Reply #92: You've added to it significantly

[notesdev]

Obama's bow was not a "highest respect" bow, but a servant->master bow, completely inappropriate for a head of state. American heads of state should bow to no one.

No Japanese is going to mistake this gross error as a gesture of respect. They will interpret it as what it looks like in their culture, a gesture of submissiveness.

Either the protocol wing there is completely incompetent or Obama chose to wing it/do his own thing. As a foreign head of state, Obama is not part of the Japanese social structure and should not be assuming a role within it, never mind a subservient role.

For people who are supposed to be aware of cultures outside our own, the ethnocentricity in trying to explain away this awkward gaffe is astonishing.