They Have a Word for It ... And We Don't

Sekken

There is a Japanese word, "sekken", I would like to understand better. It is used to name the otherwise nameless social consensus, that is held to control Japanese public life...

A Japanese friend, who is irreverent towards her own culture, explained “sekken” to be the power that moves a large school of fish this way and that, as if they were a single organism. It is “the power that can move the entire school into the astute fisherman’s net”. She experienced it once herself, in a small way, when she wrote something controversial that happened to be true. She found herself in the position of the lone fish, who has somehow missed the tribal instruction to turn a sharp left.

David Warren