Secretiveness
and shyness
It is my belief that no matter
how widespread the implication of the issue of secretiveness in Japanese
culture, the basis of the issue is their biologically based bashfulness and
shyness, as well as interpersonal sensitiveness. Sense of shame has been found
to be so close to many Japanese. It is well known that Ruth Benedict (1946) formulated
that Japanese society as "a shame culture" (as opposed to American
society, which she termed "a guilt culture"). As I stated in 1994, shame
is given different meanings in various cultural contexts. In Japan, shame-prone
and self-effacing behavior tends to be given positive functional value and is
actively promoted by society. In the United States, society tends to prohibit
such shame-prone behavior and the show of one's vulnerability, while
encouraging the visible demonstration of one's power and capacity.
Historically, Japanese people
have become used to being characterized as shame-prone, shy, self-effacing,
reserved, and apologetic, even though they show some resistance or reservation
in accepting the designation of their culture as a "shame culture"
with its rather negative connotations. Many authors argue that social phobia
has a much higher prevalence in Japan than in the Western world (Kasahara,
1974; Kora, 1955; Yamashita, 1977).
Kasahara (1974) reported that
10% of new students in a Japanese university who were under psychiatric care
had a diagnosis of social phobia, and that its prevalence was second only to
depressive reactions and psychosomatic disorders. A report by Uchinuma (1983)
indicated that 2.5% of psychiatric outpatients in a Japanese mental hospital
had a primary diagnosis of social phobia.
In Japan, a cluster of neuroses
with socially phobic features as well as hypersensitivity and pervasive
hypochondriacal concerns has been called "shinkeishitsu," which a
Western textbook of psychiatry describes under the rubric of
"cross-cultural syndromes" (Kaplan & Sadock, 1988). Half a century
ago, Morita (1960), a pioneer in the study of shinkeishitsu, postulated that
there is a shinkeishitsu-prone innate temperament that he called
"hypochondriacal temperament." According to Morita, people who are born
with this temperament are overly sensitive, self-reflective, and notice even
minimal changes
Generally speaking, Japanese
authors appear to assume that the culturally encouraged show of shame-proneness
among the Japanese is enough to explain the reported high prevalence of social
phobia among them.
This general discussion of
shame in the Japanese cultural context paves a way to the following discussion
of secretiveness in their culture.
