatemae must be a factor that greatly influenced Japan to position in fourth place on the worldly "tendency to lie" list. But can there be other agents that explain the results?
In the study of research in psychology, we learn that frequently there are factors that affect the research but are not accounted for (extraneous variables), which sometimes end up "contaminating" those results. When that happens, these factors are called confounding variables.
"A variable is considered to be confounding because it provides an alternative explanation for your results; that is, an alternative explanation for the relationship or differences between the variables and/or groups that you are measuring. This threatens the internal validity of your results." (LAERD dissertation)
Can there be confounding variables affecting the results of this survey? Does the Japanese really lie all that much ? Is tatemae always lying?
I wish I could be able to make definitive claims here, but the fact is that I am only reading about this research and don't know with sufficient extent the details about how it was conducted. So all I can do is to speculate.
The significant presence of tatemae on the day to day is definitely a factor that differentiates Japan against other countries when it comes to omitting one's true opinion. If the japanese individual really does consider most of his "tatemae actions" to qualify as a lie, perhaps this factor alone can explain why Japan was ranked so highly in tendency to lie. Besides that, maybe the way the question was framed in japanese gave a greater tendency for participants to answer "yes" to the question. Maybe the way that the japanese individual understands the idea of a "lie" is more broad- therefore including more cases within the label "lie"; or the term it is less morally charged- therefore making it more acceptable to admit a lie. Maybe the research participants wanted to be polite and confirm what they perceived the researcher's expectation was- in this case saying "yes" would in itself be tatemae. All of these are examples of possible confounding variables, which are not accounted for while doing the research, but end up altering its results. Maybe the japanese does lie more than other cultures, or maybe it really is the case that they simply are more honest about their dishonesty.
What do you, the reader, think?
8:11pm
The Dorm library, Osaka
Japan 🇯🇵
