In Japanese culture, there is a strong current of needing to read between the lines, because the Japanese are traditionally less direct in their conversation.
From the web site, ‘thejapanesepage.com’: ‘The Japanese expression "をめない" literally means "can't read the air." It is used to describe someone who is socially awkward or unaware, lacking the ability to pick up on social cues, context, or the mood of a situation.’ (The Japanese Pages)
Apparently, the Japanese love to abbreviate and so they use slang, ‘KY’, When spoken, ケイワイ to mean, ‘can’t read the air’. So, if you see ‘KY’ written online you now know what it means. KY are two of the letters from ‘Kuuki o Yomenai’
I like to talk; I really like to talk. But I am not very good at listening. You would think I would be good at listening because I lost a considerable percentage of my visual acuity when I was still six years old. Decades later, my vision has been fixed and I can see as well as most people in the West; I don’t need corrective aids to see very well. I do however, need reading glasses. Before my vision was restored I could not see the minute facial changes on people I met; I could not distinguish a ‘Duchenne Smile’ from a ‘Pan-Am smile’, because I could not see if the smile reached the eyes. I relied very heavily on nuances and inflections in the speaker’s voice. Unfortunately, it seems that almost no-one I met paid much attention to their voice and how they used it. Indeed, why would they? So far, in their lives everyone they came across, just understood them. It made things quite difficult for me at the most basic level. Doctors, and even people who profess to being autistic, or having Asperger Syndrome, or being ‘on the spectrum’, either tested me for autism or in the latter, told me I am autistic. Because I lost a lot of my vision as a child, I tended to watch anything I could see on anyone’s face that was moving; in effect lip-reading without actually lip-reading. A ‘Pan-Am smile’ would fool me into thinking that the wearer was happy and not instead strained by my continued presence. I suppose, taking a hint was not in my tool-box of social interaction.
Back
then, when I was standing quite close to a woman, yet still outside
of her personal space as we all understand the size to be in our
culture, I would stop watching her mouth when she stopped talking,
and look at her eyes. Some women would pull their cardigan over their
chest to more firmly cover their body. I wasn’t looking at
their chests, I was watching their mouths, but they saw my eyes flick
up and they were watching my face for clues on how I was perceiving their conversation. I never bothered to tell them that I was watching
their mouths and not looking at their bodies.
Here, we should become aware that I am building a hook to another part of an explanation. It is usual for me to leave a few hooks hanging, and then I can show how the shape of something can be made out when it is brought out into the open and hung from different hooks but with different light sources. We might consider this differently: By partially explaining something, I cast a shadow on a wall. Another partial explanation, from a different aspect, casts another shadow on the same wall, and so on. Soon enough, there are the right shadows on a wall, and I then move the light sources so all the shadows blend together and all the shadows can be seen as one shape. Where the shadows cross, darker areas are formed and depth is perceived; at least, I hope so.
Back to my eyes flicking upwards to a woman’s eyes. If I tell an offended woman I was only looking at her mouth, three things can happen, I suggest. She doesn’t believe me - people caught in the act, I propose, mostly lie about their actions; she does believe me and maybe feels a bit foolish; and thirdly, she is offended because by explaining my actions I have used a suppressed premise, ‘I was not looking at your breasts!’. I believe it is rude, in the UK, to bring up, even obliquely, the shape of a woman in a conversation that is not expressly about her body. So, as a result of any of these three moments, an awkward phase passed between the offended woman and I, and the conversation faltered and petered out. I might paint a picture of the feelings of two people in this scenario as there being a resentful and offended woman who is lowering her respect for a man with poor eyesight, who, himself, is feeling foolish and vicariously guilty by a association with having the thought of stealing a glance, that has been forced upon him. The slightest change in posture or hesitation by this man will positively identify him to the woman as the rightful recipient of her contempt. Of course, this is only a picture that might be painted with broad brush-strokes. If this was occurring, however, the man would be in a ‘zugzwang’ situation. No matter what he does, he will lose a piece in a proverbial chess game with a forced position that requires a move, simply because it is his turn. And all this cast in a greenish spotlight of penetrating focus, before a suddenly hushed audience, with only an internal commentator annoyingly drawing out the micro-pause, to be analysed over and over again in the editing rooms of the man’s and woman’s minds. She may remember only the rude man and, he, only his vicarious shame. It is just a picture though, a wild representation of how things might be seen. That is not to say that there is actually a game to be won or one that is even playable.
Business speaker and author of ‘The Culture Map’, Erin Meyer, spoke, in a talk, on how she gave a talk to a room full of Japanese and asked them, at the end, if they had any questions; no-one raised their hands so Erin moved off the stage and sat down. She was surprised when her Japanese colleague asked her if he might try for questions. He asked if they had questions and no-one raised their hands. However, he selected people in the audience who really did have questions, and who were grateful to be chosen. Erin asked him how he knew who to select. He answered that these people had bright eyes. Because, Erin said, Japanese people will not look at you if they have questions, the ones who look at you show, to those who can read the air in the room, that they have questions or something to say.
My mother visited me one day and, after some time, pointed to a little picture of a hologram with concentric circles in a frame on my mantelpiece. She asked me if that was the right time. I knew she was embarrassed about having poor eyesight and just told her, ‘No, it is not, I will go and find out the right time’; I did, and told her the time. This, in Japanese culture, is reading the room, or the air, or understanding a person. I come across this ability so rarely in the West. We are quick to judge and seem to take everything at face-value. Many of us would inadvertently have hurt their mother by not thinking beforehand and telling her it is not a clock. Why do we do that? Unfortunately, when we read the room and do not act in a particular way there is a hiatus in communication. We, in the West are sometimes compelled to ignore the ‘air in the room’ simply because it is bad manners to disallow someone to be direct with us; go figure, as they say in the United States.
In a TEDx Talk in Trondheim, Norway, Julien S. Bourrelle shares an experience that in his home country, French-speaking Canada, he would have been fine with, in Norway, after living there for some time, he found to be intrusive and uncomfortable. He was sitting on a park bench and someone sat down on the same bench and started talking to him, Julien answered and then turned away. He thought to himself, ‘Why is this man talking to me?’ so he asked the man, and added that he [Julien] comes from a country where that sort of behaviour does not happen; people don’t speak to each other. Yet, he went on in his TEDx talk to negate this, by saying that it is entirely normal for strangers to just start conversations. In Norway, however, socialisation takes place in a much more framed and organised manner. In fact, he had rewired his brain, and his mental programming had changed over the five years he had spent in Norway.
Confront, Complain, or Conform
‘When you confront, it is because you believe that your behaviour is the right behaviour. When you complain, you isolate yourself into social bubbles of segregation. When you conform, you adapt your behaviour to the society you are in, and can truly benefit from diversity’. Julien went on, ‘But that implies that you are observing, learning, understanding the behaviours of others and adapting your own so that it fits with the behaviour of the society you are in’.
I will start a conversation at supermarket checkouts, park benches, bus stops, on the bus or train, but never in a pub or bar, unless I have been there a few times to read the room (or air). This is a selfish attitude. The pub or bar I choose to be my regular or at least one of a favoured few, is a place I go to to feel comfortable. I don’t want to upset the proverbial apple-cart with crass opinion or statements in a place I want to be able to return to. Ironically, I do not present my true self, until I am confident that I am known and as such, some leeway may be afforded me if I make a mistake once or twice. This means I am two different people. Or perhaps, we might see it as ruthlessly using a circumstance with a stranger that I will likely never meet again as a temporary release of verbal energy; thereby, secretly and silently, ticking one of the many boxes on my invisible ‘List of Things to do Today’; Speak to a stranger; No, I mean, socially interact. I no longer air-write: ‘Make a list’ on my daily list. We have all, I suspect, recognised that the volume of conversation is attenuated by the entry of a stranger in a remote village bar where tourists tend not to go.
Valerie Hoeks, in a TEDx talk in Haarlem, The Netherlands, some years ago, spoke of her time spent conducting business in China. She highlighted that Confucianism plays a large part in how Chinese see themselves and others. Valerie remarked that there seemed to her to be three things that really stood out to be imperatives to get things done in China. Of course, she also wanted to be kind and friendly.
Reciprocal favour; Harmony; and Saving Face
In China if one asks for a favour it is unquestionably expected that the favour will be returned; the more favours asked, the more the debt is increased. It, she says, is unforgivable to not return favours. She went on to explain by mentioning that she had friends who decades after graduating still went, every week; every week for decades, to visit their primary school teachers, for whom they felt they had never repaid the debt of their attention and teaching.
Harmony, was impressed upon Valerie by finding herself in a situation for which she had some anxiety but her friend seemed to brush it aside and a fine solution was effected. In fact, the solution far exceeded an alternative that Valerie was actually seeking. There is a time for everything.
A Time for Everything
1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens
2
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to
uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down
and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a
time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones
and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain
from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time
to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to
mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love
and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 The Bible, New International Version
You may have seen a portion of this in the very first pages of a book. For me, I might have a story-line that resembles the hands on a clock. The hour hand moves slowly from twelve to one, while the minute hand moves twelve times faster before it gets to the twelve again. The clock strikes and a task or event is reached. This happens eleven times more while the hour hand advances and each hourly chime lasts longer and longer, and the task, event, or circumstance being celebrated or tolled is ever more portentous. If this persistence of chiming is made known to the reader, there is a building anticipation of the clock finally striking twelve (midnight for Cinderella).
My mum had a German Cuckoo clock which chimed every quarter hour and cuckoo-ed every hour. As children, we would advance the hands to make it chime and pull on the weights to speed up the tune. The cuckoo clock broke after just a couple of years, but my mum still kept it on the wall; she loved it, even when it didn’t work. We forced events to occur and the world of the two figures and the cuckoo in the clock got broken, and our mum silently cried. We didn’t realise at the time that we had made her unhappy.
I used to hate windy days, because I cycled to work, until I bought a sailing boat, and then would think, ‘Great sailing weather!’ To be mindful of harmony and to remind me to try to let things segue together, I had to change my speech; I now draw out the ‘double u’ (w) on the word ‘wait’. I like how it sounds, and I think some people can hear the word a little better, when patience might be a good idea.
The third thing that Valerie, in her TEDx talk mentioned as being inherent in Chinese culture was ‘Face’, or more accurately, how one is perceived by others. This includes the actual facial physique, social interaction, honour, and respectability. It is horrific, she concludes, for Chinese people with a connection to Confucianism to lose face.
If I had told my mum that the clock she thought she saw on my mantelpiece is not a clock, the implication would have been that I am observing her as stupid or in some way impaired. Extending this implication it would also mean she is either useless to society or even a hazard to safety. Someone, somewhere, filled with hate, would have maliciously told her, ‘Yes, it is the right time.’ and watched her squirm. They might even have deliberately stayed in the room to prevent her from moving closer to the clock to check the time. When my mum asked me if it was the right time, no matter the time she was going to leave; she was merely interposing a pause and introducing an exit strategy to go home. If the mean person makes you feel uncomfortable, then you and I are the same; it makes me very, very uncomfortable.
References
The Japanese Page, https://www.thejapanesepage.com/not-reading-the-air-in-japanese-%E7%A9%BA%E6%B0%97%E3%82%92%E8%AA%AD%E3%82%81%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84/
Accessed: 09 February 2025
Julien Bourrelle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Yy6poJ2zs&list=TLPQMDkwMjIwMjVo5MAa2lUG8A&index=17
Accessed: 09 February 2025Cultural difference in business | Valerie Hoeks | TADxHaarlem, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMwjscSCcf0&list=TLPQMDkwMjIwMjVo5MAa2lUG8A&index=13
Accessed: 09 February 2025
Erin Meyer, The Lavin Agency
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQvqDv4vbEg&list=TLPQMDkwMjIwMjVo5MAa2lUG8A&index=14
Accessed: 09 February 2025
Bibliography
BBC https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200129-what-is-reading-the-air-in-japan
Accessed: 09 February 2025