Nevertheless makoto has its positive meanings in Japan, and since the Japanese so strongly stress the ethical r?le of this concept it is urgently necessary for Westerners to grasp the sense in which they use it. The basic Japanese sense of makoto is well illustrated in the Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin. ‘Sincerity’ in that story is a plus sign added on to giri. ‘Giri plus makoto’ is contrasted with ‘merely giri,’ and means ‘giri as an example for ages eternal.’ In the contemporary Japanese phrase, ‘makoto is what makes it stick.’ The ‘it’ in this phrase refers, according to context, to any precept of the Japanese code or any attitude stipulated in the Japanese Spirit.
Usage in the Japanese Relocation Camps during the war was exactly parallel to that in The Forty-Seven Ronin, and it shows clearly how far the logic is extended and how opposite to American usage the meaning can become. The stock accusations of the pro-Japan Issei (American immigrants born in Japan) against the pro-United States Nisei (second-generation immigrants) was that they lacked makoto. What the Issei were saying was that these Nisei did not have that quality of the soul which made the Japanese Spirit – as officially defined in Japan during the war – ’stick.’ The Issei did not mean at all that their children’s pro-Americanism was hypocritical. Far from it, for their accusations of insincerity were only the more convinced when the Nisei volunteered for the United States Army and it was quite apparent to anybody that their support of their adopted country was prompted by a genuine enthusiasm.
A basic meaning of ‘sincerity’ as the Japanese use it, is that it is the zeal to follow the ‘road’ mapped out by the Japanese code and the Japanese Spirit. Whatever special meanings makoto has in particular contexts can always be read off as praise of some agreed-on aspects of Japanese Spirit and well-accepted guide posts on the map of virtues. Once one has accepted the fact that ‘sincerity’ does not have the American meaning it is a most useful word to note in all Japanese texts. For it almost unfailingly identifies those positive virtues the Japanese actually stress. Makoto is constantly used to praise a person who is not self-seeking. This is a reflection of the great condemnation Japanese ethics pronounces on profit-making. Profit – when it is not a natural consequence of hierarchy – is judged to be the result of exploitation, and the go-between who has turned aside to make a profit out of his job becomes the hated money-lender. He is always declared to ‘lack sincerity.’ Makoto, too, is constantly used as a term of praise for the man who is free of passion, and this mirrors Japanese ideas of self-discipline. A Japanese worthy of being called sincere, too, never verges on the danger of insulting a person he does not mean to provoke to aggression, and this mirrors their dogma that a man is responsible for the marginal consequences of his acts as well as for the act itself. Finally, only one who is makoto can ‘lead his people,’ put his skills to effective use and be free of psychic conflict. These three meanings, and a host of others, state quite simply the homogeneity of Japanese ethics; they reflect the fact that a man can be effective and unconflicted in Japan only when he is carrying out the code.
Since these are the meanings of Japanese ‘sincerity,’ this virtue, in spite of the Rescript and of Count Okuma, does not simply Japanese ethics. It does not put a ‘foundation’ under their morality, nor give it a ‘soul.’ It is an exponent which, properly placed after any number, raises it to a higher power. A2 will square 9 or 159 or b or x, quite indifferently. And likewise makoto raises to a higher power any article in the Japanese code. It is not, as it were, a separate virtue but the enthusiasm of the zealot for his creed.
Whatever the Japanese have tried to do to their code, it remains atomistic, and the principle of virtue remains that of balancing one play, in itself good, against another play which is also in itself good. It is as if they had set up their ethics like a bridge game. The good player is the one who accepts the rules and plays within them. He distinguishes himself from the bad player because of the fact that he is disciplined in his calculations and can follow other players’ leads with full knowledge of what they mean under the rules of the game. He plays, as we say, according to Hoyle, and them are endless minutiae of which he must take account at every move. Contingencies that may come up are covered in the rules of the game and the score is agreed upon in advance. Good intentions, in the American sense, become irrelevancies.
In any language the contexts in which people speak of losing or gaining self-respect throw a flood of light on their view of life. In Japan ‘respecting yourself’ is always to show yourself the careful player. It does not mean, as it does in English usage, consciously conforming to a worthy standard of conduct – not truckling to another, not lying, not giving false testimony. In Japan self-respect (jicho) is literally ‘a self that is weighty,’ and its opposite is ‘a self that is light and floating.’ When a man says ‘You must respect yourself,’ it means, ‘You must be shrewd in estimating all the factors involved in the situation and do nothing that will arouse criticism or lessen your chances of success.’ ‘Respecting yourself’ often implies exactly the opposite behavior from that which it means in the United States. An employee says, ‘I must respect myself (jicho),’ and it means, not that he must stand on his rights, but that he must say nothing to his employers that will get him into trouble. ‘You must respect yourself’ had this same meaning, too, in political usage. It meant that a ‘person of weight’ could not respect himself if he indulged in anything so rash as ‘dangerous thoughts.’ It had no implication, as it would in the United States, that even if thoughts are dangerous a man’s self-respect requires that he think according to his own lights and his own conscience.
‘You must respect yourself’ is constantly on parents’ lips in admonishing their adolescent children, and it refers to observing proprieties and living up to other people’s expectation. A girl is thus admonished to sit without moving, her legs properly placed, and a boy to train himself and learn to watch for cues from others ‘because now is the time that will decide your future.’ When a parent says to them, ‘You did not behave as a self-respecting person should,’ it means that they are accused of an impropriety rather than of lack of courage to stand up for the right as they saw it.