Due to the nature of this book I don’t believe spoiler alerts are necessary, but still make sure to write where you are when you discuss things since you want to give context for people to know what you’re talking about and where to look for it.
I have read the 2 prefaces and the part about 「内と外」. I had to look up a couple of things in the “もっと深く” section, but overall very accessible, imo. I enjoy the writing so far.
I think most people are 内弁慶. and I am sure we have all met 外面がいい people…
Not much new for me in this part - apart from the actual language. I don’t think I have come across よそ before… or at least, I didn’t actively notice.
That Japanese have a very strong us vs. them menality is nothing new, imo. I think it exists everywhere but at least here, it feels less… set in stone… I have never lived in Japan, though, so my knowledge is solely based on having to study (cross-)cultural theories, etc.
Not much new information apart from some new vocab, but it’s good to check my understanding of the concept.
I always found it fascinating how 内 and 外 changes depending on who you are talking to, and how the language used changes with it. Like for example if you are talking to your boss directly you might address them as 田中さん, but if you’re talking to someone from a different company suddenly it’s just 田中.
But knowledge about European languages is a bit limited, I think. It looks that the author mainly thinks about English. E.g. in German their does well exist a difference on the language level between how people talk with people of the in-group, using “du“, and with others, using “Sie“. Though nobody (at least currently) makes a philosophy from it.
For some reason I expected this to be harder.
The phrase with Benkei is gonna hopefully be my take from this week lol it’s a fun one in terms of how it’s pictured in my head
I’m not reading this yet, bc I’m focused on マリみて - but this phrase gets constant use there (to describe particular characters), and it was my first time seeing it. Fun coincidence
Just finished the 世間 section. I thought the part about how 人間 gained the meaning 人 was really interesting. It’s not anything I had ever thought to question, and now it seems funny that I never did. I guess it’s just such and early word that you learn that you’re just fine learning words by rote at that point
I feel like there may be some spicy takes here so I’m putting it in a drop-down. I don’t think there’s anything that people can’t discuss here, but since we’re talking about society, better safe than sorry.
I’m also speaking as an American here, and sometimes specially from California/the west coast. Would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts about either America or your own home country.
thoughts
For しつけ, I think my biggest takeaway here is, yeah, we do that too.
Maybe to a lesser degree/there’s less of a social stigma if you break the rules. And you’re more allowed to bend or even break the rules the richer (or other privileged group you belong to) you are. But I feel like within your own socioeconomic class these rules all apply. Maybe because there are a lot more classes in more heterogeneous societies it looks different as a whole. But there’s really not much here that I don’t think applies.
The only real outlier I saw was that even as an adult your conduct reflects badly on your family. I think that there’s probably some shame that parents would have with their adult children, but as long as society deemed you a “good parent” that conduct is more of a reflection of the individual and not the parent.
Speaking specifically from growing up in California, I think that we’re kinda opposed to the idea of けじめ in a number of circumstances. I feel like if hierarchy is bad (and that’s kinda the thesis of the community I’m from) it requires a lot of けじめ to go away. I get the impression that a lot of other places in the US don’t feel that way for example, when I hear people calling their dad “sir” it makes my skin crawl. I can’t decide if it’s that we do or don’t have as strong of distinctions, or if it’s that the 内/外 divide is fuzzier. Anyway けじめ is the first keyword in the book so far where I was like “oh yeah, we definitely don’t do that”.
I thought the section about 躾 and 国字 was my favorite part of this week. I could read an entire book that talked about each of the 国字 (although you could probably collapse the 魚偏 into one group…). Or maybe I want to read a book that’s just the もっと深くparts of this book.
There may exist some remains though, even in California, I suppose, like as a ten year old you probably didn’t address the father of your friend by his forename, but as Mr XY, the same is probably valid with how you addressed your teachers, like you didn’t address them the same as your classmates.
After some thought I realized that I should have mentioned that some (a lot?) of my teachers and other carers were some honest to god hippies. So it’s entirely possible that calling teachers by their first names isn’t as prevalent in early grades anymore. I don’t have kids, don’t live there anymore, and my friends with kids aren’t in the same area as we were growing up so I don’t have a great source to ask if this is still true.
Calling parents of friends by Mr/Ms last name still feels icky to me, and I imagine that’s still true where I grew up. Like if someone’s kid called me that I would hate it (I don’t even correct nieces and nephews to call me aunt, but some of their parents do).
I also don’t think I called anyone from my grandparents’ generation by their first names. But I also had so very little contact with people that age. I just remember calling my grandma’s friends Mrs Lastname. So that’s the best けじめ I can muster
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and I am sure we have all met 外面がいい people… 
