Keywords

1 Introduction

The number of foreign visitors to Japan is rapidly increasing. Since April 2003, when the “Visit Japan Campaign” promotion to attract tourists from abroad was begun by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism [1], over-seas publicity regarding travel to Japan, domestic infrastructure for the sake of foreign visitors, and other such developments have intensified. Despite the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, proliferation of the middle class brought on by a weakened yen and economic growth in various neighboring Asian countries led the number of foreign visitors to jump from a mere 5.24 million in 2004 to 13.41 million in 2014, and 19.74 million in 2015. Therefore the government decided to greatly raise the aim of 2020 from 20 million to 30 million.

In terms of Japan’s tourism resources which pique the interest of people from other countries, there are factors such as its beautiful scenery of nature as an island nation, its rich historical and cultural heritage, and other cultural resources. However, after it was decided that the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics would be held in Tokyo, it seemed to become inevitable that the Japanese way of hospitality – known as “omotenashi” – would also rank as an essential tourism resource. This was especially true because of the attention that would be drawn to lodging facilities like hotels, traditional inns, and bed and breakfasts, as well as dining and drinking establishments from casual eateries to high-end restaurants, and other places visitors are certain to see.

The Japan Tourism Agency is supporting regional pre-emptive initiatives as the “Regional ‘Omotenashi’ Improvement Project Directed at the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics”. Concomitant with this movement, there are also efforts to attract customers by strengthening the spirit of “omotenashi” within the service industry, but in order to do so a proper understanding of “omotenashi” is imperative. The Japan Productivity Center has defined “omotenashi” as “work to provide uncompromisingly heartfelt service while valuing the perspective of customers and/or residents” [2]. “Valuing the perspective of customers and/or residents” can be rephrased as “mutualistic service whereby the provider considers the circumstances of the beneficiary and responds with his or her whole heart,” as differentiated from service which is unilateral from the side of the provider only. It can be thought that analogous concepts in other countries such as “hospi-tality” (the U.S.), 待客之道 (China), and “hospitalité” (France) vary from “omotenashi” on this point of whether the service is or is not mutualistic [2], and we can say that it safely passes as a peculiarly Japanese tourism resource.

There has been much debate over the question of what kind of service “omotenashi” entails. But even if we start from the basis of the saying that, “‘Omotenashi’ begins with a greeting and ends with a parting,” it seems that we should note the Japanese way of bowing (ojigi) as a first step to studying “omotenashi”. The history of bowing being an action of greeting for Japanese people is long, as in the third century Chinese text the Gishi-wajin-den it is recorded that, “When meeting with an important person, Japanese people go to their knees and cast down their heads”. Furthermore, the action of casting down one’s head, or bowing, has been regarded as showing that one has no enmity toward his or her counterpart, due to the fact that it exposes the back of the head, a point of vulnerability [3].

Bowing is not limited to instances of greeting. It is also performed in various other settings such as to show appreciation or apologize, and is a commonly seen gesture in the course of daily life [4]. Bowing can be done while standing or while sitting. For both there are multiple classifications according to the angle at which the upper portion of the body is bent. Within standing bows, based on the angle of the bow there are the classifications of eshaku (“greeting bow,” 15°), keirei (“respect bow,” 30°), saikeirei (“highest respect bow,” 45°), and hairei (“worship bow,” 90°) [5], or the classifications of eshaku (approximately 15°), keirei (approximately 45°), and saikeirei for the gods and buddhas (“highest respect bow used for the gods and buddhas,” approximately 90°) [6, 7], among other ways of classifying. However, in most settings calling for conventional business etiquette, eshaku (15°), keirei (30°), and saikeirei (45°) are practically being used as the three classifications of bows [8].

Sitting bows also have classification. Ogasawara way of bow has 9details called “kuhonrei” and the following 3 are popular “eshaku”, “futsurei” and “saikeirei”. There are Tanaka (1989) and Asada [8] as previous study. Moreover, they are called “Shin”, “Gyou” and “Sou” in the order corresponding to “Saikeirei” “Futsurei” and “Eshakurei” in the way of tea.

As a case study of researching bowing through experimentation, Morishita and Iwashita [9] reported that as inexperienced persons lowered their heads when bowing, there was an intensification in the angle of the curvature of their backs; that in comparison to experienced persons the time of remaining still upon bowing was shorter for inexperienced persons; and that despite their being Japanese, the subjects predominantly bowed in a self-taught manner.

Most case study about bow with experiment is targeting standing bow. In other previous study about it, they studied about the aspects such as what kind of bow would prefer or what kind of impression they give.

Henmi and Isayama [10] examined the duration for which pleasure was taken in various types of standing bows, making use of a “standing bow motion stimulus” with the body bent at 45° that was created by three-dimensional computer graphics. Additionally, Gyoba et al. [4] conducted a pair of experiments, one investigating jective impressions toward the action of bowing, and the other investigating the appropriateness of certain styles in given social contexts.

Also they conducted an experiment which consider appropriate movements for movements of bow. Then, they proved 3 tendencies as follows. At greeting moments, the more you impress people with bow in a low politeness and high smooth motion, the more you rate as appropriate. At the moment of appreciation, the more smooth motion give high impression, and at the moment of apology, the more politeness give high impression, the more you rate as appropriate.

As stated at the outset, there is a movement to attract customers by strengthening the spirit of “omotenashi” within the service industry at this time.

Then, we decided to research about what kind of motion judged as appropriate with the sitting bow used in formal scene such as Japanese restaurant and tea ceremony. Using Gyoba et al. [4] as basic instruments, we conducted the experimental tests on researching subjective impression to the motion with real movie which including operated motive information of sitting bow. According to this, motive information operated bend angle and duration of the bent posture.

Gyoba et al. [4] is using the bow movie made by CG. But in contrast to them, we operated bend angle and duration of the bent posture as motive information in the real motion what human do.

Although about the bent angle of sitting bow, there is great variability among literatures, generally, the variabilitiy of eshaku’s is from 15° to 30°, futsuurei’s is 30° to 90° and saikeirei’s is 45° to 90°. We dertermined 30°, 45° and 90° to inspect the clear differences of movements, considering the view of motive repeatability with human. In addition, we provided 5 class (from 0 s to 4 s) with duration of the bent posture. In the experiment, we studied about subjective impression for movement of sitting bow by using SD. And we altered a part of pair of adjectives in SD using example from Gyoba et al. [4] used.

2 Experiment

2.1 Purpose of This Experiment

The purpose was to research the impressions of someone to bow to by operating bend angle and duration of the bent posture.

2.2 The How

Making the Video of Sitting Bow

We placed a video camera in front of the model who bow in sitting. In this case, we conducted 3 sitting bow patterns (30°, 45° and 90°) and he downed his head centering on his waist. To make sure the setup angle, we measured his angle in video taken from lateral by angle gauge after we marked his head and waist. Regarding the duration of bent posture, the model counted accurate time by himself using metronome and made videos at 0 s,1 s,2 s,3 s and 4 s. Recorded over 3times, we selected one of them as the best video for evaluate impression which fall within the acceptable value (approximately 10% both bend angle and duration of the bent posture).

Also as Ogasawara (1975) says “the speed of bending and stretching body should be at a uniform pace”, this study followed the concept in regardless of bent angle. We setup other movements in 3 sitting bows as follows by referring Asada 2015. 30° bow is as “Slide down your both hands from knee and touch tatami by only fingertip. Body might have a head forward posture along the movement.” 45° bow is as “Move your fingertip a little forward from eshaku form keeping wrist on your knee. And tip your body forward opening both hands.” 90° bow is as “Keeping the form of eshaku, put your fingertip under the forehead as rei and make shape of mountain by fingertip. The line from head to back would be flat.”

Evaluation of Impression

We had questionnaire on the Internet using Google Form officially by Google. Answers were 21 men and women aged from 23 to 59. On the questionnaire, we gave 15 sitting bow videos (bend angle from 30 to 90°, duration of bend posture from 0 to 4 s) at random and they observed them. Next, they evaluated the each videos by using SD. They started to play each videos whenever they like, evaluated 15 patterns of sitting bow movements and 8 patterns of pair of adjectives with 7 stages. Because adopted the questionnaire which cannot finish with blank, there were no flaws (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Video image

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2.3 The Result and Consideration

We decided to study every participant’s rating value about all sitting bow videos by every pair of adjectives after calculate the average.

Pair of Adjectives “rude/polite”

We found that on the rating average of this pair of adjectives “rude/polite”, the more angle goes to deep, the more rating goes high and the more angle goes to deep, the politer impression would be given. On contrast, in the relation between duration of bend posture, no bend time gave bad impression in regardless of bend angle. Also, we found that while making 1 s duration improved impression, it’s not to say over 2 s duration make better impression than (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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Pair of adjectives “rude/courteous”

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Pair of Adjectives “dishonest/honest”

We also found common element at the pair of adjectives “dishonest/honest” to “rude/polite”. The result of this case is almost same as “rude/polite”. As the angle gets deeper, it gives a more serious impression, but it is difficult to give a serious impression at any angle for a stationary time of 0 s, the impression improves at 1 s duration, and at 2 s duration, evaluation will not rise further. Add to this, there was an inclination to down the evaluation at 30° and 4 s duration (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Pair of adjectives “dishonest/honest”

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Pair of Adjectives “polite/impolite”

This pair of adjectives “polite/impolite” has common element to “rude/courteous” though the graph’s line shape is opposite because of order. The feature is effectively same but we found the decrease of polite evaluation at 30° bend and 4  duration (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Pair of adjectives “polite/impolite”.

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Pair of Adjectives “friendly/unapproachable”

On the rating average of pair of adjectives “friendly/unapproachable”, rating of 45° and 90° are close and 30° has different impression. However compared with no duration, 1 s duration express as friendly in regardless of the bend angle, if the more lenghten the duration, the more unapproachable impression you would give (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
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Pair of adjectives “friendly/unapproachable”

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Pair of Adjectives “natural/unnatural”

This pair of adjectives “natural/unnatural” has same rating average as “friendly/unapproachable”. and the impression differs from 30°. Compared with 0 s, 1 s duration make people feel natural, but you would impress unnatural under lenghten duration in regardless of bend angle (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
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Pair of adjectives “natural/unnatural”

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Pair of Adjectives “uncomfortable/comfortable”

The pair of adjectives “uncomfortable/comfortable” has common element to “friendly/unapproachable”, though the graph’s line shape is opposite because of order. the feature is effectively same (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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Pair of adjectives “uncomfortable/comfortable”

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3 Consideration

In the standing bow study of Gyoba et al. [4], 45° bend angle got higher score than 15°. The more increase the duration from 0 s, the more score goes up and achieve a peak in 1 s. Then as a result, it was in a gradual decline.

In our study of sitting bow, in the case of pairs of adjectives such as “rude/courteous”, “dishonest/honest”, and “polite/impolite”, the more bend angle goes to deep, the more higher evaluation they would be given. And according to the more bend angle goes to deep, the more you express the politeness, it showed there is a relation between depth of angle and polite impression.

Think about the relation to duration of bend posture, while the duration from1sec to 4 s got stable high score in 45° and 90° bow, but the evaluation downed in case the duration exceeds 3 s in 30°. Although we can impress the politeness with long duration in 45° and 90° bow, the polite impression might be diminished by skewed sense which is given by shallow angle, long duration and formal atmosphere in 30° sitting bow.

About “friendly/unapproachable”, “natural/unnatural” and “uncomfortable/comfortable”, it is effect that comparing with previous standing bow study of Gyoba et al. [4]. They showed over 1.5 s duration in standing bow make decreasing of smooth score and we proved it is same as sitting bow. Pairs of adjectives “friendly/unapproachable”, “natural/unnatural” and “uncomfortable/comfortable” had decrease score, so it is obvious that sitting bow has resemble impression about smoothness as standing bow.

4 Conclusion

In this study, we found that the bend angle and duration of bend posture are very important elements about impression and the impression is different from them. But it is also essential to study about the appropriate judgment on each situation because of sitting bow is used in greeting, appreciating and apologizing scene. Based on this result, we would like to widen a search about how the bend angle and duration of bend posture of sitting bow effect the evaluation which they are appropriate or not to greeting, appreciating and apologizing scene.