よろしくお願いします has no formal English equivilant

よろしくお願いします　（よろしくおねがいします）　yoroshiku onegaishimasu

As a native English speaker, this phrase has been the hardest to understand in my meager 3 years of studying the Japanese language. I’ve asked numerous native Japanese speakers to explain it to me. I’ve gotten numerous responses. It means ‘Nice to meet you!’ they say, or can be used when parting like ‘Kind regards.’ My absolute beginner Japanese text book translates どうぞ　よろしく (douzo yoroshiku) as ‘Nice to meet you,’ but literally translated I discover it means ‘Please kindly,’ said as a way of suggesting that the person being spoken to kindly treat the speaker well. What? Call me naive, but isn’t that rather offensive? I mean to be on the offense, assuming up front, that the person you are meeting for the first time is likely to not treat you well.

My worst experience with this term so far was when I used it as a parting statement with someone I had met for the first time (someone Japanese). He blankly looked at me and said ‘no.. you don’t say that now,’ without any explanation as to when I should say it. Sounds unusually uncharacteristic coming from a native Japanese speaker doesn’t it? I thought so. Because of this, my caution surrounding the use of this term increased as did my sense of discomfort. It must be a very important term for someone Japanese to break from character and appear so stern and unapologetic about it’s use.
Ok, all jesting aside, I do understand the meaning to be ‘nice to meet you’ when used in introductions and that any native Japanese speaker hearing this would likely understand it to be a friendly greeting, but what about the numerous ‘other’ situations it is used in? For example, it is often used in parting statements by friends and strangers alike, specifically in letters and emails. Or sometimes it is used in place of the English Thank You.

There is a complex hierarchy of honorary terms used by people in Japan with varying status’s, but why is this term so common among the Japanese people and why is it so hard to pin it’s meaning down? For this reason I have avoided using this term for almost 3 full years. Yet, I find it unavoidable and finally must have an explanation that will ultimately lessen my queasiness around the use of the term.
From Japanese text books (more advanced than my beginner text) – よろしく yoroshiku is an adverb meaning ‘in a good/appropriate way’ and when used with the verb 願う negau = I make a request of you (お願いします onegaishimasu is the polite form of the verb) it definitely seems to have another meaning besides ‘Nice to meet you’. Jun Ohashi in her study “Japanese culture specific face and politeness orientation: A pragmatic investigation of yoroshiku onegaishimasu” describes it as a ‘negative politeness strategy’ used to balance the debt/credit equilibrium, or to save face (face being positive or negative self image) when asking for a favour from someone. So how does meeting someone for the first time equate to asking for a favour? The Japanese have their own way of inventing politeness (as it is very important to them) and by asking the person to ‘treat you kindly’ you are shifting the focus from the speaker to the listener, therefore giving them more status and hoping that they will treat you kindly with this status given (by you). Perhaps this explains the ‘bowing’ wars I’ve sometimes witnessed by the Japanese of the elder generation. They are attempting to give more credit to the other by bowing lower, therefore putting themselves beneath the other in status. While shifting credit from themselves to the recipient, the recipient tries to restore the debt/credit balance by bowing lower than the other, and on it can continue.

Well I think I understand now… よろしくお願いします！Or in other words… “I beg of you to go easy on me!” (expecially if I use this damn term wrong again) :0

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