Ethnography: Sumimasen すみません

 https://tadoku.org/japanese/book/5509/ - a free resource of stories by reading level, in Japanese, and for anyone wishing to follow the subject of this blog post.  This a story set at level 0 for difficulty/skill, with lots of detailed large pictures.


Just from the pictures alone, you can tell that the story follows examples of everyday life in Japan, with people boarding a bus to go somewhere, a near accident with a cat in the street and the bus, and bruised toes from luggage shifting inside the bus.  Then at work, encounters with colleagues, not all positive, including getting given tons of work, spilled coffee and someone asleep at their desk, then someone with really nice cookies, and finally someone trying to leave the office to head home, and a rapid sprint for the bus home, which is all too familiar to many of us, only to get there and find out that it is out of service.

On the second reading, listening to it, we learn that Miki is taking the bus to the office, and en route, the bus stops sharply with a loud screech of brakes. Reading it at the same time, I can see that they did the katabkana onomatopoeia nicely in the sound effects. Someone nearly falls and their luggage goes whistling down the aisle of the bus, past Miki, to smash into a fellow passenger's feet.  That passenger is giving the luggage owner a thumbs up though, so they may have put their foot out to deliberately block and catch the luggage before it harms anyone.  Depending on that, the luggage owner's call of “すみません” could either be a "sorry" (for hurting you) or a "sorry for the inconvenience, thank you!" call of relief.

We now see that the driver braked to avoid killing a cat in the road, and is relieved to see the cat made it.  The cat's owner scooped it up, looking relieved and embarrassed, and called “すみません” in thanks and apologies for inconveniencing the whole bus.

Miki arrives at work and calls good morning to her senior colleagues as she dashes in. Her colleagues appear at her desk with a giant amount of work and apologise to her and ask her to do it, please, which she of course, says yes to, and they leave her sitting looking at her giant amount of work.

Another colleague spilled coffee all over an older colleague and apologised profusely with “すみません” twice.  One of Miki's colleagues has fallen asleep at their desk& the other needs their signature and apologises with “すみません” for waking them.

A colleague has a bag of really nice cookies and lots of people are heading towards them looking pleading & saying “すみません” - presumably, it is an apology for depriving them of their cookies if they are kind enough to share them.  Even Miki and their two colleagues get away from their desks for cookies.  

Miki heads out ahead of her colleagues and apologises with “すみません” for leaving before them - while planning to go for drinks with someone. She sees the bus heading for the stop & sprints to catch it. When she reaches the stop, the driver points to the router indicator, which says “すみません” because the bus is out of service.  Presumably Miki will soon be texting “すみません” to her date to apologise for being late...

I didn't really have any difficulty reading the hiragana.  Had slight difficulty remembering the phrase for being sorry for leaving early.  

In this story, “すみません” has been used as a thank you, a sorry, an excuse me, and possibly even a please.

In English, we use other phrases multiple ways - good evening can simply wish someone a good evening, or it could be a "go away, get lost" message. The sort of good evening that gets overused in cartoons to say "I said 'good evening' sir!" in high offense.  Much of the time, when we have a word or phrase having multiple meanings in the UK, they are due to sarcasm, and mean exactly the opposite of the original meaning, rather than a separate related use.  "Nice" is a word that is often used to mean the exact opposite, because sarcasm... Likewise "Oh, that will be fun..." to imply it will be anything but.  Not sarcasm, but an attempt to be tactful, I might use "interesting" if a friend asks what I thought of something and I don't want to hurt their feelings, even though it was not interesting.

Back in the 1980s, there was a show on Britsh television called "Yes, Minister" & later "Yes, Prime Minister" about a new MP trying to get things done despite the interference of the British Civil Service.  I clearly remember one episode of that when they didn't want him to do something, and they praised it and told him that it was a wonderful idea, truly groundbreaking, most excellent, and very courageous.  He dropped it instantly, because they all knew that courageous was code for "this will kill your career".

Another annoying phrase with multiple meanings is the ridiculous "Hot enough for you?" which is used either when it is so hot that the mercury has broken out of the top of the thermometer and everyone is dying of heat stroke, or it is so cold and windblown blizzard conditions that it feels like the fimbulwinter has begun.

In English we also have double negatives that can reverse our meaning, rather than intensifying the negativity, and at least one double positive that can become a negative**.  These can be confusing even for native English speakers, and the source of grammar jokes (a jury of grammarians swooning when the accused used a double negative and shouting that he had confessed, etc).

Also, growing up in England, I am always really polite to people that I don't like or despise, but quite rude to friends or relations - one day, my godmother told me that I was like my father, she never knew when to take me seriously or not.  I looked at her in horror, never having realised that people might have had that problem, because if I had meant any of those things, I wouldn't have said them, they would have been too awful. 

However, in England, we apologise for everything, regardless of whether it is our fault or not.  If someone bumps into you when you are walking down the street, you apologise to them - and can be several streets away before you realise that they were the one at fault. It annoys my wife (who is American, rather than dual-nationality as I am) incredibly, because frequently, people apologise and do absolutely nothing to fix the issue, so she feels that it is empty.  I just take it as totally normal behaviour.

Unlike Japan, the person apologising in the UK isn't based on a person's status or age, it tends to be everyone.  I certainly would not be apologising for waking someone up that had fallen asleep at work, as I would be annoyed at them for falling asleep when I was working.

We don't tend to apologise for a thank you, but we might say when we see a gift "thank you, that must have taken a lot of work", which is what I said to a friend of mine who crocheted me a dragon from rainbow coloured thread.  The dragon is awesome, but it was a lot of work and fiddly to attach all the pieces together.  That is one of the senses of “すみません”, but we don't have a multi-purpose, swiss-army-knife word like Japanese does that covers so many options. 

I may have something similar to the “すみません” for a please, when someone offers something nice - any time someone offers to do something nice for me, I tend to ask them if they are sure, if it is really ok, because I'm worried about the inconvenience, and do they really want to do that.  It took friends quite a lot of effort to train me out of doing that, and we have frequently agreed on a compromise - I will ask that one time and if they confirm that it is fine, I do not repeat the question.  A little like the “すみません” to the person with the cookie bag - "are you really sure you want to sacrifice your awesome cookies...?"

It is a little strange being dropped into American culture without classes on it, and only rally knowing what I have seen on tv, instead of having lessons about a new culture - despite the jokes about the UK & America being two countries separated by a common language, there aren't really guides aimed at ex-pat Brits in America, nor vice versa.  One difference I have noted here is that in the UK, if someone is oblivious and I need by them, I would probably tap them on their shoulder and say "excuse me", and over here, my wife tells me that I would probably get hit if I did that.  Given how much more formal the UK seems compared to the US, that personal space response seems contradictory to me.  It might be a response from having historically had more space/land than the UK has had, so less likely to have to adjust to having their personal space violated regularly.  I suspect that Japan is more like the UK than the US there, because one picture shows someone about to tap someone awake, while apologising or saying excuse me, and they are much more densely populated, so more likely to have to pass closely and inside people's personal space comfort zone. 

 ** - there is a joke about a lecturer instructing a college English course and teaching about double negatives and how those become positives (very like in maths), and how there is no equivalent double positive that becomes a negative...  At which a voice rang out from the lecture hall... "Yeah, right".