Recently I watched the 2012 movie “Emperor” on Amazon Prime. This is the story of post-World War II Japan in 1945 after its surrender. And the evaluation by General McArthur and his team on whether to prosecute Emperor Hirohito for war crimes.

In one scene, General Fellers who leads the charge is given some advice by one of his old Japanese contacts who explains to him about the two kinds of things we see - “tatamae” - the way things appear and “honne” - the way things really are.

It was a very fine distinction with a deep cultural context to the 2,000-year-old culture of Japan. What it looks like on the surface is completely different when you dig deep into the soul of the culture and its innate practices of hundreds of years that are baked into how things are.

Extremely deep viewpoints that helped me understand the Japanese culture better. And this is true for much of the world around us. If we peel the layers and look deeply beyond the surface, we see things differently and perhaps as they are.

Sources:

Emperor - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103264/

Honne and tatemae - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae