Essay The shoganai spirit By Francois Du Bois	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
「しょうがない」の精神 例えば今、世界を覆う不景気に対して、フランス人ならまず、責任者に抗議する。 一方日本人は誰かに抗議するでもなく、「しょうがない」の一言で済ませてしまう。 日本人によくあるこの傾向、何に原因があるのだろうか？

As everywhere in the world, Japan is deeply affected by the economic recession, but there are some interesting differences in the way people react to the crisis.

One example can be found by observing French and Japanese people. I say Japanese and French, but I only speak for the people I know: I would not put people from Hokkaido in the same basket as people from Okinawa, they are too different; the same holds for French people from Paris to Marseille.

The first reaction of the French, when faced with a problem or a bad situation like today's economic crisis, is to protest, and blame (strongly and loudly) the people in charge, and then, demand they fix the problem.

The Japanese, on the contrary, do not consider protest as a knee-jerk reaction. Of course they have the same complaints about the financial situation as the French, but there is a tendency to gloss over the problem with the famous expression shoganai.

To be honest, I don't always support the French way of behaving, but the shoganai spirit is not helping to solve problems either.

I have always wondered where this shoganai spirit comes from, but in my experience here, I have realized that there are no opportunties to learn how to debate in Japan.

Learning how to debate helps us analyze and form objective opinions, because we have to convince the other party that what we are arguing is right. Debating is the way to learn opinions from people with different points of view, which can lead us to new solutions for any given situation.

But when I see Japanese people trying to debate, they mix their feelings up with their opinions, and end up using shoganai to bypass the argument and avoid hurt feelings.

This habit has become an obstacle to constructive discussions: People use it as a magic spell to close the discussion as if greater forces somehow decided the situation.

But escaping from any responsibility does not provide any solution.

Words are a mirror into the personality, and shoganai is no exception. How about banning shoganai from your conversations? I bet this will create interesting changes in the way you think and interact with others.

Shukan ST: April 24, 2009

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