Comment on a Colonialistic View of Moral and Integrity in Japanese Language and Society: A Reply to James F./ガメ・オベール
高校生時代からジェームズ・フィッツロイ氏による『ガメ・オベールの日本語練習帳』というブログをたまに読んでいた。日本のことを新鮮な視点から記しており興味深かった。
来月このブログが書籍化されるとのことで喜んでいたところ、氏のツイッターで「日本の若いひとびとに宛てた手紙を書きました」としてとして氏のブログの新たな投稿が紹介されていた。
だが読んでみたところかなり酷い内容だった。妻にも読ませたが、妻も同じく酷いと感じたので、二人してツイッターで氏に向けてコメントを書いた（ところ氏にアカウントをブロックされてしまった）。
以下（英語での説明の下）が私たちのコメントである。
追記：「Integrity」という語の訳が日本語に存在するかどうかはあまり関係ない。適切な訳が存在したとしてもそれが意味することは原語と異なるであろうからだ。例えば、日本の「愛」と、英語圏で用いられる「love」が同じものを指していながらも使用される状況などが異なるのは映画やドラマなどでもお判りのことだろう。それと同じく、英語の「Integrity」と日本語の同等の語が持つ意味合いは異なる。また、適切な訳があるとしても、単純な名詞ではない概念の訳には多くの場合複数の訳語が存在する。すると必然的に元の単語と訳は同じ意味の物にならない。
関連して以前FUZEで執筆させて戴いた記事もお読み戴くと面白いかもしれない：
｢他言語を学ばなくてもいい日｣は来ない。言語と機械翻訳を改めて考えてみる | 人間編
追記2：下の英語の文章とは内容は異なるが、日本語で書いた内容はこちらの投稿で読むことができる：
There is this blog written by James F. I started reading his blog time to time since I was a high schooler. He writes about Japan from an interesting perspective. I liked that.
Very recently I got to know that his blog will become a book, and I was excited.
But then he posted a new article on his blog titled "To my young Japanese friends whom I haven’t met yet,". Which I've read and thought outrageous. My wife also read it and thought outrageous. So we wrote a series of comments on his Twitter account (which sadly lead him to block my account).
Enjoy:
Thank you for your latest post. Me and my Finnish linguist wife had a very interesting discussion.
We wholeheartedly disagree on the Japanese not surviving. That's nothing to do with the lack of the word integrity. (By the way, Finnish also does not have the word: you are not saying that all languages without that one word are going to cease to exist? Quite English centered world view.)
In my opinion, lack of integrity is not a problem. Lack of integrity makes the language-culture more adaptive to the situation. At the same time, I agree that the personal integrity can be easily melt into the context of the situation.
Moral is not integrity. Japan has moral. Your understanding of moral is not the one and only. Japan has its moral and you saw people acting according to it.
Probably Japan sees many other language speakers in Japan more selfish because a strong personal integrity is considered lacking moral in Japanese society. In that sense, Japanese language-culture has stronger integrity in that.
I take it so you've seen this pregnant woman not getting a seat on trains in Japan many times and on the other hand rarely in England or USA. But are you certain that in English speaking countries people are giving the seat out of some High Moral of God, or could it be actually very similar human mind working as in Japan? In Japan, a rush hour train full of salarymen and one pregnant women, there is no social pressure to give the seat: the sitting men are tired and not judging each other of not letting the seat. Maybe they would if their mom was sitting next to them, but not in this situation. But maybe in England there are more certainly people who will say something to those who are not letting the seat. And more people who want to impress someone by doing a good deed. So yes, giving a seat to a pregnant woman is not considered a good deed enough in Japan and Japan could do better and try to educate the masses to judge each other of not letting the seat to the pregnant woman, but you cannot judge a whole society to be moral-less because of that.
The concept you call "common decency" is not only achieved by integrity nor moral, it can be reached by hypocrisy.
I think you're view of point in this text is extremely imperialistic: you are basically saying that only the moral of a "white Christian man" is Moral and others don't have it because they don't have the word that you use to describe morality.
Source: To my young Japanese friends whom I haven’t met yet,
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