Japanese Etiquette

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 113, 4 March 1886, Page 2

Japanese Etiquette

The differences of national interpretations of etiquette are comically illustrated in a little history told by a lady in Washington society. A Japanese gentleman called on her one day just before luncheon. As it was a first and, presumably, ceremonious call she naturally expected it would be brief. To her surprise he accepted her invitation to lunch, and that domestic rite over he still stayed. The hours wore on and he did not go. The lady was wearied beyond endurance. Dinner time came. The lady's husband returned, and still the gentleman from Japan stayed on. He was as a matter of necessity invited to dinner. Finally the gentleman of the house relieved his wife for a time in entertaining this apparently stationary visitor, but as the evening wore on he became so tired and sleepy that he retired to his own apartment, and the hostess again screwed her courage to the sticking point and resumed the entertainment of the guest. At last, about midnight, the Japanese, with the most elaborate and abject apologies to the lady for leaving her, took his departure. But the comedy reached its denouement the next day, when a friend, in whom the extraordinary guest had confided, told the hostess that he said he never had such an ordeal in his life; that he was so tired, and he thought the lady would never let him go, and finally he was obliged to leave her without her permission. Then the hostess learned that in Japanese etiquette the lady receiving a gentleman gives him the signal for his departure, and it is very rude in their code to leave her till she does this.