I just read this post from Trump blog about “Matsui’s Apology“. First of all, you may ask about the Trump blog as Donload Rrump’s blog? Yes, it’s Donald Trump, the big boss in “The Apprentices“. He has a blog too, but I am not sure whether it’s written by him though.
Anyway, in his article he tired to quote the story of “Matsui’s apology” to address a point that loyalty and apologies are important to team works or to organisations. I agree with that, but he might not quite understand the Japanese style of apology. One typical example here is the expression “Sumimasen (すみません)” in Japanese can both mean “Thank you” and “Sorry”. Say if you are walking in the street and crash on someone accidentally, “Sumimasen” can be used as “Sorry”. But if someone you barely know give you a present or offering you something, when you accept it you can use “Sumimasen” as “Thank you”, which imply “I am sorry to let you buy me a present”.
My housemate Arata was the president of AJS last year. It’s interesting when I received newsletter from her, seven out of ten I could see “I am sorry to…” at the begging, for example “I am sorry to fill out your inbox again” or “I am sorry to inform you within such a short time”. Although she had been living in England for more than 7 years, I can still tell she is very Japanese from this aspect.
I heard a story before about this Japanese style apology as well. A Japanese tourist drove a car in America and had a accident. When he came out to the car the first thing he said was “Oh, I am so sorry”. Unfortunally that was in America, so once you apology then must be your fault. So of course that Japanese guy suffered a loss by apologying first, even though it was the American guy’s car crashed into his.
When I was in Japan I experienced this kind of polite apologies a lot, especially in shops or any services industries. Maybe Donload Trump is making a good point there, but the example he used is not persuaded, because Japanese perceive the word “sorry” differently to westerners do in a lot of aspects.