Meaning of awe in Japanese (con)text: Beyond fear and respect

Abstract

Awe is theorized as an emotion appraised by perceived vastness and need for accommodation. This theoretical framework was developed with a review of spatially and temporally distributed literature mostly in the American and European cultural context, and is assumed to be culturally universal. However, awe as described by Japanese literature, was not explicitly included in the original theorization. We tested whether this framework generalized to the Japanese context by analyzing how Japanese awe-related words (e.g., “畏敬/ikei”) are used in Japanese text. A topic model was used to extract topics in contexts as an index of meaning. Results show that (1) the meaning of awe was statistically dissociable from similar but distinct meanings of fear and respect, and (2) the dissociating topics included transcendent entities such as god, spirits/ghosts, and powerful beings. Japanese meaning of awe includes vastness (i.e., transcendence) that goes beyond typical respect (i.e., power distance) requiring an accommodation of one’s mental framework.

Individual and Cultural Differences in Predispositions to Feel Positive and Negative Aspects of Awe

“…In contrast to the empirical studies’ focus on the positive aspects of awe, and consistent with Keltner & Haidt (2003)’s identification of threat as a flavoring feature of awe, the word for “awe” is associated with “fear” in several languages (e.g., Japanese, Chinese, Greek, and Hebrew; Gordon et al, 2017; Halstead & Halstead, 2004; Nakayama & Uchida, in press) and was associated with negative emotions of fear, shame and depression in its Old English form, ege (Díaz-Vera, 2015). Indeed, the Japanese language has two words for “awe,” the ideographs of which have negative connotations.…”

“…Indeed, the Japanese language has two words for “awe,” the ideographs of which have negative connotations. 畏, the character found in both 畏敬 ( ikei ) and 畏怖 ( ifu ), indicates a mixture of fear and respect towards a transcendent entity, such as a god (i.e., appraisals of vastness accompanied with both positive and negative flavours; for a more detailed discussion, see Nakayama & Uchida, in press). The second characters specifies different flavors of awe.…”

“…Multidimensional scaling extracted a “valence” dimension within the data set, with the two awe words located at the extreme negative end. Similarly, Nakayama & Uchida (in press) analyzed a Japanese corpus and demonstrated that meanings of awe-related words are dissociable from those of fear- and respect-related words, and that the meanings of awe is in the middle of those of fear and respect, suggenting mixed valence of awe in Japanese. In relation to personality, Muto (2016) developed Trait Respect-Related Emotions Scale for Late Adolescence (TRRES) in Japanese to measure predispositions to feel respect-related emotions, including a subscale for negative awe (e.g., “I often feel that people and the nature around me have large presences that make me realize my own limitations,” “I feel small whenever I meet some great person”; see Appendix).…”