Soy Sauce 4

   
                                ‘Their way of writing is very different from ours because they write from
                                 the top of the page down to the bottom. I asked Anjiro why they did
                                 not write in our way and he asked me why we did not write in their
                                 way? He explained that as the head of a man is at the top and his feet
                                 are at the bottom, so too a man should write from top to bottom.’
                                                                              St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552)

Geography determines climate. The islands of Japan were fermented in fūdo, a sui generis climate of peculiar rhythms. Four distinct seasons coloured thought and behaviour, and human nature in Japan became an extension of Nature herself. The arrival of Buddhism softened the sharp edges of the interior mountain feudal barriers to a common identity. As geography and climate forged Japanese society, society fashioned brain patterns, and brain patterns fashioned language. Vowels and consonants are processed respectively in the right and left hemispheres of Western brains, but Japanese brains process both sounds in the left hemisphere.
The Japanese hear the sound of temple bells, insects (which they perceive as music) and snoring with the left half of the brain, the opposite of Westerners.
Also, as in German, Japanese verbs fall at the end of sentences, and new words can be made by adding several together. In Lost in Translation, Charlotte asked Bob why the Japanese ‘switched the r’s and the l’s here.’ But there is no switch. There is simply no consonant. Deck the hars with boughs of horry… Fa ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra …
Grammar determines world-view. Japanese language developed a unique structure and body of native words that allowed the speaker to express oneself both precisely and vaguely at the same time. Foreigners may speak it fluently, and correct in their usage, but never get beyond the alien structure of their own original language, and into the nuanced meaning that Japanese makes provision for.
Language ultimately defines psychology and etiquette and the interpersonal dependencies that determine the unique form of human relationship within a society. In Japan, this resulted in a complete fusion of the ego and the alter ego, where defined boundaries between self and other became ambiguous or fluid, and the individual could not properly exist. The group was the identity, and social and political conformity came with, and was, the turf. And the turf was a giant isolated anthill of purity.