Source: Persuasion
by Quico Toro
“One of the hardest things to explain about what it’s like to live in Japan has to do with a single word: majime. It means something like earnest striving, or wholesome seriousness. That’s easy enough to understand. What’s harder to wrap your head around is the role it plays in Japanese society, where a majime attitude is the default setting for social interaction. I see it through my 14-year-old’s eyes. Growing up in Canada, she had adopted the standard North American teenage girl persona: slightly detached, snarky, above it all. In other words, the exact opposite of majime. When we moved to Japan, she and her brother realized they’d have to flip the script if they wanted to fit in at public school: the kind of simple-minded earnestness that would have gotten them pilloried in a Montreal schoolyard is positively de rigueur in Tokyo.” (11/07/25)