POLITENESS IN JAPAN
Politeness in Japan is not at all confined -to the .upper circles, as you imagine. Servants are just as punctiliously polite to each other as their masters. When they meet in the street they will smile correctly at 4he proper distance from each other. On drawing nearer they smile again, according to the etiquette prescribed, and then after bows of the finest and most minute significance the gardener of one house will address the betto (horse-groom) of another with some such phrase as, ' It is long since I have hung upon your honorable eyelids.' And the other will answer, ' Please excuse my rudeness at the last time we met.' And if by any chanced they have occasion to punch one another's heads they won't part until they have expressed, with many bows, their mutual regret that their meeting has not been under more pleasant conditions.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT19080618.2.64.7
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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 24, 18 June 1908, Page 38
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148POLITENESS IN JAPAN New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 24, 18 June 1908, Page 38
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