[1] is a Japanese value roughly corresponding to "duty", "obligation", or even "burden of obligation" in English. defines it as "to serve one's superiors with a self-sacrificing devotion". It is among the complex Japanese values that involve loyalty, gratitude, and moral debt.[2] The conflict between and, or "human feeling", has historically been a primary topic of Japanese drama.
is a social obligation, best explained by how it conflicts with ., is among those forms and actions that locates the self in relation to society, whereas concerns the inner and intimate realm of the self.[3] The - dichotomy reflects the human dilemma of needing to belong to the realm of the outside and of the inside .[4]
relationships have an emotive quality. Fulfilling one's obligation does not merely entail the consideration of interest or profit anticipated; rather is also based on feelings of affection.[5] relationships are perpetual, not transactional.
may be seen in many different aspects of modern Japanese behavior. An example is Japanese gift-giving. It is marked by an unwritten, but no less real, perceived balance of "giri" in which unusually large gifts must be reciprocated. "" is a specific term referring to the obligation of close colleagues or associates to provide Valentine's Day or White Day chocolates to each other even if they feel no romantic feelings (although Valentine's Day is a Western tradition that was imported to Japan only relatively recently, and White Day is a holiday invented in 1978 by the National Confectionery Industry Association to sell twice as many confections each year).
Japanese corporations have one of the lowest rates of laying off or firing employees of any industrialized nation. Employees reciprocate that loyalty through their personal habits. Whereas in the West, engineers from different companies might be friends, this is far rarer in Japan. Employees' sense of obligation may be so strong that they consume only the beer and other products produced by their conglomerate's affiliates (). Part time workers, however, are not so particular.
Japanese abroad often complain about the poor service to be found in non-Japanese countries. While some modern Westerners might prize individuality and the right of a serviceperson to be an assertive social equal with opinions, Japanese generally value carrying out one's work obligations to the best of one's ability, including what might seem to those from less formal social environments like excessive, mawkish, or even hypocritical or contrived formality and servility.
Some social historians believe the pervasiveness of the concept in Japanese culture is a reflection of the static feudal order that defined Japanese society for centuries. " books", or village registers that included all the unpaid obligations of one family or individual to another, were a cultural phenomenon that could exist only in a static agricultural culture, as opposed to a migrant or hunter/gatherer tradition.