Giri

" Giri " (義理) is a Japanese Mot without literal translation in French. He indicates the concept of Owe and moral obligation.

For example, each year, the women who work must offer chocolates (" giri choco") with their male colleagues. Some is their degree of friendship, it acts of a social obligation being used to prove that one is happy to work together. In return, the men must make a gift with the women at the time of the " White day ".

In 1900, Inazō Nitobe gives a rather negative definition of it:

I want to speak about the word giri , which literally means “right reason”, but which came from there to express from now on only one vague idea of the duty that, according to the public opinion, the holder of an obligation was to fill. In its direction first and whole, giri expresses the duty, pure and simple. Thus we speak about the giri that we owe with our parents, our superiors, our inferiors, the company in general, etc In this case, giri means “duty”; what the duty if not what requires and orders us the reason? Shouldn't the reason be our categorical imperative?

In the beginning giri did not mean anything more than “to have” and I dare to say that its etymology rises owing to the fact that in our control - towards our parents - the love, who should have been the single mobile often have suddenly missed, one needed another authority well to reinforce the filial devotion, and it as follows was formulated: giri . And one have reason to call thus this authority giri , because if it is not the love which pushes with the acts of virtue, it is necessary to have recourse to the intelligence of the man, and its reason must be prompt to convince it of the need for acting with uprightness. This is true for any other moral obligation. As of the moment when the duty becomes heavy, reason between concerned preventing us to withdraw to us from it. The giri thus included/understood is a severe Master, whip in hand, which makes achieve with lazy the their duty. In the field of the ethical , it acts of a power of second order. Because it is infinitely lower than the Christian doctrines of the love, which should be the only law. It is for me the product designed by a artificial company - company in which the chances of the birth and the unmerited favors instituted the differences in class little by little, a company in which the family is the only recognized unit, a company in which the privilege of the age is higher than the recognition of the talent, a company in which finally the slopes of the heart must be often erased in front of arbitrary human uses. And it is because of this basically artificial character that the giri , time passing, did not end up not expressing but one vague spirit any more of what is bienséant, to which one has recourse to explain this or to reject that. Thus, for the giri , the mother in the need will have to sacrifice all her children to theborn one, the girl will have to sell her virtue to pay dissipations of the father, and so on. “right reason” in the beginning, the giri , in my eyes, definitively was often lost in poorest of the Casuistique S. Pire still, it degenerated into simple and coward fear of the social blame. I could say giri what Walter Scott said of the Patriotisme: “Noblest will be often poorest of the masks to dissimulate other feelings”. Out of the reason, the giri became a monstrosity. It sheltered under its wings all the Sophisme S and all hypocrisies. And it would quickly have become the nest even of all cowardices if Bushidô did not carry in him an acute sense and truth of what are courage, the spirit of audacity and the self-control.

In 1945, the American Sociologue Ruth Benedict, although she does not speak Japanese and that she never was with the Japan, gave its version of this basic concept of the Japanese Culture in the study which she provided to the American high command. Despite everything, many are the Japanese who consider that it is one of best descriptions than one ever made them.

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