The ‘untranslatable’ Japanese phrase that predicts love

She said something to the effect that she has a type, and she was at a party and sees this good looking guy across the room, in profile, and thinks, “oh my, who is that?” When he turns around and she sees it’s Ashton she says to herself, “uh oh, I’m in trouble.”

Sounds like that may be closer to the situation here than the more cliched love at first sight.

Sounds like limerence. Which is a sort of made up word, but a useful one.

The problem is, what I'm thinking of with myself is something that I was not consciously aware of at the time, but that definitely occurred. So I can't relate to the idea of "I will probably fall in love with this person." Rather, it's there's this reaction I have, that's probably some initial attraction, or picking up on subtle cues of their attraction, or mutual attraction, that I'm not aware of at the time.

Generally speaking, I feel like I want to impress this person a lot, and feel kind of inferior or insufficient or something, like I want them to like me. It's not a manipulative feeling, like I want to manipulate them, but rather a genuine feeling of wanting to be a better person, or more attractive, in response to them. It's almost as if my brain is trying to be sexually and romantically attractive to a person I don't even know I'm attracted to.

However, in these situations, I would never really think anything about being attracted to them. If someone brought it up with me, I might even think it's absurd, and not even in a defensive way, but just in the sense that it never ever occurred to me to be in a relationship with them. I don't think to myself "oh that person is really attractive," or "they're the sort of person I'd like to be with." It's something I'm really unaware of, sometimes even for months of knowing the person. It's a very visceral, primal kind of thing.

This article seems to be describing a very similar idea, but at a later stage, where I might be becoming aware of feelings but am not entirely sure of the consequences of it or something.

It can take a sentence, a paragraph or an essay.

What the term usually means is: it is not translatable as a single word. And in this case, it isn't.

I would be interested to hear what the other factors are.

Jishin–(self-assured-ness) ii kanji–(feels right) yasashii kanji–(nice to someone) atama ga ii–(smart)

I think you're comment is overly dismissive.

First, other cultures probably do have it, but it's just not named as a phenomenon. I personally don't believe the nihonjinron theory. That said, the language and culture is very linguistically and sociologically distant from the west, so some terms don't translate naturally or easily.

Second, you will see this phenomenon in cultures and subcultures that are more collectivist than individualistic. Most countries in the west trend towards individualistic, while most in east Asia trend towards collectivist. Note that how this individualism and collectivism manifests themselves is a fascinating topic, so exceptions are easy to spot depending on the granularity that one looks at a given culture.

Third, the Japanese concept of love can be a bit different than that in the west. Many Japanese marriages are more like brotherly/sisterly love than "romantic" love -- in fact I find that these marriages are often the most stable I have ever seen (this has a lot of caveats, but I'm typing on my phone). Other Japanese marriages are based on a principle of something like "good enough" -- that is, they set a reasonable bar for want they want, and they will happily take anything above that bar. This is a pretty healthy approach imho, as long as the bar is not regularly set too low. A lot of what is wanted is pretty health stuff like a pleasant disposition, empathy, self-confidence, etc. I think people in other cultures wan this, too, and in many situations they can and do get it. That said, sometimes other competing values in the west get in the way of otherwise healthy relationships or marriages from developing.

Anyway, i encourage you to look into this more. It's a fascinating topic, and it's not nihinjinron propanda, imho.

The thing I like about other cultures is how we find different solutions to similar problems. They often aren’t better, or are only better in certain situations (see also eating utensils, and availability or scarcity of metal), but they broaden your views on things.