Hansei Shinasai

Reprinted from the blog tongodeon:

I was helping a Japanese friend move a while ago and I noticed a book in her collection: "How To Deal With Americans Who Don't Hansei". The cover art was striking and I became interested.

"What's hansei?"
"There really isn't a word for it in English."
"So what does it mean?"
"Hmmm, it is hard to explain."

"Hansei" literally means "reflection". Figuratively it describes being conscious of your behavior and its impact on others. People who take pride in driving noisy cars do not hansei. People having loud conversations while walking past your bedroom window at 2AM do not hansei. People who stall checkout lines at the grocery store while they figure out whether or not they've got the money to buy what they selected do not hansei. Hansei is the reason why mobile phones are always on vibrate and only used for sms in public areas: text creates less disturbance than loud conversations. Hansei is at the center of Japan's iconic anti-smoking ads, reminding smokers not of their own health risks but of the disturbance they are causing to others. Hansei also means greeting success with modesty and humility. To stop hansei means to stop learning. With hansei one never becomes so convinced of one's own superiority that there is no more room or need for further improvement.


George Bush is the international no-hansei icon; he does not self-reflect, and because of this he makes the same mistakes over and over. The Iraq War is a no-hansei disaster with no regard for world opinion and no plan for victory beyond the presumption that our supremacy makes success inevitable and guaranteed. Without familiarity with such a basic concept we are a nation whose parents did not raise us right.

From the blog Gemba Panta Rei:

"Han" means to change, turn over, turn upside down. "Sei" is the simplified form of a character meaning to look back upon, review, examine oneself. As a native speaker of Japanese "hansei" strikes me as both an intellectual and emotional exercise. With hansei there is a sense of shame, if that is not too hard of a word. This may come from having been asked to do a lot of hansei as a child, being told "hanse shinasai!" which in English might be "Learn to behave!"

The point is, when you do hansei it is almost never because you are "considering past experience" as if they were happy memories. You are confronting brutal facts about your actions and the impact they had, in hopes that you can learn from this and change your behavior in the future.