White Day

Today is the Japanese holiday of ホワイートデイー (Howaito Dei), or White Day.  This holiday, despite its foreign derivation, is based upon Japanese social norms and that stickiest of social glues, obligation.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day (February 14) is traditionally celebrated by women who buy chocolate for the men in their lives—family members, coworkers, friends, and also romantic interests. A month passes and then, on March 14, those men reciprocate with white “obligation” chocolate.

This always struck me as a bad deal, particularly because I’m no great friend to white chocolate.  Also, there’s no mystery to White Day.  No chance for surprises.  The man might wonder which woman in his life will bring chocolate, but the woman knows ahead of time.  She’s only getting returns from the people who owe her.

There’s a special name for White Day chocolate.  It’s called 義理チョコ, giri-choko or obligation chocolate.  Romantic, it’s not.

Thinking about giri-choko, I started to wonder about obligation in general.  I don’t get much from the English word; it feels blank of connotation.  Obligation could mean anything, be directed toward anyone or -thing. 

Giri, on the other hand, is about social expectations.  There’s the giri that the man give white chocolate to the women who gave him Valentine’s gifts.  There’s giri to bring back souvenirs from the trip or to compliment the meal.  Years ago in Japanese class, I learned that the translation for “stepfather” is giri-no-chichi, obligation dad. (It also means “father-in-law.”)

Giri sounds rough to me, but part of that is likely homophonic.  Another character pronounced “giri” means “to cut.”  Giri-giri is an idiom that means “just barely,” as in, “It was giri-giri, but I got home three minutes before curfew!”

In its obligatory sense, I can’t help but contrast giri to חיוב (hiyuv), which is [arguably] the same word in Hebrew.  In any case, they both translate the same way. Within the Jewish lexicon, hiyuv tends to come up in religious, rather than interpersonal, circumstances.

To me, the most significant distinction between giri and hiyuv is the question of what got the obligation started.  Giri started with an act.  In case of giri-choko, the guy and the girl were on perfectly stable footing until she went and bought him chocolate, thus setting the chains of obligation onto him.  He can only reestablish equilibrium on a single day—March 14—and through one particular action—giving white chocolate.  Having done so, he puts himself back on equal footing… at least until the next time one of them does something nice for the other.

It a big philosophical theological sense, one could claim that hiyuv works the same way.  The One Who Spoke called us into being, and made a schnazzy world for us because we needed a place to stay. Even though we can’t give back a gift of equal value we can still give God the giri with all of our heart, mind and might. 

Except… it doesn’t feel that way. Jewish religious obligation can influence interpersonal behavior in some of the same ways as giri, but despite a big-picture similarity it just doesn’t feel the same. I guess it comes down to a more personal, harder to address deep inner “why” of observance.