Victory Manual

I found an NHK website aimed at Japanese school children for learning Japanese. (国語)

There was an article on the difference between だ and です forms, and what it boiled down to was whether or not the student was nervous or relaxed. But what I found the most interesting wasn’t the grammar content, but the explanation of the term きんちょう (what we would call ‘nervous’ in English). Here’s what it had to say:

「きんちょう」とは、相手と自分の心が遠いと感じることです。

Basically, that says, “You feel ‘nervous’ when you feel an emotional distance between yourself and who you are talking to.”

In my opinion, the English term ‘nervous’ can have absolutely nothing at all to do with who you are addressing. It’s a completely internal, personal emotion that can be set off by a variety of circumstances. In a class of your peers, for example, you can feel completely relaxed and comfortable until you have to stand up in front of them all and present a project. It’s the same group of people, but you are put on the spot and start sweating the succcess or failure of your work.

Also, not everyone is nervous when they meet someone new, even if they are consciously aware of an “emotional distance”. Again, this is an internal, personal feeling that is different in every person.

I’m interested to hear how other native Japanese speakers would explain the term ‘きんちょう’ to see if this is a really a cultural difference in terms of how the word is used.