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What do people usually experience when reuniting with family members and loved ones after a period of absence? What do Japanese people in particular experience in such situations? In what ways would their experience be similar to and different from that of the people from other cultural groups?
These are some of the main questions with which I began my narrative interview research on the experience of reunion1 in the spring and summer of 1993.2 During the course of my investigation, I began noticing that my Japanese subjects frequently used the term hazukashii or terekusai almost interchangeably, regardless of the subjects' gender, when describing their emotion3 at the time of reunion.
The word hazukashii is an adjective of haji, which means “shame.” It finds no easy translation equivalent in English. Some of the dictionary meanings are: ashamed, abashed, shy, coy, blushing, embarrassed, modest, self-effacing, reserved, timid, demure, awkward, self-conscious (Masuda, 1974).
What do my Japanese subjects mean when they say they felt hazukashii (shy, self-conscious, etc.) when they first saw their family members at the airport upon returning to Japan? Did they feel “ashamed” to see their parents, siblings, or spouse? Is this emotion unique to the Japanese?
Further investigations into the cultural meanings of the emotion expression hazukashii, and the reason why it was conspicuous in the Japanese narratives, led me to the concept of amae, of which the Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi first provided the systematic analysis in Japan (1962), and later introduced it to the West .
Another highly salient aspect of the emotion hazukashii is the