Abstract
“Emotions” are a psychological category that was first expounded in the eighteenth century, whereas earlier classical literature, since the time of ancient Greece, had used the term “passion.” Descartes elucidated that thoughts are the essence of the “ego.” According to Descartes, thoughts proceed from the soul, and actions of the soul are our will. On the contrary, passions are our perceptions that include emotions in a wider sense. “Passion” is an important word in both philosophy and linguistics. The fact that a great majority of adjectives designating emotions in English are derived from participles, is suggestive of the passivity of emotions. For Descartes, emotions are the negation of thoughts as action, whereas emotions play a central role in Japanese culture. In the Japanese language, emotions are verbally expressed in spontaneous and non-volitional form. Therefore, it is suggested that research on the characteristics of emotional expressions in the Japanese language could result in a new formulation of the concept of emotions.
