DANGERS OF THE PASSIVE March 22, 2026 (Spring Equinox)

Happy Spring Equinox! In the spirit of the Fire Horse (depicted here) I have decided to continue this blog past Number 100. My words for this year are Courage and Patience. How about yours?

Here is a conversation I had frequently when I was younger in Japan:

   (someone Japanese) “Nani nani ga kimatte iru.”

   (me)  “Dare ga kimeta no?”

To translate:

    “(Something) has been decided.”

    “Who decided it?”

In English the first sentence is usually translated in passive voice, but it is grammatically different, In Japanese, in many cases, the same verb can be active (kimeru-kimeta, to decide) and passive (kimaru-kimatta, to be decided). The second has a feeling of finality; you aren’t supposed to argue with things that are “kimatta”, even if they were decided only a few years ago. Everyone has accepted them, and you are supposed to too, with no dissension. This shows the prevalence of passivity in this language and this culture.

There’s one problem with this, and that is that I myself don’t follow what “everyone” does simply because they have decided that something is right (it becomes “kimatta”). (Who are they to make the decision anyway?)I am more likely to dig my heels in; maybe I’m contrary, or (which sounds better) I like to keep a balance. This is social suicide in a country like Japan, where you are expected to do what everyone does, no questioning or (gasp!) doing the opposite just because it is the opposite.

There are plenty of examples of the passive voice in English as well. When, in social media, something (increasingly these days) is “Suggested for you” I am likely to mutter, “Who suggested this?” or when they say “Most relevant is selected…” I counter with “Who selected it? It wasn’t me.” (Don’t get me started on the manipulation hidden in the words “for you”!)

In English, the passive voice is a way to bypass the often onerous rule that there has to be a subject in every sentence. “The powers that be decided” changes to “It has been decided” thereby neatly cutting out the responsible party, who can be rather clumsily added using the construction “by” (…”by the powers that be”). But when the subject is not present at all (changed to “it”), it is a very insidious and unnoticed way for that subject to avoid taking responsibility for something. It makes whatever is proposed unarguable, because there is no one to argue with.

Back when people wrote their own papers etc., the passive voice was encouraged, for the reason that if the subject is constantly changing, as it tends to in a paper or thesis, it was easier because it made it unnecessary to name a subject of the sentence directly – I remember being told to write exclusively in passive voice for my Bachelor’s thesis. Avoiding chopping and changing was another reason for choosing a voice and sticking to it.

But my argument here is that use of the passive voice encourages passivity. It makes it okay to sit back and take things that maybe should be questioned. If you say “kimatte iru”, you don’t have to say who decided it, and the point is that it’s now decided and there is no more need to think about it. But isn’t that kind of the point of being human – thinking about things and decided when and how they are obsolete and should be changed? It may not be necessarily “progress”; it might be going on the opposite direction, when the old way is clearly better for many reasons. But change is both desirable and necessary in human life. That is how our species evolved (and it is almost impossible to say that it hasn’t).

One example is walking on one side of the escalator and standing on the other side, which arose during the time I have lived in Japan – far from being “kimatte iru” for a long time, it has only been an unwritten rule here for about 20 years; before that it wasn’t a thing here at all. (It has been a thing in other countries before.) These days there are signs all over the place in Japan, telling people NOT to walk on the escalator because of several accidents that occurred this way; but there continue to be long lines on the standing side while the walking side is completely empty, as the procedure here is to take cues for one’s behavior from those around one and not from official signs -- because right now, standing on one side to leave room for walkers is “kimatta”. I wonder about the history of this custom, as I wonder about the history of lots of customs in my life now.

About 30 years ago, someone sitting next to me at a formal lunch tried to tell me that disposable chopsticks were “part of Japanese culture” and therefore sacrosanct. At what point does something become part of the culture (kimatte iru”)? And at what point is it so no longer? Since the Japanese is a culture now in transition in many ways, as many societies are around the world, where to draw the line has become problematical. For example, I belong to a local group called “Let’s preserve the Look of the Roadside of our Town” (Hino no Machinami no Hozenkai) But at what point are we allowed to say that “this will be preserved, and this is too new”? Is it totally subjective? I myself wrote and illustrated a book called “100 Objects in my Japanese House” and concentrated on things that I felt were “old” or traditional. But at some point, those things were new, and pushed aside other things that had been used previously. I did have a rather vague cutoff point (late Meiji-early Showa period, or around the turn of the last century) but it was mostly about my own feelings toward the objects in general. These objects had survived usually about 100 years or more in my home. The previous occupants weren’t into collecting “stuff” as we and other members of our generation are, so these objects were usually handmade, I think, or anyway one of a kind. But I really have no idea if these objects were considered “kits” or partly machine-made or cheap when they were new. Again, where does one draw the line?

Recently on social media, people who communicate directly at the risk of hurting another person were contrasted with those who were brought up to communicate in a more circumspect manner, and readers were invited to say which they preferred. I come down squarely on the side of directness, not just because I was brought up to it, but because indirectness (and I would include passive voice here) can also be hurtful if a person is seeking honesty. The opposite of honesty is not lying but, in my opinion, deliberate indirectness and muddy communication. Directness is easier to understand, which is important in communication.

In my generation, two singer-songwriters addressed this idea with two songs called “Honesty” (Billy Joel) and “Tenderness” (Paul Simon). I believe that both are possible, perhaps at the same time, with a little thought and work. There is really no need for either side to get their noses out of joint. What do you think?