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The apology that is not about feeling sorry
A Japanese business apology is a document with a job: restore the relationship and state what will stop it recurring. Whether anyone feels remorse is not the subject, which is why 深く反省しております reads badly in a short mail — it makes the writer's interior the topic when the reader wants the fix. The shape 中村 gives Alex is the one taught in corporate training and visible in every public apology: the four moves, in that order, and brevity as the proof of seriousness. It also explains the famous televised bow. The bow is not a feeling either; it is the physical form of the same document, and its depth and duration are calibrated to the harm.