Bending to Rise, Part 2: The Coffee and Japanese Bow on a Bullet Train
Insight No. 20
Author: Mani Skaria, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M–Kingsville
Inspired by a reader’s reflection on a previous post
After sharing my previous essay on humility — Bending to Rise: The Hidden Power of Touching Someone’s Feet – one comment from my friend Joseph V. Mathew stayed with me.
He wrote about “Ojigi”, the Japanese tradition of bowing — an art of showing respect through elegance and mindfulness.
Joseph explained that in Japan, bowing is not an act of submission but a refined expression of gratitude, apology, or acknowledgment — a gesture that speaks before words do.
His words reminded me of a quiet morning from our travels — a small moment that carried a lifetime of meaning. In 2023, my wife, Anne, and I were on a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, a sleek arrow gliding through a land where discipline meets beauty.
We ordered coffee. It arrived in a porcelain cup so elegant that, even before tasting it, we felt a sense of gratitude.
Perhaps that grace — the cup, the aroma, the calm—was part of what came with a business-class ticket.
The coffee was not free, and gladly I reached to pay. I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill; the hostess smiled and bowed slightly, declining.
I offered my American Express — another gentle refusal. Then a Visa — still no.
She smiled again and, with soft hands, made a little circle in the air, a language without words: Only Japanese yen.
I didn’t have any.
She bowed once more, apologizing as though she were at fault.
A few minutes later, she returned — this time carrying a plain white cup.
Without a word, she poured the fragrant coffee from the elegant porcelain into the simpler cup and handed it to me.
That gesture told the story: she needed to record the premium cups used for accounting, but she could still give me the coffee.
It was a gift, and a quiet lesson.
Before she left, she bowed — deeply, sincerely — not as a worker to a customer, but as one human acknowledging another.
Her humility filled the space like fragrance from the coffee itself.
My wife and I looked at each other and smiled.
I joked, “Ron (our son) should find a Japanese girl like her to marry!”
My wife laughed and said, “No, no — then they’ll keep him here in Japan!”
And the two of us laughed together as the train sped on, carrying both coffee and contentment through the gentle countryside.
For a moment, my thoughts flew home — to Kerala, India.
where sometimes a missing coin can ignite a quarrel,
where tempers rise faster than kettles.
And there, on that train gliding across Japan, I thought:
If only our elected leaders and public servants could spend six months here —
not to study bullet-train technology,
But to study the human technology of respect.
Because progress is not measured by the speed of the train,
But by the grace of the bow.
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“True progress begins when humility travels faster than technology.” -Mani Skaria
