Conspicuous individual success or difference attracts suppression from the group.
Quoted constantly, inside and outside Japan, as an explanation of conformity. What it can support is that the sanction for standing out is socially real; what it cannot support is that this is peculiar to Japan, since near-identical proverbs exist in several countries that consider the trait their own.
In practice
- A junior who solves a problem the department had accepted finds the credit distributed and the invitation withdrawn.
- The same proverb is offered in three countries as proof of a national characteristic, which is evidence about proverbs.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is enforcement of a group norm that treats visible difference as a claim to status. Another is coordination: where work depends on tight cooperation, a member who breaks step imposes costs on everyone.
- In its favour
- The sanction it names is socially real and recognisable, and it names a pattern that people inside and outside Japan describe in similar terms.
- Against it
- Comparative evidence for a distinctively Japanese effect is thin, similar proverbs exist elsewhere, including the tall poppy syndrome, and the saying is often used to explain outcomes it merely labels.
- Standing
- A commonplace about Japanese social norms rather than a measured finding; comparative evidence for a distinctively Japanese effect is thin. Compare tall poppy syndrome, which makes the same claim of Australia and Britain.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- Proverbs that recur across cultures