Muka Tsuku

Asano-san hung up the phone angrily and made a rude gesture at it. ‘Muka tsuku yo!’ she mumbled. When she turned and saw me standing there, she smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry, Mary.’

I couldn’t help asking. ‘What does that mean?’  I’d heard muka tsuku used a lot, almost always with a particular vehemence.  Asano-san, one of the daytime secretaries, used it quite a lot.

‘Means you’re so angry you get sick,’ she said, throwing her pen down on the desk. She sighed and rubbed her forehead. ‘I have to be nice to people who are rude. Like that man.’  She made a face and stuck her tongue out at the phone.

I laughed. ‘What did he say?’

‘Oh – he wasn’t rude exactly like, you know, calling me names. He was rude by being extra polite.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah. That’s the worst rude of all for Japanese. Like, you use really polite language when you don’t need to.’

Japanese is encumbered by an intricate system of keigo, literally ‘polite language.’ The verb ‘say,’ for instance, has several different forms depending on how polite you want your speech to be. This tends to be related to social status: if you are speaking to the delivery boy from the noodle shop about something he said, for instance, you use the less polite form  iu, but if you’re reminding your professor about something he said to you , you use a different word entirely: ossharu. Things might change given the circumstances, of course:  if you slammed the door on the delivery boy’s hand, for instance, or had to tell your professor to stop putting his hand down your blouse, you would scale your language up or down as necessary. Keigo includes both ‘honorific’ and ‘humble’ forms. If I want to express your feelings of humility to a person you consider your superior, you will use a different verb for ‘say’ when you describe your own actions: moshiageru.

Asano-san had lived in Oklahoma during her late childhood and well into her teens; she had also studied for a year at a language school in Bournemouth when she was in her twenties, so her English was impressively colloquial. One of the words she had made her very own was ‘bastard.’ When she let her hair down, she fairly peppered her speech with ‘bastard.’  She had her own particular way of pronouncing it, too.

‘Every time that bass-turd talks to me, he says ossharu and moshiageru to me.  What did you oh-so-honorably say? What did you think I oh-so-humbly said?’ Such a stupid whanking bass-turd with all his fakey-fakey polite keigo.’ 

People do this in English, too, of course. English may not have the same ornately formulaic system for expressing politeness as Japanese does, but we can manipulate sentences to make ourselves sound kindly and well-intentioned on the surface when inside we might be nurturing feelings of hatred and resentment. Marjorie never did much with Japanese, but she was no slouch when it came to English. Later that week she caught me off guard and showed me how with careful phrasing and sensitive timing, words that sounded kind and considerate could in fact be hurtful and insulting.

Todd had a low tolerance for silly, giddy girls and had frequently told me how awful a particular class of mine were. He’d been their teacher before I took over the class and he seldom missed an opportunity to let everyone know how glad he was not to be teaching them anymore. The class was mainly composed of girls just out of high school but not yet in university and they were in fact a frivolous bunch who treated English classes as a chance to socialize, but I found that we got along fine as long as I didn’t expect too much of them. Todd’s comments on the girls’ stupidity and vacuity irritated me, but after a while I learned to ignore him. 

One evening, Todd was ill and I had to teach his classes. He had a particularly obnoxious class that he was forever moaning about: none of us, he argued, had any idea how awful this group was or how difficult they were to teach. They had failed to mesh as a group partly because they were an odd assortment: a few scatterbrained clerical workers, two middle-aged women, three high school boys who were not interested in anything but high school girls, and one retired businessman who was loud, opinionated, and full of himself. I privately thought that he sounded exactly like Todd, but after teaching the class I had to admit that Todd’s retired businessman was  even more obnoxious than he was. And I felt sorry for Todd, too, because the class really did present a teaching challenge.

The next evening, as we all walked to the station, I made a point of saying this to Todd, telling him that I certainly sympathized with him having such a difficult class to teach.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘they drive me nuts. I can’t wait till next semester when somebody else gets to have them. Like maybe you – ha, ha, ha!’

Todd then went his separate way, but Marjorie, oddly enough, told him that she would catch up with him; she wanted to have a word with me first. I was surprised: perhaps she was warming up to me after all! Perhaps she was going to suggest meeting for coffee?

‘Mary,’ she began tentatively, as though she was about to ask me for a favor.

I nodded, all ears. ‘Yes?’

‘I know you didn’t mean any harm just now. . .’.

I stared at her, astounded. ‘About what?’

Marjorie’s voice took on a chatty, confidential tone. ‘It’s just that, well, we all feel that our own students are a little special. Maybe it’s because we’re teaching them, maybe it’s because we share a little part of their lives, after all, and we’ve given them something of ourselves.’

All I could do was continue to stare at her, flabbergasted. What in the world was she trying to say?

‘And what you said just then about Todd’s class; I know that you didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but –’  We had come to a stop in front of the ticket machines, and we were facing each other.

‘But he’s always saying – he’s always complaining about that class himself  – !’ I spluttered.

She shook her head dismissively, smiling as though I was particularly thick. ‘We all complain about our students, Mary. You complain about yours too.’

This was true, I did; but so did Todd. He complained about his students and he complained about my students. In fact, he didn’t just complain about my students, he demeaned them. To my face, and in front of everybody. Surely she was aware of this?

‘Marjorie, I was commiserating with Todd!  That class is not an easy class to teach with all those different ages and levels. He’s said it any number of times himself. I wasn’t making fun of anyone or being nasty, I  –’  I had to stop. I was so exasperated that I was close to tears.

Marjorie regarded me with pitiful, fake-sympathetic eyes, still shaking her head. ‘Like I said, Mary, I know you didn’t mean to hurt Todd. You were just being insensitive. And you did hurt Todd, I’m afraid. He may say things about his students from time to time, but I know that he cares deeply about them. And I just wanted you to know that, well, you’re not the only person who has feelings around here. Okay?’

This was too much for me. If I’d had a stick, I’d have whacked her over the head with it. Instead I nodded stupidly, my heart racing, willing the tears to stay back.

Marjorie smiled again. Unctuously. ‘So – just keep it in mind, Mary. Okay? No hard feelings, right?’

I stared back at her. Oh, there were hard feelings all right. I didn’t nod, though. I was damned if I was going to nod anymore. I was all nodded out.

‘See you tomorrow, Marjorie,’ I said as politely as I could.  And I turned and walked away.