Take a Bow

President Obama wrapped up his trip to Asia this past week and raised eyebrows back home by lowering his head dramatically while bowing to the Emperor of Japan.

As with all things in Japanese society, the act of bowing (ojigi) is ruled by the all pervasive yet unstated rules of joshiki, the societal sense of proper behavior in any situation that Japanese possess. The inscrutability of this code for most foreigners leads to gaffes large and small when dealing with people in Japan.
In bowing for instance, the angle, duration and method of the bow are based on a variety of factors related to the relative position of the participants in the social hierarchy. The Emperor being at the head of this pyramid, is subject to and associated with a mind numbing array of protocols too complex for most human beings to grasp. Foreigners are usually not expected to conform to these rules of etiquette though with some notable exceptions.

One such case occurred in 1862 in the Namamugi Jiken or Richardson Affair, when British sightseers crossed paths with the party of the Regent of the Satsuma Han on the Tokaido Highway. Rather than dismount and bow as was expected of them, the Englishman deliberately stayed upright incurring the fatal wrath of Satsuma retainers who killed the Englishmen for their disrespectful behavior.
The resultant bombardment of Satsuma’s capital city Kagoshima by British warships was a factor in forward thinking Samurai realizing that modern military power was necessary for Japan to maintain its independence from Western powers.
In contrast to these incidents, the importance of symbology in Japanese culture was cleverly realized by another American leader in his interactions with the Emperor of his time.

This picture was taken at the first meeting General Douglas MacArthur in his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and Emperor Hirohito after the war. General MacArthur insisted that the meeting be held at his residence in the Dai Ichi Kangyo building, forcing the Emperor into the unprecedented position of visiting another party and obviating the layers of protocol in the Imperial palace.
At the onset of the meeting, a photographer was brought in to take this picture which was then sent to all newspapers in the country to make the obvious point of the relative power of the participants and their respective countries.