ABSTRACT
The Japanese commonly describe themselves as being immersed in the here-and-now and focused on being in the world. Nakane Chie goes on to say that the identification of self with ‘frame’ means that group identity is more significant than any common identities one may perceive across groups. Viewing the self as the activating centre of a field of experience affects our perspectives on space, time, self and society. The Japanese self has long been characterized as ‘relational’, which means that it is defined in interaction with self and other. Communication on the deference axis is thus directional, signalling either that the subject is inside or outside the speaker’s group. Use of forms on the deference axis depends on the speaker’s perception of a primary division between uchi and soto. The focus in Japanese social organization on the here-and-now, and spatio-temporal ‘place’, position and ‘placing’ cannot be grasped by approaches which abstract and reify.
