2023 | 9 min read
“Don’t cry,” Masami told her son. “You’ll make everyone late.” The tantrum was over a lunchbox that was unbecoming of a boy in third grade. “Go look after your little sister,” she told him. He stopped sniffling. As Masami was readying the kids for school, she once more found herself tidying up after an adult. Why was it that her airline pilot of a husband, despite being able to transfer 300 passengers a day safely across the Pacific Ocean, was unable to transfer his socks to the laundry basket each day?
She walked the kids to the station, where they always got on different trains. The brother and sister wore matching yellow hats and held hands when they came near the station. Their train would take them to a private elementary school in the suburbs. Her train went in the opposite direction to Gotanda, where she worked as a manager for a small design studio overlooking the Meguro River, which was really more of a canal.
Today, her first task was to field an urgent phone call. A major supplier had failed to send a quote that had been promised yesterday. The supplier spoke of a mix-up with one of his own suppliers. He seemed to want to secure an extension and then quickly bring the call to an end. As he prevaricated, Masami kept a cool silence. Notes of anxiety began to creep into the voice on the line. She could hear him bowing. Finally, she interrupted her own silence to say that tomorrow morning would be fine. Nothing would be discussed before then anyway. “Thanks as always,” she added. The man seemed to collapse on the other end of the line.
Hori had entered the room while she was on the phone. She didn’t really like him, but hid it well. Hori was around her age, but he fancied himself as a future CEO and sometimes acted as though the title had already been bestowed. “Guess what,” he said. “I’ve just spoken with the hotel client. Remember how they were going to put the website project on hold? Well, I persuaded them to go ahead with the meeting next week as planned.” He pulled his chair out from his desk. “Now let’s get down to work. It’ll be easier if we start by preparing case studies.”
Hori made a show of hanging up his jacket before lowering himself into his chair. He turned his head and was about to say something else when his attitude suddenly changed. The CEO and founder of the firm – everyone called him Sensei – had just entered the room. “Sensei, good morning!” said Hori brightly. “The meeting next week is back on again. Where should we start with the preparations?”
Sensei nodded, but he didn’t answer the question. He knew that whatever needed doing would get done, even if they had to work through the night. A lot was riding on this pitch. His real concern was the lack of new projects in the pipeline. He had a good team. It was no exaggeration to say that they did all the work. Was it time to start thinking about his own retirement? This wasn’t something he felt able to discuss with his subordinates. He resolved to take it up with his dominatrix later that evening.
“You’re just a big BAY-BEE!” cried Lady Nanae as she reached out a lace-gloved hand. She pinched Sensei’s cheeks hard and gave his face a shake.
“Yes,” said Sensei. In that moment, he could think of nothing more to say. But finally he added “Thank you.” Lady Nanae wasn’t wrong. The more he looked inside himself, the more obvious it seemed. And he was, after all, wearing only a disposable diaper.
In the all-depending city, everyone leaned on someone. Juniors looked up to seniors and expected a helping hand in return. Small companies accepted work from big companies and there was no limit to how much. Anything might be outsourced to agencies and vendors, and it wasn’t about the cost. There was peace of mind in making others do things you could reasonably manage on your own.
In every relationship there was a clearly defined top and bottom, master and servant, client and service provider. You could be on the junior side in one relationship and the senior side in another. Whichever side you were on didn’t matter. Asymmetrical relationships were more secure and longer lasting. Dependence was strength. It could even be called sweetness.
Relations between equals or peers were more prone to destructive emotions such as rivalry, envy and attraction. You could never let down your guard. No, the social sphere was more just and harmonious when it was ordered into seniority-based relationships between teachers and their students, managers and their subordinates, companies and their suppliers, masters and their apprentices, hosts and their guests. If it sounds like a recipe for oppression, that’s not how it worked in practice.
In most relationships, even the most asymmetrical, there was considerable scope for both sides to get what they want. The reason for this was said to be amae, an untranslatable term that meant something like dependence. To amae was to depend boldly. The verb form amaeru meant “presume upon” or “impose on” and described a type of behaviour only permissible in relationships where there exists considerable psychological safety.
The kanji at the root of amae meant “sweet” and there was semantic overlap with the English expression “to be in sweet with someone” or to be able to rely on their goodwill. Amae was the sweetness that powered the relationships felt to be among the most tender yet secure. The husband-wife relationship was unique because either side could play the amae role, and a healthy marriage was one in which both sides could take turns. But the ultimate expression of amae was in the bond between parent and child, the original dependency that all other relationships strove to recreate.
The person who performs amae might act childishly or unreasonably, but always with the aim of identifying with the other. For the person on the receiving end of amae, the expected response was always a kind of parental benevolence. Since amae was an imposition on the other side, or even a way of testing and expanding the boundaries of the relationship, there was always some blurring of the two individual selves. In essence, amae was an erasure of the self in exchange for a duty of care. It’s the reason children clearly very capable of walking demanded to be carried by their parents, and why companies already very busy were expected to drop everything for their clients.
The concept of amae was first put forward by psychiatrist Takeo Doi in an effort to explain Japanese behaviour to Americans and to help the Japanese better understand themselves. In 1950, Doi was a graduate of the University of Tokyo sent from Japan on a scholarship to the USA. Doi’s first brush with amae arrived when he was visiting the home of an American acquaintance. The key exchange went something like as follows:
“Hey Takeo, you hungry? We have some ice cream if you’d like it.”
“No thanks, I’m fine,” said Takeo.
“Alright then,” said the American, closing the freezer door.
Takeo himself froze. In truth, he was feeling a bit hungry and he did want some ice cream. He had expected his host to insist on it. More to the point, why didn’t he just serve ice cream for the both of them without troubling his guest about it first? A Japanese host would never enquire if his guest was hungry. Hospitality and hunger were two different things. Americans seemed incapable of understanding even the basics of social politeness.
Doi was starting to form an image of the USA as a nation of atomised individuals, each of them required to explain endlessly what they would and wouldn’t like to have. And if they would have it, how they wanted it. In a bowl or a glass? A regular or large amount? With syrup or without? It seemed to Doi that Americans, with their never-ending statements of personal preference, were always trying to reassure themselves of their own freedom. The ice cream-deprived young scholar glared at the freezer door. He would taste that locked-away sweetness, but not for another two decades when he would serve up a grand theory of Japanese behaviour.
Doi spent the next twenty years puzzling over and trying to explain the reasons why Americans and Japanese often failed to get along. Americans felt certain aspects of Japanese behaviour to be childish, not least the inability to articulate what they really want. Japanese considered Americans to be rude because they didn’t exercise their duty of care, whether as hosts in the home or as senior partners in the new bilateral security treaty.
In 1971, Doi published his analysis in a book, Amae no Kōzō, later translated as The Anatomy of Dependence. It was one of the first works of psychology to explain Japanese behaviour using Japanese terms. There was already a long literary tradition, of course, and Doi borrowed liberally from the writings of Natsume Soseki, regarded as Japan’s finest modern chronicler of social relations. The Anatomy of Dependence put examples from literature into terms a psychiatrist might understand.
For much of the 20th Century, Japanese psychiatry had been a deeply strange field. Patients would describe what ailed them – naturally speaking Japanese – and psychiatrists would then try to find a German word for it. If no corresponding German term could be found, then the ailment could not be recorded and the patient’s problem was felt not to exist. It also didn’t help that Japanese cultural orthodoxy located a person’s psychological wellbeing in their relationships with others. It was not something one discovered by looking inside oneself.
A patient’s mental distress could now be explained as a failure to amae. A reluctance to depend on others, or to identify with other people’s needs, was the source of the problem. Aloof or self-contained behaviour was pathological. It was the same in business. Nobody could go it alone. Companies relied on their suppliers, who in turn relied on the largesse of their clients. Employees made it their mission to please their CEOs, who in turn relied completely on their employees. This is how they rolled, lashed together for mutual assurance on the barrelling Spaceship Earth.
After the client meeting, the design firm got to work. Because it had a relationship with the client formed over many years, the team had a deep store of knowledge about what the client did and didn’t like. Recently there had been a change of CEO at the client, and a note of unwelcome anxiety had been introduced to the process. Or was it excitement? Nobody was really sure. Either way, at the very last moment, Sensei insisted that, along with Proposals A-C, they also include Proposal D, a “safety” option similar to a recent campaign by the client’s main competitor.
When the client’s marketing team received the proposals, they quickly removed the first, which they’d already learned was not to the new CEO’s tastes. The other three were sent up the chain of approval, with some gentle hints about the marketing team’s opinion. The following week, when the design firm received the email, it informed them that the CEO likes Proposal D, so that’s what the company will go with and thanks for all the hard work. Masami and her colleagues were deflated, but quickly saw the bright side. Things would be easier from now on.
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