Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC and this  is a part of one of his broadcasts

ZUBARI series

Sometimes I meet British people who have come to know some Japanese for a time – perhaps their children went to the same school in Britain and so the parents got to know each other. And quite often they say to me, “The Japanese are very kindly and well-behaved people. But they are not very interesting, are they? I always know what has happened. They have met Japanese who would not talk about Japan and Japanese things, but tried always to talk about their present life in Britain. They thought that British people would be bored if they were told about Japan. So, they talked about what they thought the British people would be interested in: football, the Royal family, the history of London, Shakespeare and so on. That was why their British friends thought the Japanese were not interesting.

When I am asked about this, I always say, ‘On the contrary, the Japanese are one of the most interesting people. But there are thousands of really interesting things they could have told you, but they were too polite to talk about themselves. You should have asked them all sorts of questions – you could have asked them about how they write, for instance, or about that little bead counting frame which you have seen on the TV. Did you know that it can beat an electric calculator for speed?’

They always sound very surprised and regretful. I have pushed the blame on to the British people, but really it rests with the Japanese. When we meet French people, we don’t expect to have to ask them about French life; we expect that when there is something interesting which they can tell us, they will do so. This is one of the arts of a successful conversation; to exchange items of interest (which perhaps a hearer will remember and use again, like a careful housewife, to fuel some new conversation.

There is a French phrase, savoir faire, which means ‘to know what to do.’ It is used in English like a noun – ‘he has got savoir faire’, a and it means a man or, very often a woman, at a loss in social matters. To give an example of conversational savoir faire: suppose a Swede is introduced to a group of English people at a party. We do not know much about Sweden, and perhaps he does not know much about Britain. They exchange greetings, ‘Good morning’ and someone adds, ‘A fine day, isn’t it?’ Then sometimes the conversation pauses – no one seems to know what to say. But he says, ‘Ah, a fine day. We notice here that you often mention the weather in a conversation; we never do that in Sweden, and that’s because you are so interested in gardens; the weather matters a lot to you, because of your gardens. In Sweden not many of us cultivate gardens.’ if I said, it’s a fine day’ to another Swede, he’d just stare at me and think, ‘Well, I can see that. Why mention it?’

© Trevor Leggett