project's soup

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51. I like a woman who follows three steps behind me.
She decides to follow me on her own accord, and so she follows me while placing her trust in me.
The act of trusting someone needs no reason or logic.
She trusts herself and her own intuition.
This proves that she is that powerful a woman.

It's an ancient Japanese concept that has been passed down through generations, isn't it? Japanese women following three steps behind their men. This was misunderstood by an idiotic American college professor who had no understanding of Japanese culture to mean this: "Japanese women are being discriminated against by men and are not permitted to walk alongside men. In this day and age when "ladies first" is becoming the global standard..."  In response, an even stupider Japanese college professor started saying "Men and women must be treated as equals". This is like putting the cart before the horse. This [misunderstanding] happened because they didn't understand the true meaning [of the phrase]. This is nothing short of a tragedy.
Following three steps behind doesn't really mean "following three steps behind". It actually means "allowing [the man] to walk three steps ahead". Too many people are unaware of this.
Japan is the country of samurai. At the core of the way of samurai and their ideology, there is a fundamental concept of "protecting the people you love". This is the most important point of the Bushido concept. If your loved one were walking in front of you, you wouldn't be able to protect her, would you? It's the expression of the will to protect your loved one by walking ahead of her, by asking her to walk behind you.
But Japanese women have always been modest, so they didn't phrase this as "I permit him to walk [ahead of me]", but instead they expressed it modestly as "I follow [him]". This is the origin of the phrase "follow three steps behind".
Even a President doesn't walk ahead of everybody. First the secret service, and then the President follows. Keeping the person you need to protect positioned behind you at all times, that's basic.
A woman allows a man to walk ahead of her because she trusts him. This doesn't really have to do with the submissiveness of women. A woman lets her man walk ahead of her because there is trust between them, because she judges the man as someone she can trust as her protector, because she's confident with the man she chose for herself. If she's not confident, she won't let him walk ahead of her.
That's the true yamatonadeshiko!!, some may say. But that's incorrect. I believe that this whole interpretation itself is the origin of Bushido. It's not "yamatonadeshiko", but "the wife of a bushi [=samurai]". Most Japanese women today don't know this true meaning.
The phrase "follow three steps behind" simply came from women trying to save their men's faces. It's an expression of trust - the trust women have in their men to have the ability to protect them. They wouldn't want to follow men who can't [even protect them], now would they? ”

Reposted from lladia via mondkroete