Taken from “Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by
Edward Hutchings
Near
the end of the year I was in Brazil I received a letter from Professor Wheeler
which said that there was going to be an international meeting of theoretical
physicists in Japan, and might I like to go? Japan had some famous physicists
before the war—Professor Yukawa, with a Nobel prize, Tomonaga, and Nishina—but
this was the first sign of Japan coming back to life after the war, and we all
thought we ought to go and help them along.
Wheeler
enclosed an army phrasebook and wrote that it would be nice if we would all
learn a little Japanese. I found a Japanese woman in Brazil to help me with the
pronunciation, I practiced lifting little pieces of paper with chopsticks, and
I read a lot about Japan. At that time, Japan was very mysterious to me, and I
thought it would be interesting to go to such a strange and wonderful country,
so I worked very hard.
When
we got there, we were met at the airport and taken to a hotel in Tokyo designed
by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was an imitation of a European hotel, right down to
the little guy dressed in an outfit like the Philip Morris guy. We weren’t in
Japan; we might as well have been in Europe or America! The guy who showed us
to our rooms stalled around, pulling the shades up and down, waiting for a tip.
Everything was just like America.
Our
hosts had everything organized. That first night we were served dinner up at
the top of the hotel by a woman dressed Japanese, but the menus were in English.
I had gone to a lot of trouble to learn a few phrases in Japanese, so near the
end of the meal, I said to the waitress, “Kohi-o
motte kite kudasai.” She bowed and walked away.
My
friend Marshak did a double take: “What? What?”
“I
talk Japanese,” I said.
“Oh,
you faker! You’re always kidding around, Feynman.”
“What
are you talkin’ about?” I said, in a serious tone.
“OK,”
he said. “What did you ask?”
“I
asked her to bring us coffee.”
Marshak
didn’t believe me. “I’ll make a bet with you,” he said. “If she brings us
coffee.
The
waitress appeared with our coffee, and Marshak lost his bet.
It
turned out I was the only guy who had learned some Japanese—even Wheeler, who
had told everybody they ought to learn Japanese, hadn’t learned any—and I
couldn’t stand it any more. I had read about the Japanese-style hotels, which
were supposed to be very different from the hotel we were staying in.
The
next morning I called the Japanese guy who was organizing everything up to my
room. “I would like to stay in a Japanese-style hotel.”
“I
am afraid that it is impossible, Professor Feynman.”
I
had read that the Japanese are very polite, but very obstinate: You have to
keep working on them. So I decided to be as obstinate as they, and equally
polite. It was a battle of minds: It took thirty minutes, back and forth.
“Why
do you want to go to a Japanese-style hotel?”
“Because
in this hotel, I don’t feel like I’m in Japan.”
“Japanese-style
hotels are no good. You have to sleep on the floor.”
“That’s
what I want; I want to see how it is.”
“And
there are no chairs—you sit on the floor at the table.”
“It’s
OK. That will be delightful. That’s what I’m looking for.”
Finally
he owns up to what the situation is: “If you’re in another hotel, the bus will
have to make an extra stop on its way to the meeting.”
“No,
no!” I say. “In the morning, I’ll come to this hotel, and get on the bus here.”
“Well,
then, OK. That’s fine.” That’s all there was to it—except it took half an hour
to get to the real problem.
He’s
walking over to the telephone to make a call to the other hotel when suddenly
he stops; everything is blocked up again. It takes another fifteen minutes to
discover that this time it’s the mail. If there are any messages from the
meeting, they already have it arranged where to deliver them.
“It’s
OK,” I say. “When I come in the morning to get the bus, I’ll look for any
messages for me here at this hotel.”
“All
right. That’s fine.” He gets on the telephone and at last we’re on our way to
the Japanese-style hotel.
As
soon as I got there, I knew it was worth it: It was so lovely! There was a
place at the front where you take your shoes off, then a girl dressed in the
traditional outfit—the obi—with sandals comes shuffling out, and takes your
stuff; you follow her down a hallway which has mats on the floor, past sliding
doors made of paper, and she’s going cht-cht-cht-cht
with little steps. It was all very wonderful!
We
went into my room and the guy who arranged everything got all the way down,
prostrated, and touched his nose to the floor; she got down and touched her
nose to the floor. I felt very awkward. Should I touch my nose to the floor, too?
They
said greetings to each other, he accepted the room for me, and went out. It was
a really
wonderful room. There were all the regular, standard things that you know of
now, but it was all new to me. There was a little alcove with a painting in it,
a vase with pussywillows nicely arranged, a table along the floor with a
cushion nearby, and at the end of the room were two sliding doors which opened
onto a garden.
The
lady who was supposed to take care of me was a middle-aged woman. She helped me
undress and gave me a yukata,
a simple blue and white robe, to wear at the hotel.
I
pushed open the doors and admired the lovely garden, and sat down at the table
to do a little work.
I
wasn’t there more than fifteen or twenty minutes when something caught my eye.
I looked up, out towards the garden, and I saw, sitting at the entrance to the
door, draped in the corner, a very beautiful young Japanese woman, in a most
lovely outfit.
I
had read a lot about the customs of Japan, and I had an idea of why she was
sent to my room. I thought, “This might be very interesting!”
She
knew a little English. “Would you rike to see the garden?” she asked.
I
put on the shoes that went with the yukata
I was wearing, and we went out into the garden. She took my arm and showed me
everything.
It
turned out that because she knew a little English, the hotel manager thought I
would like her to show me the garden—that’s all it was. I was a bit
disappointed, of course, but this was a meeting of cultures, and I knew it was
easy to get the wrong idea.
Sometime
later the woman who took care of my room came in and said something—in
Japanese—about a bath. I knew that Japanese baths were interesting and was
eager to try it, so I said, “Hai.”
I
had read that Japanese baths are very complicated. They use a lot of water
that’s heated from the outside, and you aren’t supposed to get soap into the
bathwater and spoil it for the next guy.
I
got up and walked into the lavatory section, where the sink was, and I could
hear some guy in the next section with the door closed, taking a bath. Suddenly
the door slides open: the man taking the bath looks to see who is intruding.
“Professor!” he says to me in English. “That’s a very bad error to go into the
lavatory when someone else has the bath!” It was Professor Yukawa!
He
told me that the woman had no doubt asked do I want a bath, and if so, she would get it
ready for me and tell me when the bathroom was free. But of all the people in
the world to make that serious social error with, I was lucky it was Professor
Yukawa!
That
Japanese-style hotel was delightful, especially when people came to see me
there. The other guys would come in to my room and we’d sit on the floor and
start to talk. We wouldn’t be there more than five minutes when the woman who
took care of my room would come in with a tray of candies and tea. It was as if
you were a host in your own home, and the hotel staff was helping you to entertain
your guests. Here, when you have guests at your hotel room, nobody cares; you
have to call up for service, and so on.
Eating
meals at the hotel was also different. The girl who brings in the food stays
with you while you eat, so you’re not alone. I couldn’t have too good a
conversation with her, but it was all right. And the food is wonderful. For
instance, the soup comes in a bowl that’s covered. You lift the cover and
there’s a beautiful picture: little pieces of onion floating in the soup just
so; it’s gorgeous. How the food looks on the plate is very important.
I
had decided that I was going to live Japanese as much as I could. That meant
eating fish. I never liked fish when I was growing up, but I found out in Japan
that it was a childish thing: I ate a lot of fish, and enjoyed it. (When I went
back to the United States the first thing I did was go to a fish place. It was
horrible—just like it was before. I couldn’t stand it. I later discovered the
answer: The fish has to be very, very fresh—if it isn’t, it gets a certain
taste that bothers me.)
One
time when I was eating at the Japanese-style hotel I was served a round, hard
thing, about the size of an egg yolk, in a cup of some yellow liquid. So far I
had eaten everything in Japan, but this thing frightened me: it was all
convoluted, like a brain looks. When I asked the girl what it was, she replied
“kuri.” That
didn’t help much. I figured it was probably an octopus egg, or something. I ate
it, with some trepidation, because I wanted to be as much in Japan as possible.
(I also remembered the word “kuri
” as if my life depended on it—I haven’t forgotten it in thirty years.)
The
next day I asked a Japanese guy at the conference what this convoluted thing
was. I told him I had found it very difficult to eat. What the hell was “kuri ”?
“It
means ‘chestnut.’” he replied.
Some
of the Japanese I had learned had quite an effect. One time, when the bus was
taking a long time to get started, some guy says, “Hey, Feynman! You know
Japanese; tell ‘em to get going!”
I
said, “Hayaku! Hayaku!
Ikimasho! Ikimasho! ”—which means, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Hurry!
Hurry!”
I
realized my Japanese was out of control. I had learned these phrases from a
military phrase book, and they must have been very rude, because everyone at the
hotel began to scurry like mice, saying, “Yes, sir! Yes sir!” and the bus left
right away.
The
meeting in Japan was in two parts: one was in Tokyo, and the other was in
Kyoto. In the bus on the way to Kyoto I told my friend Abraham Pais about the
Japanese-style hotel, and he wanted to try it. We stayed at the Hotel Miyako,
which had both American-style and Japanese-style rooms, and Pais shared a
Japanese-style room with me.
The
next morning the young woman taking care of our room fixes the bath, which was
right in our room. Sometime later she returns with a tray to deliver breakfast.
I’m partly dressed. She turns to me and says, politely, “Ohayo, gozai masu,” which
means, “Good morning.”
Pais
is just coming out of the bath, sopping wet and completely nude. She turns to
him and with equal composure says, “Ohayo,
gozai masu,” and puts the tray down for us.
Pais
looks at me and says, “God, are we uncivilized!”
We
realized that in America if the maid was delivering breakfast and the guy’s
standing there, stark naked, there would be little screams and a big fuss. But
in Japan they were completely used to it, and we felt that they were much more
advanced and civilized about those things than we were.
I
had been working at that time on the theory of liquid helium, and had figured
out how the laws of quantum dynamics explain the strange phenomena of
super-fluidity. I was very proud of this achievement, and was going to give a
talk about my work at the Kyoto meeting.
The
night before I gave my talk there was a dinner, and the man who sat down next
to me was none other than Professor Onsager, a topnotch expert in solid-state
physics and the problems of liquid helium. He was one of these guys who doesn’t
say very much, but any time he said anything, it was significant.
“Well,
Feynman,” he said in a gruff voice, “I hear you think you have understood
liquid helium.”
“Well,
yes …”
“Hoompf.”
And that’s all he said to me during the whole dinner! So that wasn’t much
encouragement.
The
next day I gave my talk and explained all about liquid helium. At the end, I
complained that there was still something I hadn’t been able to figure out:
that is, whether the transition between one phase and the other phase of liquid
helium was first-order (like when a solid melts or a liquid boils—the
temperature is constant) or second-order (like you see sometimes in magnetism,
in which the temperature keeps changing).
Then
Professor Onsager got up and said in a dour voice, “Well, Professor Feynman is
new in our field, and I think he needs to be educated. There’s something he
ought to know, and we should tell him.”
I
thought, “Geesus! What did I do wrong?”
Onsager
said, “We should tell Feynman that nobody
has ever figured out the order of any
transition correctly from first principles, so the fact that his theory does
not allow him to work out the order correctly does not mean that he hasn’t understood all the
other aspects of liquid helium satisfactorily.” It turned out to be a
compliment, but from the way he started out, I thought I was really going to
get it!
It
wasn’t more than a day later when I was in my room and the telephone rang. It
was Time
magazine. The guy on the line said, “We’re very interested in your work. Do you
have a copy of it you could send us?”
I
had never been in Time
and was very excited. I was proud of my work, which had been received well at
the meeting, so I said, “Sure!”
“Fine.
Please send it to our Tokyo bureau.” The guy gave me the address. I was feeling
great.
I
repeated the address, and the guy said, “That’s right. Thank you very much, Mr.
Pais.”
“Oh,
no!” I said, startled. “I’m not Pais; it’s Pais you want? Excuse me, I’ll tell
him that you want to speak to him when he comes back.”
A
few hours later Pais came in: “Hey, Pais! Pais!” I said, in an excited voice. “Time magazine called!
They want you to send ‘em a copy of the paper you’re giving.”
“Aw!”
he says. “Publicity is a whore!”
I
was doubly taken aback.
I’ve
since found out that Pais was right, but in those days, I thought it would be
wonderful to have my name in Time
magazine.
That
was the first time I was in Japan. I was eager to go back, and said I would go
to any university they wanted me to. So the Japanese arranged a whole series of
places to visit for a few days at a time.
By
this time I was married to Mary Lou, and we were entertained wherever we went.
At one place they put on a whole ceremony with dancing, usually performed only
for larger groups of tourists, especially for us. At another place we were met
right at the boat by all the students. At another place, the mayor met us.
One
particular place we stayed was a little, modest place in the woods, where the
emperor would stay when he came by. It was a very lovely place, surrounded by
woods, just beautiful, the stream selected with care. It had a certain calmness,
a quiet elegance. That the emperor would go to such a place to stay showed a
greater sensitivity to nature, I think, than what we were used to in the West.
At
all these places everybody working in physics would tell me what they were
doing and I’d discuss it with them. They would tell me the general problem they
were working on, and would begin to write a bunch of equations.
“Wait
a minute,” I would say. “Is there a particular example of this general
problem?”
“Why
yes; of course.”
“Good.
Give me one example.” That was for me: I can’t understand anything in general
unless I’m carrying along in my mind a specific example and watching it go.
Some people think in the beginning that I’m kind of slow and I don’t understand
the problem, because I ask a lot of these “dumb” questions: “Is a cathode plus
or minus? Is an anion this way, or that way?”
But
later, when the guy’s in the middle of a bunch of equations, he’ll say
something and I’ll say, “Wait a minute! There’s an error! That can’t be right!”
The
guy looks at his equations, and sure enough, after a while, he finds the
mistake and wonders, “How the hell did this guy, who hardly understood at the
beginning, find that mistake in the mess of all these equations?”
He
thinks I’m following the steps mathematically, but that’s not what I’m doing. I
have the specific, physical example of what he’s trying to analyze, and I know
from instinct and experience the properties of the thing. So when the equation
says it should behave so-and-so, and I know that’s the wrong way around, I jump
up and say, “Wait! There’s a mistake!”
So
in Japan I couldn’t understand or discuss anybody’s work unless they could give
me a physical example, and most of them couldn’t find one. Of those who could,
it was often a weak example, one which could be solved by a much simpler method
of analysis.
Since
I was perpetually asking not for mathematical equations, but for physical
circumstances of what they were trying to work out, my visit was summarized in
a mimeographed paper circulated among the scientists (it was a modest but
effective system of communication they had cooked up after the war) with the
title, “Feynman’s Bombardments, and Our Reactions.”
After
visiting a number of universities I spent some months at the Yukawa Institute
in Kyoto. I really enjoyed working there. Everything was so nice: You’d come to
work, take your shoes off, and someone would come and serve you tea in the
morning when you felt like it. It was very pleasant.
While
in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at
it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took
lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour.
One
day he was teaching me the word for “see.” “All right,” he said. “You want to
say, ‘May I see your garden?’ What do you say?”
I
made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned.
“No,
no!” he said. “When you say to someone, ‘Would you like to see my garden? you
use the first ‘see.’ But when you want to see someone else’s garden, you must
use another ‘see,’ which is more polite.”
“Would
you like to glance at
my lousy garden?” is essentially what you’re saying in the first case, but when
you want to look at the other fella’s garden, you have to say something like,
“May I observe
your gorgeous garden?” So there’s two different words you have to use.
Then
he gave me another one: “You go to a temple, and you want to look at the
gardens …”
I
made up a sentence, this time with the polite “see.”
“No,
no!” he said. “In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to
say something that would be equivalent to ‘May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite
gardens?’”
Three
or four different words for one idea, because when I’m doing it, it’s miserable; when you’re doing it, it’s
elegant.
I
was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if
this same problem existed among the scientists.
At
the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, “How would I say
in Japanese, ‘I solve the Dirac Equation’?”
They
said such-and-so.
“OK.
Now I want to say, ‘Would you
solve the Dirac Equation?’—how do I say that?”
“Well,
you have to use a different word for ‘solve,’ “they say.
“Why?”
I protested. “When I
solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you
solve it!”
“Well,
yes, but it’s a different word—it’s more polite.”
I
gave up. I decided that wasn’t the language for me, and stopped learning
Japanese.