EVERYONE SPEAKS through gestures, but different countries have different gestures—or similar gestures with different meanings. Japan has a rich gesture vocabulary, but one which is not easily read by the foreigner, one indeed open to uninformed misinterpretation. At the sathe time, however, this language, once mastered, reveals or sustains a number of valid observations about the country.
A gesture, says Desmond Morris, is “any action that sends a visual signal to an onlooker.” But what matters, he continues, “is not what we think we are sending out, but what signals are being received.” Take, for example, the almost universal gesture of the circle made by thumb and forefinger. In America this means OK, based on an assumption that a circle is “perfect;” in France, however, the same gesture means just the opposite-the meaning is “worthless” because a circle is also a zero. And in Greece the gesture is an insult because it refers to an unmentionable, if circular, orifice in the body of the onlooker. In Japan, however, it means (coins being round) money.
The visiting American, Frenchman or Greek would all read this identical Japanese gesture “wrongly,” with results which could be anything from amusing to disastrous. The signal sent is not the signal received.
Japanese gestures are thus rich in opportunities for mistake. There is the famous example of the Japanese smile. The West had long been taught that the smile means pleasure, amusement or happiness. It is consequently there used accordingly.
But, as Lafcadio Hearn long ago observed, the Japanese smile is not only such spontaneous expression. It is also a form of etiquette and the Japanese child is still taught, usually through example, to smile as a social duty. Other countries, of course, also know of this usage, but there it is externalized and called the social-smile. In Japan the utility of the smile has been internalized. It has become, at least, a semi-conscious gesture and is to be observed even when the smiling person thinks he is unobserved. He races for the subway door, let us say. It closes in his face. His reaction to this disappointment is almost invariably a smile.
This smile does not mean happiness. No one is happy to have missed a subway. It does, however, mean cheerful acceptance. From an early age, the Japanese is taught to express no emqtion which might disturb a sometimes precarious social harmony. Though scowls or even temper tantrums in the subway would not, in fact, upset society’s equilibrium, this beautiful smile blooming in the teeth of disappointment does indicate that many taught gestures can become pseudo-involuntary, if social pressure is strong enough.
In Japan, indeed, this special gestural use of the smile can be extreme. Smiles at the death of a loved one are still to be witnessed. The message, properly read, is not that the dead are not mourned. Rather, the smiler is implying that bereft though I be, larger social concerns are more important and I am determined not to cause bother by making an emotional display upon this sad occasion.
Not all Japanese gestures, of course, bear this weight of social utility and hence this possibility for Western confusion. Some are just as confusing merely in their difference. For example, the presumably simple gesture of waving. We use it (palm open) to attract attention and (palm bent) to indicate farewell. The Japanese, however, use our “farewell” gesture to beckon. This gesture has become further confused in that, since Wodd War II, the Japanese have also taken up waving goodbye. This they do by wagging the open palm sidewise—which is, of course, our gesture for getting attention.
Even those gestures which are identical in intent with those of the West always incorporate differences. Nearly universal, for example, is the right-handed gesture denoting the act of eating. The southern Italian for this is the bunched fingers of the right hand making a series of swift, lifting motions to the half-open mouth. The Japanese variation is two outstretched fingers making a circular motion in front of the closed lips. The Italian gesture mimes eating pasta, originally perhaps picked up with the fingers; the Japanese gesture mimics chopsticks. Both concern eating but if the Japanese does not know about gnocchi and the Italian has never seen hashi some cultural confusion is certain to occur.
Or, drinking. The same Italian raises his fist, throws back his head and sticks out his thumb. The Japanese lowers his head and makes a half-circle with thumb and index finger in front of his mouth, then suddenly tilts the whole hand. Here the European is imitating the act of drinking from a spouted wine-flask; the Japanese is miming drinking from a sake cup.
Nor do the difficulties end there. I, for one, am always confused by the Japanese eating gesture because I identify it with the smoking gesture—where two fingers are held in front of the mouth, the message usually reading “give me a cigarette.” A yet further complication is that the old fashioned gesture for kissing is also two fingers held perpendicular to the lips. Did the occasion arise, I would be certain to mistake this for the give-me-a-cigarette or even the let’s-eat gesture.
Simpler to read, but quite arcane enough for the first-time visitor, are the large number of professional imitative gestures. The carpenter mimes the actions of the saw, the barber imitates the scissors, the bartender the motions of the cocktail shaker. All of these happen to be identical with those of the West (except the carpenter’s—the saw cuts when it is pushed rather than pulled) and are readable after a little practice. Not so easy to make out, however, are those imitative gestures indicating purely Japanese professions. The flower-arranger mimes an ikebana as he talks and the tea-master makes stirring motions. One must know what these represent in order to know what they mean. Fortunately they are coded. The barber always makes the same gestures; so does the tea-master. If you can read one you can read them all.
Occasionally, however, for an unexpected profession, the gesture can prove baffling. In Sanya, in the slums of Tokyo, I repeatedly observed a very odd gesture—a rapid opening and closing of the hand. Upon investigation I discovered that this was a new entry into the professional imitative repertoire. It is a simple pumping motion (fist closed, then opened) and indicates that the gesturer has made some money by selling to the local blood bank.
Equally difficult for the uninformed are the various finger gestures. There the difficulty lies in that they rest upon a subcode which is assumed. To break this code one must realize that fingers are seen as, typically enough, a family system. The child is early taught that the thumb is the parent finger, specifically the father finger (otosan-yubi). The index is then the mother finger, the middle and ring fingers are elder/eldest brother/sister, and the littlest (ko-yubi) is his very own—often called the boku (me) yubi.
Perhaps all the fingers were at one time used for familial designation and its extensions, but now only the thumb and little finger are used for visual signals. The little finger held in the air means, originally and primarily, a baby. Held aloft it traditionally asks if the couple has yet been blessed. The secondary, and now much more common meaning, however, is “girl-friend.” I do not know how this transference took place but I do know that the little finger held up before your eyes on the street corner always asks if you are indeed waiting for “her.” Likewise, the thumb has come to have a number of meanings, including “boy-friend.” Most commonly, however, it retains its original parental attribute. It means father, master, employer, or—in the Japanese gang-world—the oyabun, boss.
Fingers are extensively used in the gesture vocabularies employed by Japanese gamblers and gangsters. Such, to be sure, are seen equally in all countries: members often wish to communicate in front of some third party but want to be neither overheard nor understood. A great many such gestures are thus international: crossed wrists means jail not only in Japan but in most countries as well. Probably only Japanese gangsters, however, understand the sharp pulling of the index fingers (as though shooting a gun) to mean pickpocketing, or the crossing of the index fingers (like swords) to indicate a fight.
The gesture vocabulary of gamblers is particularly rich. A rapid flicking of the thumb against the curved index finger is a reference to pachinko, that very popular form of pinball which is Japan’s true national sport. Mahjong is indicated either by moving both arms as one does when mixing the tiles, or by imitating movements used when setting up a tile row. Dice-box gambling is indicated by a wave (side to side) of t1,.e hand, fingers loose. An interesting non-imitative gambling gesture is that used to indicate the card-game hanajuda: the side of the nose is rubbed with the thumb. This is a visual pun. The game translates as “flower (hana) cards” but hana is also a homonym for “nose.”
Another interesting gambler gesture, its origins somewhat obscure, is that for cheese-it-the-cops. This consists of hitting the forehead with the thumb end of the fist. Though the context in this case determines the message—resulting as it does in a general scampering—confusion is possible in that it is almost identical with another and more general gesture. The thumb end of the fist is shaken near the face to indicate that someone is gatchiri or katai with his money—both gesture and meaning being covered, in this case, by an identical English term: tightfisted.
The fist is again used when something is suddenly remembered (usually with disastrous consequences) or suddenly understood (usually for the worse). Then the top of the speaker’s own head is struck, often with the fist, though sometimes with the flat of the hand. The West has this self-punishing gesture, but it is always the temples which are slapped. The Japanese chastise the entire head.
The head is also used in a number of other ways indicative of a general lack of self approval. The painful scratching of the back of the head always means that the scratcher is embarrassed. (In America the same gesture means: I don’t know.) It indicates, precisely, embarrassment coupled with unease—usually after a slip of some kind has occurred, or just after an ordeal (school speech, appearance on TV, etc.). One might think this as semiinvoluntary as the smile, but its use seems more conscious. After all, in Japan being embarrassed is not only nothing to be ashamed of, it is a kind of social virtue, indicating as it does that one knows one’s proper and subservient place. I have seen this gesture consciously used in order to create this sort of impression.
One major difference between Japanese and Western gestures, as seen in all of these examples, is that this rich manual vocabulary is almost never used in the second-person singular. Questions may be asked (little finger? thumb?), but statements, in particular derogatory ones, are not to be made. Thus Japan has no second-person gestures so graphic as the Spanish biting of the thumb, the American thumbing of the nose, the Middle-European meaningful extension of the middle finger, the Italian thrust of the entire arm, stopped short by the other hand on the biceps.
Hand gestures as statement tend to refer either to self or to some third person not present. Following the custom of the spoken language (comments are made about “me, him, and her” but rarely about “you”), gestures are directed “away” from the watcher. Take, for example, the matter of making horns with the fingers. This is a universal sign occurring in many cultures where it has a number of meanings, all of them uncomplimentary.
In southern Europe, where it suggests cuckoldry, proven or not, the horns are often directed at the suspected victim himself. The perhaps primary European meaning, aversion of the evil eye, finds it—perforce—directed “against” the viewer. This secondperson use never occurs in Japan though the “horns” (index and little fmgers stiffiy extended) mean things just as socially unacceptable: namely, jealousy or (secondary meaning) anger.
“My wife is always so (fingers make horns—reading: jealous) that I just hate to go home.” Or: “Today my boss is (fingers make horns—reading: angry) and I’m not going to go near him.” This usage is almost always referential to a third-person. I know of only one instance where this unpleasant gesture is used in a first-person context. This is when imps are invoked to torment misbehaving children. The finger-horns are “worn” by the irate adult who rushes directly at the offending child with loud cries of ani! ani!
There are several exceptions, however, to the general rule that in this land of harmony an overt second-person gesture is not permitted. These are the number of mild and/or amusing “statement” gestures specifically designed for second-person use. One is particularly charming. The speaker delicately scratches the space between the bottom of his nose and the top of his lip. This takes the place of the slightly improper phrase hana na shita ga nagai, though just why the length of this area should indicate the degree of the other’s potency I have no idea.
This gesture, like most of the others already mentioned, is used by men with men. Japan joins the other nations of the world in excluding women from most of its gesture-making activities. For whatever reason (unrefined, unladylike, etc.), it is men who discourage women from thus expressing themselves. Of all the examples mentioned so far the only one I have seen women engage in is the oni demon-calling.
Women are, however, permitted (indeed, encouraged) to use a certain category of gestures not unknown in other countries but perfected to a degree in Japan. This has a specifically “cooperative” intention, and often represents a request for a degree of social tolerance. One example is that quite graceful gesture, half request, half expression of intent when, hand held carefully in front, one enters a row of seats or walks in front of another person. A full-scale version of this is seen when a person walks across the street just as the light is changing. There the hand is held high, like a flag, but it is also “humbly” bent at the elbow—a gesture which both proclaims and requests.
There are a vast number of “cooperative” gestures in Japan, but many of them are “negative.” One might call them “absent” gestures except that they operate gesturely for positive results. In a crowded train or subway, for example, there is almost no eye contact among the passengers. Each studiously ignores the others. Here the gesture is the apparent lack of one. Or, a number of barrier signals are used—crossed arms if one is sitting, for example. Or, one moves further away (if possible) to maintain personal space, an area somewhat larger in size in over-crowded Japan than it is in wide-open America. While none of these are “gestures” they all serve as such. The most interesting thing about their use in Japan, (most of them being seen in other cultures as well) is the way in which they are used. They are rarely used “defensively,” though defense is indeed their purpose. Instead, with everyone doing them, all in the same way, the effect becomes one of a greater cooperation, everyone doing what is expected and everyone doing so at the same time.
Such social “gestures” are extremely common in Japan as are those, some of which have already been noted, which are purely cooperative in intent. One of these is, of course, the famous Japanese bow. It is, strictly, a gesture meaning submissive behavior and is so used by many cultures. In Japan, however, the point of the bow is that its length and degree must (among social equals) be the same on both sides. One often sees polite gentlemen and genteel ladies glancing surreptitiously to gauge both the depth and the duration of the other’s bow. Though the company president need only nod to the secretary’s bow, confronted with an equal, he must not appear any less polite than his fellow bower. Submission turns into a kind of contest as to who is the more refined, and such bowings can go on for an amount of time.
What one might have misread as a mutual display of submission is then actually a cooperative leveling of differences, a removal of grounds for social disagreements, an assurance (however empty) that we are all alike and that we are mindful of the larger social concerns. At the same time one can see that bowing, like the Japanese smile (and like many of the other gestures mentioned here), can suggest a number of valid observations about this country where the direct second-person encounter is so avoided, where “face” is considered of vital importance, where gestural statements of intent take the form of requests, and where embarrassment is, indeed, nothing to be ashamed of.
—1980