Be a good listener: sit quietly and wait your turn to talk.
Right?
Not in Japan!
Here it's actually rude not to interrupt someone.
And here's why.
Welcome to my old dōjō.
I practiced a martial art called kendō, the "sword path".
While we drilled our way through footwork and cuts of the sword over and over, my highest-ranked
sensei watched with intent eyes and a jolly smile.
But he wouldn't wait to grade us on our skills.
Feedback was constant.
Always talking, always, nnn, sōōō sō sō sō.
Every step, every move of the hand, right or wrong.
There was almost a rhythm to it.
A rhythm with a constant flow of interjections.
Looking back, I think what was going on here was a kind of aizuchi.
Consider a conversation in English.
The person who's talking shares a thought, and you listen quietly until they finish.
Hah, no actually, that may be polite for some, but for most of us there's back and forth,
with room for reactions, transitions and taking turns.
That's important.
No cuts!
Wait your turn.
Now a conversation in Japanese.
Notice all the interaction by the "listener".
The speaker barely gets out the topic before they're cut off!
Then come uh huhs and yesses and reallies scattered throughout.
Clearly, Japan has a different opinion on what being a "good listener" means.
To see why, think back to kendō.
Not kendō with my sensei, but 550 years ago, when a struggle for Shogunate succession
broke out into the intense Ōnin no Ran.
Warriors trained to take up the sword, and ironworkers to produce them.
As swordsmith and apprentice hammered together back and forth, they coined a new term: ai-dzuchi,
"mutual mallet".
Later, this compound became a metaphor for Japan's culturally valued take on being a
"good listener".
Today "chiming in" is still aizuchi o utsu, to strike mutual mallets.
This involves talking back with a bunch of "tokens", little words or phrases.
Your choice of tokens varies, but most get reused frequently.
And not only when it's your turn.
More often than not, and for some by definition, you say these tokens while the speaker is
still talking.
It's happening at the same time, "overlapping" the speaker's speech.
But aizuchi is not merely a list of memorized keywords.
Japanese listeners pay attention, even repeating or asking for more: So, last month - last
month yes? - I was visiting family - family, really?
Master this, because bad aizuchi can get you labeled "dorai", cold, shallow.
I first learned about ironworkers and mutual mallets from this masters thesis.
The same anthropologist later did a study on conversations between US and Japanese businesspeople.
She acknowledges the Japanese stereotype that amerikajin are dorai but then introduces someone
who was never called cold: Gary.
Here is Gary helping a coworker with an English lesson.
What makes him so warm?
Overlapping the coworker and constantly using feedback tokens.
Don't misinterpret them though.
Go look up "hai".
What does it mean?
"Yes"!
Not in the world of aizuchi.
Another US businessperson, let's say not-Gary, is giving a Japanese subordinate advice on
running an ad campaign.
Despite repeating "hai", the employee does not take any of not-Gary's advice.
Uh, what?
Well, there were hints of disagreement.
Also, so important, these tokens tell you, "I follow, go on."
As these researchers put it, interrupting aizuchi mean "I listen" but "never
agreement or empathy".
Now, they use the word "backchannel", a term coined in 1970 for "short messages" a listener
gives back to a speaker.
English also has overlapping backchannels.
Japanese just does it more.
Like, three times more.
And, curiously, Mandarin does it a lot less.
Less than Korean, where the metaphor is instead beating the mutual drum.
English listeners tend to backchannel when it's time to take turns, but, like Japanese,
Korean listeners were heard backchanneling between turns.
Speakers actually cued listeners to backchannel by raising pitch and drawing
out sounds.
So one reason it's impolite not to interrupt in Japanese may come down to this simple mechanism:
pitch.
Analyzing a bunch of "messy" conversations, this paper found that speakers were lowering
their pitch 110ms before backchannels.
Low - or maybe high - pitch change was a solid predictor, better than the meaning of the
utterance, better even than whether speakers have finished their thought.
So active listeners, but also active speakers inviting reactions and building conversations
together.
Dynamic!
Japanese speakers even use "loops": a back-back-channel to respond to your backchannel signals that
the floor is now open for your turn.
Hah.
Speakers prompting listeners prompting speakers... this is what reminded me of the rhythms and
interruptions of my training.
My sensei did give opinions: "almost ok" when you did well, "zaawan" when you glimpsed hard-to-repeat
perfection.
But often I think the "feedback" was aizuchi that really meant "keep going".
And with you here supporting me, that's exactly what I plan to do.
Animating linguistic tales takes a while, but my hands are already
busy with the next one.
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