letter from Japan
If you look on Google there are over 22 million hits for Japanese queueing etiquette.
‘Japanese people are well-mannered, and they respect the rules, that is known throughout the world.’
This quotation comes from a Japanese bank seeking to educate foreigners on how to queue well in banks and other public spaces when visiting Japan:
It is a commonly held belief in Japan, and abroad, that Japanese people are indeed ‘well mannered’ people. As such, since they are so respectable, it can be very hard for Japanese people to think of themselves as sinners in need of forgiveness. The word for sin in Japanese is usually reserved for criminal offences. And as a foreigner living here I sometimes find myself thinking they are indeed ‘better’ people when I see evidence of their enormous self-control.
However, in a recent conversation with a Japanese-Australian friend, he was keen to point out that if you scratch beneath the exterior, Japanese are just as selfish as the rest of sinful humanity.
After this conversation I was interested to read a post on another missionary friend’s social media page. She was describing the impact of bird flu on the supply of eggs in her supermarket. This was not, however, an economic analysis on the impact of supply and demand, but a reflection on how her preconceptions about Japanese people being ‘well-mannered’ was completely undermined by what she witnessed.
Eggs were in such short supply in her area that it necessitated her queuing up to buy eggs before opening time. Initially everyone was patiently queuing up and waiting for 9am to roll around, but when the doors opened the scene changed dramatically. People transformed from the stereotyped benign, well-mannered queuers to self-interested egg marauders, running and pushing the opposition out of the way. Old ladies had brought their husbands with the aim of being eligible to buy two packets of eggs. The bewildered men, who normally never set foot in the place, looked browbeaten as their wives yelled at them to keep up and follow their strategic route to reach the eggs faster than others. Upon arrival, the subsequent brawl revealed that when push comes to shove Japanese people are just like the rest of us; sinners in need of a glorious Saviour.
