Give Up Culture in Japan
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hey guys, so some of you guys would be aware of the ganbare thing, ganbare, ganbarimasu,
00:09ganbatte kudasai.
00:11So we actually talked about it in previous videos, over the years it was a fairly big
00:18part of Japanese culture.
00:20So ganbare means like try hard or do your best, there's not really anything in English
00:27that has the same power as ganbare did, don't know if it still does, but it was always a
00:33very powerful thing in Japanese culture and kids were told from when they were, you know,
00:38one or two years old, ganbare, ganbare, from when they were little, you know, and it has
00:43a lot of power and the families would tell their kids, ganbare, and the teachers, ganbare,
00:49and their friends, friends would say to kids, to their friends, ganbare, and it was just
00:53a big part of Japanese culture, any time there was something difficult or some sort
00:59of challenging thing that we had to do, anybody had to do, the ganbare thing was there, and
01:04people would say, ganbaremasu, meaning that they were going to try their best, and other
01:08people would say, ganbatte kudasai, you know, do your best, and it's really powerful, it
01:13was really powerful in Japanese culture and Japanese thinking, and way more powerful than
01:18anything that we've got in English, I think.
01:21I very rarely speak Japanese to my kids, but one of the few words I use to my kids is ganbare,
01:28because it has much more power in Japanese than any English equivalent.
01:32So that's always been the case, and we do know some Japanese adults who ganbare, who,
01:38you know, try hard and try their best and go hard, and we know some kids who do as well.
01:44However, just in the last 20 years, it seems that we hear ganbare much less, and we've
01:54started to hear two things, two things, one is give up, now Japanese people, it's a loan
02:00word right, they've pinched it from English, and there's no V in Japanese, so they don't
02:05say give up, they say give up, right, and muri, which means impossible, and we're hearing
02:16it more and more, and I'll give you, I'll try not to give you too many examples, but
02:21it's hard not to.
02:22The first one that comes to mind is, I go to two different dojo, Aikido dojo, and Saturday
02:28dojo has an adults class and a kids class at the same time, separate, so at one end
02:34of the dojo there's a kids class and at the other end of the dojo there's an adults class,
02:38and that school has a group line, so it's sort of like, a line is sort of like Facebook
02:45or something similar to that, and you can have a group, so that if someone sends a message
02:51to the group, everybody sees it, right.
02:54So the result of that is, every Saturday morning, it starts early Saturday morning, messages
03:01start to come up, oh sorry, can't come to lesson today, right, and it'll be, often from
03:10mothers for their kids saying, he can't come, he can't come today because he's had a big
03:16week and today he will take a rest, right, and I mean, this lesson is an hour and a half,
03:23the adults one is fairly hardcore, but the kids one is a pretty gentle pace, you know,
03:28it's not really hard, but every Saturday you'll get a bunch of these, oh he's had a big week
03:33so he can't come today, or this week was test week for high school students, junior high
03:39school students, and so oh it's test week this weekend so I can't come today, and there's
03:45no way those kids are sitting at home studying, you know, 48 hours over the weekend, right,
03:50they'll be playing games and watching TV in amongst studying, so an hour and a half in
03:54the dojo will do them the world of good, but oh he can't come because he's got test week
03:58this week so he can't come, and the adults too, the adults too, oh I've had a big week
04:02and my body is tired so I can't come, you know, really weak excuses, I mean occasionally
04:08you get one that seems like it might be legit, you also get a lot, because it's Japan, you
04:13get a lot of the ones that you don't know if they're true or not, oh I have a fever
04:17so I can't come, that's a classic excuse in Japan because it's an accepted thing that,
04:23you know, if people have got a temperature over 37, for example, kids can't go to school
04:28if they've got a temperature over 37, all sorts of different organisations and groups
04:32have rules about people with temperatures, if they have a fever over 37 or 37 and a half
04:37or whatever they're not allowed to go, and so it's sort of like a get out of jail free
04:41card here, you can pretty much get out of anything if you say you've got a fever, even
04:46a cold, even a cold they'll say oh I can't come to Aikido because I've got a cold, but
04:51every Saturday morning you get all these excuses come in, and then when we do get in the dojo
04:56you get these kids in there that just give up, there's something that they can't do or
05:02that they're not good at, and when it comes time to do that they'll just go and stand
05:06against the wall or they'll go and sit down and watch, instead of doing it, you know,
05:11and the teachers, I mean usually karate dojo and judo dojo are pretty strict and the teachers
05:17will really hammer the kids, you know, and they won't let them cop out like that, but
05:21in the Aikido dojo, you know, they just sort of let them sit off to this, oh come on, come
05:25and do it with us, oh no, and they sit off to the side, you know, and it's just this,
05:31if it's hard, give up, and they'll say give up, oh give up, give up, give up, give up,
05:37give up, or they'll say muri, and muri means impossible, and we hear that all the time,
05:42oh muri, muri, muri, it's not, and it's not impossible, it's the kid doesn't want to do
05:47that thing or can't do that thing, okay, these are just flowing now, I've got all these examples
05:53flowing now, I almost said excuses because most of them are, there's another one, my
05:59English friend, my friend from England has an English school, and when we get together
06:06he just unloads all these stories on me about all these frustrating situations that he has,
06:10and this is one of his pet bears at the moment, is that if kids don't want to do something,
06:15if they don't want to do the English lesson anymore, they just stop, and the parents will
06:20just say, oh, he doesn't want to do the English lesson anymore, instead of the parents saying,
06:24come on, it's good for you, you know, keep doing it, or instead of the Aikido teacher saying,
06:28come on, come on, do the practice, do it, they just sort of go, okay, and they let them,
06:32and it makes you wonder, it makes you wonder why, it's possible because the gambate thing
06:39was over the top, we might have even made a video, I don't know, 13 years ago, talking about
06:46the gambate thing sometimes being over the top, so like mental health care, and awareness
06:52of mental health, and awareness of counseling, and just general well-being, mental well-being
06:57in Japan is still like 50, 60 years behind the rest of the world, right, so they've really
07:03got no idea, and you know, as recently as maybe 12, 13 years ago, I think I made a video
07:09that said the gambate thing can be over the top, I mean, you know, we know that there's
07:16actually someone in our extended family in Japan who suicided, and we suspect that what's
07:22happened there is when you are troubled, or depressed, or stressed, or something in Japan,
07:27people would just say gambate, gambate, gambate, gambate, and people would sort of reach the
07:32limit of their gambate, and have nothing left, and they'd kill themselves, so about 30,000
07:39people still, still about 30,000 people a year kill themselves in Japan, I made a video
07:46about it, it's more complicated than just the gambate thing, in Japanese culture, in
07:51Japanese history, killing yourself was an honorable sort of option, and so it's still
07:58considered to be an option in Japan, right, and so when people are overwhelmed, often
08:02they will, and it makes me wonder if one of the reasons that we're getting this give up
08:12culture at the moment is whether it's the fear of that, and what in particular, in our extended
08:19family, there's actually a boy that just started junior high school, and he was doing okay at
08:24elementary school, he used to go to elementary school every day, and he was just a normal
08:27student, he's gone into junior high school, and just can't deal with it, and he tends to go about
08:33half, about half the time, so he'll average about two and a half days out of the week, he'll go to
08:39school, and he'll go to school, he'll come home early, because he can't cope with it, he's getting
08:42headaches, and he's all stressed out, and there's kids there bullying him, which is the topic of
08:47another video, but, but what we heard about this one was, his parents attitude is, ah, well we'll
08:57just let him, we won't push him, we'll just let him, if he needs to come home, he can just come home, or if
09:02he doesn't want to go in the morning, he gets up in the morning, or he doesn't get up, he stays in bed,
09:05and says he doesn't want to go to school, and they just let him stay home, and apparently, the school
09:10counsellor, the counsellor at school, whatever qualifications that person has, said that, that, that
09:18was that person's advice, was I'll just let him, if he doesn't want to go, just let him stay home, and
09:22later it'll be okay, right, and then they went to some doctor, and you never know, when they talk
09:28about a sensei here, a sensei could be a really well qualified doctor, or it could be any quack,
09:33it just doesn't, I don't know, but they always listen to these people, like they've got the
09:38answer to everything, right, and, and apparently the sensei said the same thing, just, oh, I'll just
09:43let him, and, and you get, just get this feeling, that nobody wants to push this kid, like the parents
09:49don't want to push him, they're scared to push him, and the, the, the teacher at school's scared to
09:53push him, and this sensei, this doctor, whoever this doctor is, is scared to push him, and it's
10:01probably partly, it makes me wonder, if it's partly because of this fear of this suicide thing, because
10:06suicide amongst high school students is still high, and it is an issue, and, and whether a lot of these
10:13people, these young parents, and young doctors, and so on, they've come from a background where they
10:18had the gambare thing to their limit, you know, and so now it's swung the other way, you know how
10:22often generations do this in, in, in all cultures, you know, you get one really strict generation, then
10:28you get a really soft generation, you get another strict generation, and it tends to swing backwards
10:32and forwards, doesn't it, as people react to what their upbringing was, and, and do it in a different
10:37way, and so as a result, we're getting this give-up-u thing, this give-up-u, or muri-muri, and
10:43their parents kept saying that, when we're having this talk, that people don't usually talk about
10:48stuff like this, but these guys are relatives, they're family, extended family, and we have kids
10:55about the same age as theirs, so it sort of came up, and I wasn't really directly involved in the
11:01conversation, I was sort of doing a barbecue at the time, but I was listening really intently,
11:06and there was this underlying muri-muri, you know, he wakes up some days, and it's, it's muri, right,
11:12it's impossible, it's impossible for him to go to school, and, and we're seeing that a lot, where
11:18people tell you it's impossible, you know, and then adults too, we get the same thing. That barbecue,
11:24in fact, there were people that were supposed to come to that barbecue, one particular family was
11:28supposed to come to that barbecue, and it was muri, oh no, no, muri because, you know, he's got this
11:34happening, and he's got that happening, and ah, muri, muri, muri, and it's, it's, it wasn't muri, it wasn't
11:39impossible, it wasn't impossible, it was just that it was difficult, or it was, ah, you know, too hard,
11:46too hard, and there seems to be this really low bar now, where, where, you know, I made a video once before
11:53talking about the tired thing, you know, everybody's telling you how tired they are all the time, and how
11:58worn out they are, and, and when you know what, what is actually going on in their lives, you know,
12:04they'll just be having a normal life, they'll be going to some office 40 hours a week, and, and
12:10spending most of their time looking busy when they're not, and just normal lives, but they'll go
12:15on, and on, and on about how tired they are, you know, because there's this Japanese culture thing, where
12:20being tired, I made a video, I can't remember what I called it, something like tired and worn out, or
12:25something like that, is considered to be the norm here, so nobody says, hey, when you say, how are you,
12:31nobody goes, hey, I'm great, I'm full of energy, and, you know, no one says, oh, I'm tired, I'm tired,
12:37they say, I'm tired, you know, I'm tired, how are you, oh, I'm tired, and the kids do too, it's pathetic, it really is
12:43pathetic, so when you combine that with this give up, this cute give up thing, the give up, and the moody
12:51thing, and, and just hearing it more, and more, and more, and, and occasionally you still hear it again,
12:57I was at elementary school recently for an event, and I heard one kid, one kid, there was a kid
13:04doing something, and one of the kids said, and it was really good, because, because you
13:10rarely hear it anymore, you know, you used to hear it all the time, everybody had said, the kids had said,
13:15the adults had said, you know, and everybody did, but recently, I'm, I swear, I'm hearing
13:24give up, give up, and moody, more than I'm hearing anything else, so I, I, I know I've got a block at the
13:31moment about the examples, I had a hundred examples before I started the video, particularly adults,
13:39oh, the, our friend talking about the English lessons, you know, just the give up, give up thing,
13:46and, and sometimes they'll straight out tell him, you know, give up, oh, and we know too, we know, that's
13:51right, that was the other one, we know a family friend, and there's a boy, and because anybody who's
13:56ever doing English lessons here, I always ask, you know, how's your English lessons going, you know,
14:02and usually they answer, eto nandake, which means, ah, what is it, ah, you know, because they don't really
14:12learn any English, but, but this one kid, you know, and he's 10 years old, he's a little bit chubby,
14:18because he spends all his afternoons after school eating potato chips, and playing switch,
14:23and, and just about every afternoon, he doesn't seem to do anything else, except eat huge bags of
14:28potato chips, and play switch, and so recently, when we, we ran into these guys at the shopping
14:34center, and I said to him, ah, how's English, right, can't make an easier question than that, how's English,
14:40and oh, and he's, ah, eto nandake, and his mother said in, in Japanese, oh, you know, he's, he's, um,
14:49given up, basically, he's given up, ah, difficult, difficult, musukashii,
14:56so in other words, in other words, he's decided that he'd prefer to stay home, and eat potato chips,
15:02and play switch, for that one hour, instead of spending that one hour at the English lesson,
15:07you know, and the parents, this is what the parents are doing, they're just letting him,
15:11and we're seeing this all the time, that's what our English teacher friend says,
15:14is that he's got all these kids, all these students that stop, it's, and, and the parents will either
15:19say to him, ah, ah, he doesn't want to do English anymore, he wants to stop, so they'll actually
15:24straight out tell him that, he doesn't want to do anymore, so, so he doesn't want to do anymore, so
15:27he stops, it's, it's that simple, they still let the kids decide, that was the same as that, that
15:33kid that doesn't want to go to high school, the parents said, they let him decide, if he wants to
15:40go to school or not, so if he wakes up in the morning, and says he doesn't want to go to school,
15:43he doesn't go, isn't that amazing, how many kids, how many of you guys, when we're, when we were in
15:48high school, how many of you guys, if you're given the choice of going to school, or staying home,
15:52would have gone to school, right, and that's what they're doing, they're giving him the choice,
15:57he can decide every day, if he wants to go to school or not, and this is exactly what we're
16:00seeing, this is what we're seeing in that dojo, all these kids that don't want to go, and the parents
16:04will lie for him, because in Japanese culture, lying about something, about why you're not doing
16:10something, and saying you've got a fever when you haven't, or saying you've got a cold when you haven't,
16:13is normal in Japanese culture, it's not considered to be lying, it's just considered to be, you know,
16:18like a polite way to say that, you know, don't want to do something, basically, and so that's this
16:23running, this thread that runs through the whole thing, you know, with that kid, you know, he doesn't
16:28want to do it anymore, so he's given the choice of eating potato chips and playing video games, or
16:33going to an English class, he's decided he wants to do potato chips and video games, and his parents go,
16:37oh okay, and that's what our English friend says, that he gets this all the time, the parents will
16:43either straight out say, oh he doesn't want to do English anymore, so they're stopping, just straight
16:47out, there it is, or they'll make up an excuse, that oh he's busy now with club, or he's
16:55busy with something else, so he's going to stop, and he's decided, and we see this too, parents will
17:00turn to kids, you know, when our kids are making a plan with, we're making a plan
17:07with other families to do stuff, and they'll turn to the kids and ask the kids if they want to do it,
17:13you know, which is sort of okay, okay, that's fair enough, but you know, as parents, we should be
17:19guiding our kids, shouldn't we, not letting them decide if they want to do
17:23something, or if they want to give up, you know, or if it's moody, so it's an amazing thing,
17:30it really is an amazing thing, I'm sure as soon as I turn the camera off, I'm going to think of
17:34another really good dozen examples, because I'm seeing this all the time, that's what triggered
17:39this video, I just had to make it, because it just kept coming, and it kept coming, and it kept coming,
17:43the give up thing, and it seems if you are the sort of parent who pushes, oh look, come on, you know,
17:48you can do it, let's go, you know, you got to go, you got to go to school, let's go, that now it's
17:53considered to be a bit sort of, oh, a bit over the top, you know, not letting the kids decide what they do,
17:58what they want, do want to do, and don't want to do, you know, and again, there are exceptions, I just had
18:03a couple of exceptions come to mind, adults and kids who gambare, you know, who do the right thing, but
18:09but they're outnumbered now, I'm sure, I'm sure, I know way more people who say the give up and
18:16the moody, way more that say that than say gambare, you know, they're outnumbered for sure now,
18:22so anyway, there's that, this might come back again, because I've got a feeling I haven't quite
18:28covered this well enough yet, so this topic might raise its head again, so and also
18:35a lot of our people who watch our videos actually live in Japan, so any of you guys have some
18:40examples of this, quite often the comment section of videos like this is way more interesting
18:48than the video itself, so anybody who's got any examples of kibapu or moody, impossible when it's
18:55not impossible, we'll be looking forward to hearing all about it from you, tell us all about it,
19:01all right then, that's that, I'm going to have a coffee now, more videos coming soon.