by Anna Kunnecke
At the heart of communicating in Japanese lies a paradox. It's 'less is more' taken to almost unimaginable extremes, where the purest form of communication is believed to be nearly wordless. True connection, see, comes not from talking about one's feelings or opinions, but from knowing what the other is thinking and wanting without anything ever being vocalized. It's quite a romantic notion, but also one that scuttled any chance I ever had at having a deep relationship with a Japanese significant other; at the crucial moment, when a soulful silence was called for, I needed to prattle--and I needed the prattle to be reciprocated. In other words, I kept spoiling the goddamn mood. (I've asked my friends who are married to Japanese how they manage, and they say cryptic things, like 'Well how much do you need to discuss with your spouse anyway?' or, 'Sometimes I think it's easier because we communicate more simply.' As someone who gets gleefully tangled in semantic knots on a daily basis, to my great joy and also to my chagrin, I can only regard this feat of silent communion with wonder.)
One aspect of the Japanese language I understand down to my very bones, though, is the concept of bimyou. Though it's become ubiquitous and slang-y in the last few years, simply meaning 'weird' or 'shady' or even 'whatever, dude,' it's actually a formidable concept. It doesn't just acknowledge shades of gray, it rolls around and frolics in them. Bimyou is often translated into English as subtle or delicate, but that misses the very bimyou-ness of bimyou. It's a word that describes not just a slight difference between two things, but something more ephemeral, a quality that is neither one thing nor the other, neither here nor there. In a language where even straightforward facts must be wrapped in gauzy disclaimers and ribbons of hazy formalities, a word as beautifully quicksilver as bimyou has become a safe way to hedge any conversational bet. It's the silver bullet that combines 'it's hard to say' with 'I can't get into that right now' and 'If I told you I'd have to kill you' with a nice salty dash of 'I have no flaming idea' and 'dude, that's totally skanky.' You have to figure out which meaning is meant according to context.
But this is where this very lovely versatility is its own downfall. I am going to tell you a deep, dark secret about Japanese culture: I have come out of many meetings marveling at the subtlety of the discussion, asked my Japanese colleagues to deconstruct the nuances of what just happened, and after some hemming and hawing, had them confess that they really have no idea either. Boom! That explains a lot. One of the great curtains of Japanese mystery has just been drawn aside, and it turns out that half the time even Japanese people don't know what the hell the subtext is! But rather than trudging in and clearing up that fuzziness, the Japanese way is to ride along, surf the tide, and see where you end up. It's not wrong, but boy howdy is it different than the American way of communicating. It is, in a word, totally bimyou.
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