Japan's Face-Saving Culture: How the Obsession with Face Moves Japanese Society

Japanese has various expressions related to "face."

For example, "kao wo tateru / 顔を立てる" (saving face) means respecting someone and not letting them be embarrassed, while conversely, "kao ni doro wo nuru / 顔に泥を塗る" (smearing mud on someone's face) means damaging someone's honor and ultimately causing them shame.

Also, "kao ga hiroi / 顔が広い" (having a wide face) means having many connections, and "kao ga kiku / 顔が利く" (having a face that works) means influencing others.

Japanese people love "face," don't they?

Even I, as a child, never paid attention to my own or others' "face." Yet at some point, Japanese people start caring excessively about everything related to face.

But why do Japanese people care so much about face? Let's explore this Japanese obsession with face and the factors that make it so important.

The Fear of Shame That Creates Japanese Obsession with Face

As shown in the expressions "saving face" and "smearing mud on someone's face" mentioned earlier, Japanese people fundamentally connect face with shame.

As I wrote in the article "Does Japanese Shame Culture Really Exist? A Japanese Perspective on Understanding Shame," Japanese people view causing trouble for others as shameful. And people who take actions that cause trouble for others are treated as those who have "smeared mud on someone's face."

Many foreigners might think, "Couldn't you just not worry about such things?" But taking actions that damage someone's face leads to being labeled by those around you as an inadequate person who can't show consideration for others, which connects to receiving the punishment of exclusion from the group.

For Japanese people, who have limited immigration from overseas and live their daily lives in fixed groups (especially in rural areas outside major cities like Tokyo), being excluded from their group means social death, to put it dramatically.

Specifically, for students, this means losing their school place, and for working adults, it risks becoming disadvantageous in workplace discussions, missing promotions and advancement opportunities, or losing daily human relationships, leading to stress.

What's interesting here is that the more conscious Japanese people become about saving others' face and not causing them shame, the more they reflexively worry about "Is my own face being smeared with mud?" and "Am I being shamed by others?"

As a result, Japanese people increasingly tend to constantly be conscious of others' faces to avoid causing shame, while simultaneously being conscious of their own faces and acting to avoid being shamed themselves.

What Actions Lead to "Smearing Mud on Someone's Face"?

So what specific actions lead to smearing mud on someone's face? Of course, there are variations among Japanese people depending on generation, gender, and surrounding environment, but I believe the following broadly leads to damaging someone's face.

First is taking actions that ignore social rules based on age differences. Japan has social rules rooted in Confucian thinking from China that still emphasize treating elders with respect in modern society.

As a result, not using appropriate honorific language with people older than yourself, or making statements or taking actions that deny the experience and past achievements that come with their age, is considered smearing mud on the face of older people.

Second is taking actions that ignore social rules based on differences in social status. Until the Edo period (around the 19th century), Japan had a strict class system that divided the samurai, farmers, and merchant classes. These have, of course, been abolished and no longer exist.

However, due to limited overseas interaction from being an island nation and a national character that doesn't desire rapid social change, Japanese people still basically perceive hierarchies in companies and other social positions as a type of class difference, and tend to act with strong consciousness of this.

Therefore, for example, even if your opinion is correct, if you strongly assert your opinion to a supervisor by jumping over these social positions, you risk being labeled as someone who takes actions that smear mud on their supervisor's face without considering hierarchical relationships.

Third is taking actions that ignore the depth of the relationship or intimacy with the other person. Japanese people strongly tend to separate insider people like family from outsider people, like shallow company colleagues or first-time meetings. In the past Japan, even within the inner circle of family, there was a high consciousness of face in the form of saving the face of the father as the family head. (Of course, even now, especially in rural Japanese households, there are regions and families where such patriarchal thinking centered on the father remains.)

However, in recent years, opportunities to be conscious of face have been decreasing within insider circles like family. On the other hand, toward outsiders, saving others' faces to avoid causing them shame still exists as a kind of Japanese manner.

For example, suppose a company colleague you've just met makes a proposal for a new project. In this case, under the condition that you haven't yet built an intimate relationship, even if there are questions or errors in that colleague's proposal, Japanese people rarely reject the proposal outright on the spot, often taking it back for consideration.

This can be said to reflect the Japanese characteristic of valuing saving face and not causing shame, even for people with whom relationships haven't been established and intimacy is low.

Thinking rationally, there's absolutely no need to save face for others with whom you have thin direct relationships and conflicting interests. Yet this way of thinking works perhaps because Japanese people have a strong consciousness of being the same Japanese people within the limited island nation.

The Impact of Valuing Face on Japanese Society

After graduating from university, I lived in New Zealand for a year. It was there that I first experienced the ease and enjoyment of living without having to be conscious of the Japanese-style face. (Of course, if I had lived overseas more deeply, I think there would be implicit rules specific to each country that differ from Japan's way of thinking about face.)

And by comparing with such overseas living for the first time, I became aware of and surprised by the frequency of face-conscious actions that arise when living in Japan as a Japanese person.

Japanese face-conscious behavior might appear roundabout and without merit to overseas people. However, I think this culture of saving face definitely moves Japanese society for better and worse.

To save face, you need to understand what the other person wants without using words. This is because asking in words creates the risk of damaging face and is too late.

For example, suppose you make a proposal for a new product to your supervisor. In that case, a presentation method or amount of information that the other person can't understand or accept could lead to embarrassing the supervisor and damaging their face.

Therefore, to save the supervisor's face, you need the ability to infer not just from words actually spoken by the supervisor, but from the supervisor's daily actions, things like "What kind of proposal method does the supervisor prefer?" and "In what format would this content be easiest for them to understand?"

These actions of caring for others without putting it into words ultimately lead to anticipating others' thoughts and actions, not causing shame, and smoothly advancing things without stress.

However, being too conscious of others' faces also creates disadvantages. For example, in the product proposal mentioned earlier, if you fall into thinking of proposing a product, the supervisor likes to save the supervisor's face, but saving face becomes negative. In this case, the real customers should be the consumers who use the product, but it becomes a product aligned with one supervisor's preferences, creating a high risk of producing something that greatly deviates from the essence.

In this way, in Japan, consciousness of saving others' faces and not causing shame by anticipating others' intentions and feelings in advance sometimes becomes too strong, leading to discussions and actions that proceed while deviating from the essence.

Japan Trying to Break Free from Excessive Face Obsession

However, as I currently work in the IT industry, I think Japan is now slowly moving in the direction of abandoning this culture of saving face.

One factor in this is the roundabout nature required to save face, and the delay in speed caused by this roundabout approach.

As mentioned earlier, saving face requires first anticipating the other person's will and hopes and showing consideration to avoid causing them shame. And this Japanese culture of anticipation centered on non-verbal communication can reduce conflicts from clashing words and the stress that arises from them by not using words, but it takes considerable time due to over-reading others' emotions.

Furthermore, with advancing globalization and increasing diversification of what each individual wants, honestly, what can be conveyed non-verbally is quite limited. Therefore, I feel that actions to save face to avoid causing shame to others will be increasingly eliminated from Japanese society going forward, as they are ambiguous and lead to misunderstandings.

But I feel it would be nice if the kindness behind Japanese people's importance of face, the ability to unravel others' emotions from faces, and the surrounding situations that haven't been put into words - could remain.

I believe this consideration for others' emotions is useful not only in daily life with friends and family, but also in business where new things must be created.

As Henry Ford's famous quote goes, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." New things aren't born just by listening to someone's words or opinions. It requires breaking your heart and reading the other person's heart from their facial expressions, actions, and slight changes in them.

I hope that somewhere, the positive aspects behind valuing face will remain - where Japanese people's obsession with reading faces connects to reading others' essential hearts.

Thank you for reading this.