Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1885 — Japanese Etiquette. [ARTICLE]

Japanese Etiquette.

The difference of national interpretations of etiquette are comically illustrated in a little story 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. 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 next day, when a friend, in whom the extraordinary guest had confided, told the hostess that he said he never had such an ordeal before in his life; that ha 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 until she does this.