What the Japanese Language Tells Us about the Alleged Japanese Relational Self

The Japanese have frequently been characterized as ‘collectivistic’ and ‘group-oriented’. This common view is based on the group model of Japanese society, which claims that the Japanese self is relational, fluid, and assimilated into one’s in-group as a collective deictic center. Reviewing several major works that cover Japanese society and its language, the present article argues that the collectivist view of the Japanese self is incompatible with essential features of the Japanese language. Through an examination of addressing and kinship terms, honorific and polite expressions, donatory verbs, psychological predicates, the pronoun jibun, and private (as opposed to public) expressions, it is demonstrated that (i) Japanese requires a notion of an absolute self that is strictly distinct from others and cannot be assimilated into one’s in-group, and (ii) the distinction of the two aspects of the speaker, public and private self, is crucial to the analysis of the Japanese self. The group model pays attention only to public expressions involving social and interpersonal relations; in order to identify the essential nature of the Japanese and their language, an examination of private expressions is mandatory. The image of Japanese people that emerges from this study is contrary to the group model depiction: they are individualistic beings with strong inner self-consciousness.