On saying no in Japanese

My friend Renee asked me why the Japanese generally avoid saying no. Here is my best attempt at an explanation:

Basically, Japanese are trained to be very considerate and to think about other people’s needs and desires rather than their own. So if, for instance, someone asks them for a favor, they often feel obligated to comply, even if they would rather not. You may have felt the same way yourself sometimes—someone asks you for something, and even though you’d really rather not, you don’t feel like you can refuse, so you go along with it anyway. Take that feeling, multiply by about five, and that’s how the Japanese feel most of the time.

When the Japanese do say no, they often do so indirectly. Again, this isn’t totally foreign to Americans. If someone invites you to do something, you probably wouldn’t just say, “No thank you.” You’d say something like, “Gee, I’d love to, but I’m afraid we’re busy that Friday.” Similarly, if a Japanese person says something like, “Hmm, well, that’s a little…”, that means “no.”

Disagreeing with or contradicting someone is bad too, because either you’ve caused them to lose face (if they’re your superior) or you’ve destroyed the harmony of the group (if they’re your equal). In fact, the most common way to disagree politely is to say, “It differs.” So if, for example, someone were to ask me if I teach at the University of Iowa, rather than saying, “No, it’s the University of Northern Iowa,” I would say, “It differs. It’s the University of Northern Iowa.” That way I’m not directly contradicting them, just letting them know that the facts “differ” from what they thought.

All of this is sometimes very annoying to Americans who say, “I don’t care if the answer’s yes or no; just give me a straight answer.” And conversely, Americans often seem very rude and selfish to Japanese because we just come straight out and say “no” without considering other people’s feelings.

Note that the issue here is that the Japanese don’t like to refuse or contradict people. It’s not that they avoid the word “no” altogether. If you want to hear a Japanese person say “no”, try complimenting them. They’ll probably respond with something like, “No, no, I’m really not very good.”

Japanese also tend to say no when they offered something because they don’t want to put the other person to any trouble. So if you ask a Japanese guest if they’d like something to drink, they will probably say no even if they *do* want something, just to be polite. So of course a really polite Japanese host doesn’t ask; they just bring something out and offer it to the person (and often urge them to eat or drink several times before the guest finally does so). In fact, there’s a funny story about that. A Japanese man was in the States and was visiting an American family. His host asked if he would like some ice cream. Mr. Doi, being a polite Japanese, of course said no. So the American host went and got bowls of ice cream for himself and his son and they sat there and ate in front of their Japanese guest who really would have liked some ice cream, but hadn’t yet learned that in America you will only be asked once, and if you say no, they will take it at face value!

On the other hand, I sometimes got annoyed in Japan because people would bring out things I didn’t really want and then I would feel obliged to eat it since they’d gone to all the trouble. The point is, both sides are trying to be thoughtful and considerate. The American host wants to give people a choice. The Japanese host tries to be considerate by anticipating the other person’s wants. Both systems work fine as long as everyone’s playing by the same set of rules. It’s when people have differing expectations that it gets confusing and annoying.

So it’s not that Japanese never say no. It’s that in Japan, whether you say yes OR no is primarily based on what you think the other person wants, rather than on clearly communicating your own wants. Americans find this confusing, because we expect that each person will clearly communicate their own desires, and then if we disagree, we can negotiate a mutually agreeable solution. In Japan, everyone is so busy anticipating what the other person wants, that Americans sometimes wonder how anything gets decided at all.