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Kurumaza: Why Sitting in a Circle Is the Japanese Way
From: Columbia University
| By:
Makoto Ooka |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Since the first Portuguese  traders and Jesuit missionaries arrived on Japan's shores in 1542, the rich culture of Japan has intrigued Westerners in part because it resists foreign inquiry. This exclusionist tendency is evident not only in Japan's history of international relations but also in the interpersonal relations among Japanese people today. In Japan, it is the group--of whatever shape or purpose--that defines one's identity. Kurumaza, literally, "wheel seating," or sitting in a circle, is a metaphor for the inward-facing group mentality of Japan and the Japanese in general. In this talk, Makoto Ooka (above), Japan's most distinguished and popular poet and critic and Visiting Fellow at the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture in the spring of 2000, examines how the kurumaza mentality pervades Japanese culture. |
 ore than 20 years ago, I wrote a magazine article entitled "Kurumaza o kumu Nihonjin no bukimisa" (The Threatening Pose of Japanese Sitting in a Circle), based on an experience I had on a transatlantic plane flight. I was returning from Paris to New York on an American airline, sitting in the back of a jumbo jet filled mostly with European and American passengers. |
We had just begun flying over the Atlantic when my attention was caught by a stream of loud talk and laughter coming from a few rows ahead of me. What made my ears prick up was the fact that I was hearing people speak my own language in this unexpected setting. |
Lifting my eyes from my book, I looked forward and saw a group of seven or eight Japanese, mostly men, who were loudly enjoying a game of cards. They were casually dressed and looked like seasoned travelers; I guessed that they must be working for a fashion magazine or involved in the television industry. |
In age they appeared to range from their twenties to their forties. They occupied two rows of four seats each in the center section, and to my surprise the people in the front row had folded the backs of their seats forward and were sitting on them in a cramped arrangement facing the people in the back row as they played their card game. |
It had never occurred to me that the seats could be folded forward, and my first reaction was to marvel at this phenomenon. But what really struck me was the boisterous way my compatriots were disporting themselves while most of the people around them were settled quietly in their seats. |
It seemed strange to me that the flight attendants made no attempt to restrain the group, but then again, I thought, perhaps they are used to this sort of thing. Eventually, the members of the jolly band dropped off to sleep and the impromptu airborne party came to an end. |
I was quite embarrassed to have witnessed this scene of Japanese using even the narrow confines of an airplane to form an inward-looking circle that carried on oblivious to the rest of the passengers. How, I wondered, did the people seated nearby feel about the noisy Japanese party? |
Some of them may have thought nothing of it; after all, similarly exuberant groups of Americans may be seen on domestic flights in the United States. However, there were others who looked on with distaste and possibly even trepidation. |
As I thought about this group and the impression they made as they sat enjoying themselves in their tight little circle, it struck me that "sitting in a circle" was an image that could serve as a metaphor for Japan, and the Japanese in general. |
An inward-facing society
In Japanese, sitting in a circle is called kurumaza, literally, "wheel seating." A kurumaza formation can put others off, since all they see of the people are their backs, which seem to be saying, "The rest of you are outsiders." When the kurumaza is formed on the ground outdoors, a stranger standing on the outside of the circle can also see the faces of those on the far side. But the attention of those faces is riveted on the others in the circle. |
The stranger can be standing as little as a meter away from the ring, and still the group will pay virtually no attention. This obliviousness to others can easily be observed, for example, in the groups of revelers that fill Ueno Park for flower-viewing parties under the trees during the cherry blossom season. |
The pastime of karaoke--singing to a recorded instrumental accompaniment--represents a new form of kurumaza. It must have been sometime in the latter half of the 1970s that somebody got the bright idea of putting karaoke equipment in a bar, and in no time it caught on all over Japan. The quiet bars I had frequented succumbed to the fad and were filled with the tone of patrons belting out their favorite tunes. |
It is not that I consider karaoke a bad thing. I have some close friends who enjoy it, and when I am out with them I may even sing a song or two myself. But for a person like me, whose repertory is limited to songs that were popular 20 years ago, the sincere karaoke enthusiasts are like a kurumaza group. Unable to join in the circle, I cannot avoid feeling like an outsider and a poor sport, even when the people I am with have no intention of excluding me. |
Although the virtuoso performers at the karaoke bars appear at first glance to be enjoying themselves tremendously, it seems to me that they are as deadly earnest as participants in a major contest. Moreover, they never forget the pecking order of the workplace, which determines who sings when and so forth. I can imagine the exhausted look of their faces when they get home. Within Japan's kurumaza social structure, after-hours singing inevitably becomes part of the job. The same applies to the business golf that is the rage all over Japan. |
Kurumaza and its discontents
The kurumaza group looks happy and harmonious, but it can take on a more sinister aspect depending on one's viewpoint. At the risk of being called perverse, one might suggest that the circle is a formation in which the members constantly keep watch over one another to make sure there are no defectors or dropouts. |
Japan's dramatic emergence as an economic superpower was made possible by the diligence, integrity, loyalty, dedication to self-improvement, and other lofty qualities of the Japanese people--all of which we should be proud of. But we also need to realize that the same qualities can lead to exclusionism. This is bound to happen in the future as Japanese companies try to accommodate increasing numbers of foreigners, who are likely to march to the beat of a different drummer. |
The same people who are so generous and mutually supportive within the circle are liable to turn into frightfully difficult, arrogant, cruel and intolerant individuals when dealing with outsiders. What particularly scares and alarms me is that I realize that I share the same tendencies. |
There is no reason to believe that the Japanese tendency toward fanatic xenophobia is a thing of the past. A society that operates on the basic principle of strengthening solidarity through kurumaza is a breeding ground for such fanaticism. The only reason we have not seen a renewed outbreak so far is a near-universal attitude best summed up in the saying "Rich people don't fight." But God only knows how the situation may change in the near future. |
History of <i>kurumaza</i>
The word kurumaza has been part of the Japanese language for several centuries. The well-known Nippo jisho (Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary) published by the Jesuits in Nagasaki in 1603 contains the entry "curumazani" (the -ni at the end means "in"); the phrase "curumazani nauoru" is glossed as "all the people sit down in a circle." |
Also, the sample phrase given for the entry "gururito" (an adverb meaning "around") is "gururito curumazani nauoru," which is translated as "to change seats so as to make a human circle or to sit down in that form." |
Although I have no concrete evidence for this, I suspect that the word kurumaza may have become popular during the internecine warfare of Japan's medieval days. The word conjures up the image of a circle of men with tense looks on their faces--a group of warriors about to go into battle, or some wealthy merchants secretly discussing how to protect their interests, or village leaders gathered in council to respond to the exorbitant demands placed on them by some warlord. |
Women would not have been part of these serious kurumaza. But once the emergency situation was settled, gatherings of this sort would have doubtless turned into festive occasions of drinking, singing and dancing. At these times, women probably added color to the circle and may even have become its main attraction. And when in due course the country entered a period of extended peace, gatherings of the latter type came to the fore. |
Fostering group unity
In any case, a circular formation in which everyone sits facing the center is the most effective arrangement for unifying the group psyche, securing pledges of solidarity and loyalty and promoting exclusionist feelings toward opponents. |
The circular formation can probably be found to a greater or lesser extent among all people who are accustomed to sitting on the ground or the floor. But not every language has a term corresponding to kurumaza, which evokes such a marvelous visual image. |
The word kurumaza is written using the Chinese characters for wheel (or wheeled vehicle) and seat. Kuruma means "wheel" and za means "seat." But the term has never existed in Chinese. I suspect that the lack of such a term in China is related to the fact that since ancient times the Chinese have sat on chairs and worn shoes indoors. |
People sitting on chairs cannot form a kurumaza, which requires sitting cross-legged on the floor or on the ground. This manner of sitting is a very effective way of heightening the sense of unity of the group, since all the members have their haunches in contact with the same Mother Earth. The sensation is very unlike that of sitting on separate chairs, which heightens the awareness of individual differences. |
The lifestyle that evolved in the West, like that of China, was unconducive to the emergence of a term like kurumaza. In English, for example, the closest one can come is something mundane like "to sit in a circle" or "to sit in a ring," which has none of the special feeling conveyed by the Japanese term. |
The Japanese face
Though my ignorance of finance and economics prevents me from making any but the simplest statements about such topics, I would venture that the frequent tension between the United States and Japan ultimately has its roots in the fundamental gap between kurumaza and non-kurumaza societies. This difference could take generations to overcome, and I fear that it might result in another serious collision between the two countries. |
In the early 1990s, the Japanese were prowling around the United States (and the rest of the world) driving prices up by buying land, buildings and works of art; at the same time, we were doing our best to keep outsiders from penetrating our own real estate and other markets. From the perspective of people who embrace the principles of free trade and open markets, this behavior must be incomprehensible. |
We may not have ill intentions, but by stubbornly refusing to show anything but our backs to those on the outside, while maintaining abnormally high levels of energy within our own closed circle, we are bound to put others off. And because our gaze is directed inward, we remain largely unaware of the impression we are creating on the people who are observing us from the exterior. |
The face of a people is best revealed not in a country's economic or military power but in the strengths underlying its cultural history. No special research is needed to understand this. If you wander around in a foreign country, you are struck by the distinctive forms of dignity and courtesy manifested in people's facial expressions and actions, as well as by their manner of speaking and listening. These impart a clear sense of the individuality of the culture that has grown on that soil over the centuries. The people before you seem the very personification of their country's cultural heritage. |
Foreigners visiting Japan could make the same observation. To the perceptive visitor, the impressions of a moment speak of centuries of history. The face of the Japanese nation is to be seen at every instant on the millions of individual faces moving around Japan's cities and countryside, smiling or putting on airs. |
Here is a visage somewhat different, more complex and varied, but in general far more friendly than the one that is usually seen abroad. |
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