Although not really what I’d call a slow news week, over the past few days Reader’s Digest’s recently released ranking of “the most courteous and least courteous cities in the world” has been taking up space all over the place. Oddly enough, Tokyo is not included on this list that ranks “35 major cities” on how courteous strangers are to each other – I’d always thought that Tokyo was more of a “major city” than, say, Ljubljana, Slovenia (which ranked 27th), so I have no idea why it’s not included, but that’s not what prompted me to post this.

Being from Toronto (which ranked 3rd) and living in Tokyo, I started wondering how Tokyo would have done had it been included. The “test” was pretty simple, consisting of 3 elements: do strangers hold doors open for others, do retail clerks say “thank you”, and would a stranger help you pick up some papers you’ve accidentally dropped on the street?

Interestingly enough, 8 out of 9 Asian cities tested ranked in the bottom 11, which, of course, brings up questions about the nature of the “test”. The longer I live in Asia, there are certain behaviours in Western culture that I can clearly identify as remnants of chivalry, and holding a door open for someone seems to be one of them (and I would like to clarify here that I mean “chivalry” as in the “chivalric code”, which governed the actions and behaviours of Knights in the Middle Ages).

These days, of course, they are no longer behaviours that are codified by gender (“people” hold doors open for other “people” rather than “gentlemen” holding doors open for “ladies”), but the behaviour itself definitely stems from the centuries long distillation of “the chivalric code” into very particular notions of romance and etiquette in western culture. I am curious whether or not many Asians would consider holding a door open to be a sign of politeness or a sign of mannerly behaviour, and, in Tokyo, it’s a bit of a moot question anyway because most doors are automatic and you rarely have to physically open a door yourself. I can, however, confidently say that there are many, many other actions which would act as indicators of politeness here, and they are actions that most visiting Westerners would be completely oblivious to.

So, how would Tokyo rank on this list? As the door-holding would be hard to measure, would many people pick up a stranger’s papers? Maybe… . I would venture to say, though, that many of those who did not stop to help you wouldn’t neglect to help out of rudeness but, rather, perhaps out of consideration for you.

How could this be considered in any way considerate? To a Westerner this might seem a little odd, but I’ll try and explain: helping you pick up the papers would draw more attention to you and the fact that you had dropped your papers (something that might be rather embarassing for a Japanese person because of the disturbance it has created – he/she has potentially disturbed and inconvenienced all those nearby), so a passerby might want to avoid you further embarassment and therefore might just keep on walking. (As an extension of this, if I stopped to help a Japanese person pick up some papers, he/she would probably make a point of commenting on the inconvenience to me and apologise rather profusely.)

Without the door-holding and the paper-fetching, Tokyo would probably not do so well on the list, but, without a doubt, this is probably the most polite culture you can inhabit. As a visitor to this massive city, I am not sure how much of that politeness you would sense. One thing I’ve become acutely aware of while living here, however, is the fact that concepts of politeness are not universal and, for that reason, the Reader’s Digest ranking can be read as nothing more than the light entertainment filler it’s meant to be. Why the story is getting so much front page placement is fodder for a subsequent post…