← Kinesics — gestures

The farewell wave vs the shooing gesture

In Japan and parts of Asia, flapping the hand palm down means 'come here' (temaneki). To Western eyes, that flutter looks like shooing someone away. The exact inversion of the intent.

Category : Kinesics — gesturesSubcategory : salutations-departsConfidence level : 3/5 (documented hypothesis)Identifier : e0089

Meaning

Target direction : Politely calling someone over: in Japan (temaneki), the Philippines, Korea, China and Vietnam, the hand flaps palm down, fingers folding toward oneself, to say 'come here' — friendly and perfectly courteous.

Interpreted meaning : To Western eyes, that palm-down flutter looks exactly like the gesture that drives someone off: 'go away', 'shoo'. The invitation reads as a contemptuous dismissal — the visitor thinks they are being sent away when they are being called over.

Geography of misunderstanding

1. The gesture and its expected meaning

Two nearly identical gestures share the same hand flutter. In the West, waving a raised hand at a departing person says 'goodbye'. In Japan, the temaneki (手招き) — hand extended palm down, fingers folding repeatedly toward the palm — says the exact opposite of a send-off: 'come here'. The same palm-down convention holds in the Philippines, Korea, China and Vietnam, where beckoning palm up, let alone with a curled index finger, is reserved for animals and reads as degrading when aimed at a person. This entry covers the call/dismissal axis; the reverse axis — the big Western goodbye read as a beckon — is covered in e0071.

2. Where things go wrong: the geography of misunderstanding

The misunderstanding strikes the Western eye first: the palm-down flutter looks exactly like the gesture that drives someone off — 'shoo', 'go away', the backhand flick of a master dismissing a servant. A Japanese or Filipino host kindly calling a European visitor over may watch them turn on their heels, offended at having been, they believe, dismissed. The most famous object of this misunderstanding is the maneki-neko, the 'beckoning cat' of Japanese shops: its raised paw, palm toward the viewer, performs a temaneki — and Westerners see a waving cat, to the point that figurines made for export have the paw reversed, palm skyward, to resemble a Western beckon (Wikipedia EN, Maneki-neko). In the opposite direction, a Westerner beckoning palm up with a curled index commits an insulting gesture in the Philippines and much of Southeast Asia.

3. Historical genesis

The palm-down beckoning convention is old in East Asia, but its earliest datable iconographic attestation is Japanese: Utagawa Hiroshige's woodblock print Joruri-machi Hanka no zu (1852, late Edo period) shows maru-shime no neko, variants of the maneki-neko, sold at a market — proof that the inviting cat's gesture was already lexicalised. Comparative gesture scholarship (Morris 1977; Morris and colleagues 1979; Axtell 1998) documented the bifurcation: palm down = beckoning in East and Southeast Asia, palm down = dismissal in Europe and North America, where beckoning is done palm up.

4. Famous documented incidents

No tier-1 intercultural incident is documented for this gesture: three alleged incidents in an earlier version of this entry (a Manila negotiation in 2005, diplomatic protocol in Tokyo in 2011, a commercial tension in Seoul in 2013) rested on no verifiable source and were removed. The industrial adaptation of the maneki-neko for the Western market — paw reversed, palm skyward — remains the best documented material trace of the misunderstanding (Wikipedia EN; National Geographic).

5. Practical recommendations

In East and Southeast Asia, beckon with the whole hand, palm down; never use the palm-up curled index. In the West, read an Asian interlocutor's palm-down flutter as an invitation, not a send-off. In both directions the remedy is the same: pair words with the gesture, and read the context — smile, gaze, distance. See also e0071 (goodbye read as beckoning), e0068 (open palms) and e0064 (the Italian wrist flick).

Historical origins

Palm-down beckoning is an old East Asian convention; the earliest datable iconographic attestation is Hiroshige's print Joruri-machi Hanka no zu (1852, late Edo) showing maru-shime no neko sold at a market. The bifurcation is documented by Morris 1977, Morris and colleagues 1979 and Axtell 1998: palm down = beckoning in Asia, dismissal in the West.

Practical recommendations

Neutral alternatives

• Pair words with the gesture ('come', 'goodbye')
• In Asia, beckon palm down with the whole hand
• Walk over yourself rather than signalling

Sources