Iima, a word hunter, talks about the “expression of a bewildering politician”: “I should reflect on what I should reflect on,” “If I have misled you,” and so on.

If I have misled you” => “You have misled me.”

One more thing: “If I have misled you” is said to be surprisingly infrequent in the Diet Proceedings (except for other phrases such as “If I have misled you” or “If I have misled you”).

The first time it appears is in 1954, and the next in 1965. For a while after the war, the hypothetical forms ‘if I misled you’ and ‘if I misled you’ were not used very often.

However, this too became prominent from the 1970s.

In the past, there were many years when there were no examples of its use, but in the ’70s, there were four examples of its use. In 1994 and 2011, there were five cases, which is particularly conspicuous. ’11 was the year of the Great East Japan Earthquake. There are also several instances in which “If I have misled you” is used as an explanation for statements made regarding the earthquake and the nuclear power plant accident.

After all, this is also a phrase that has become common in the Diet proceedings from the end of the 20th century to the present century.

Based on these trends, Mr. Iima offers the following analysis.

Both ‘I will reflect on what I should reflect on’ and ‘If I have caused a misunderstanding’ are in the subjunctive, as if to say, ‘If there is something to reflect on,’ or ‘It was your misunderstanding that caused the misunderstanding.

In the eighth edition of the Sanseido Japanese Dictionary, the following commentary is added to the “Misunderstanding” section. The eighth edition of the Sanseido Japanese Dictionary adds this explanation: “The apology, ‘I apologize for the misunderstanding that my statement caused,’ can also be used as an expression of responsibility: ‘It was you who misunderstood. Correcting the statement conveys sincerity].

Also, ‘I should be sorry for what I said’ is not yet in the dictionary, but it might be shown as an example of a common phrase.

Another conveniently used phrase is ‘I am truly sorry for the trouble I have caused you. It is a word of apology, but it is accompanied by a light feeling that you have caused a commotion around you due to an internal problem. It sounds bizarre when used in cases where serious damage has been done to society. It doesn’t give the impression of sincerity to apologize only for causing a public uproar without mentioning the substance of the problem.”

Good coping”: Unclear what exactly he wants to do…

There are more words that Mr. Iima focuses on in his “History of Excuses. They are “we will take good care of it” and “we will positively consider it.

The phrase ‘we will take good care of it’ is also used to mean that we will not do it positively,” he said. For example, there is a story that in December 1969, when Prime Minister Eisaku Sato was asked by President Nixon at the Japan-U.S. textile negotiations about textile export controls, he said, “I will take good care of it. For Prime Minister Sato, the expression was ambiguous, limited to ‘well, if possible,’ but when translated into English, it was made to mean ‘I will try to meet your expectations,’ which was positive, and the U.S. became more aggressive. It is not officially recorded, but is spoken of as hearsay information.

There is also a comment by Tokuro Irie, a columnist for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, about “Zensho. The cliché of the government office is: ‘We have not received a report yet. If it is true, it is a big problem. If it is true, it will be a big problem. I will check it out immediately and do my best to deal with it. This was often quoted later.

In fact, the word “zenpatsu” itself seems to have appeared before the Edo period, but it was not until the Taisho period (1912-1926) that it came into wide use.

In 1924, Prime Minister Takaaki Kato addressed the House of Representatives and stated in ambiguous terms that he would “make every effort to deal with the problem of reforming the House of Peers. It was unclear what exactly he wanted to do, and he was criticized quite a bit.

The use of this phrase by Prime Minister Kato triggered the rapid spread of “zenpatsu”. People learned that they could cheat by saying, “I will take good care of it,” instead of “I will do it” or “I will not do it. This has continued to the present day.

In addition, “positive consideration” first appeared in the Diet Proceedings in the early 1960s. Since then, the number of cases has generally increased every year, and by the 1970s, there were more than 200 cases a year,” he said.

In the 1970s, the number of cases exceeded 200 a year. It was overused in the 1970s and was criticized for being ambiguous, so people began to cut back a little on the use of the term.

The Sanseido Kokusai Jiten (Dictionary of Japanese Language and Literature) also includes an example sentence, “Positive consideration” in the “Positive” section, with the explanation that it is “often used by politicians and officials in their evasive speeches.