Is listening in on a conversation at court dishonorable?

Question

Emerald Empire p. 43 states:

Rokugan is a society where every residence is crowded and privacy is rare and difficult to attain. If that were not enough, most internal walls (and even some external ones) are made of paper. The Rokugani have devised a variety of social conventions to get around this problem, of which the most basic is simply to refuse to notice anything that does not concern them personally. Thus a Rokugani guest will sit quietly in his room, pretending not to hear a bitter argument between his host’s family members in the adjoining room.

Certainly this illustrates that causing the other samurai to lose on by reacting to his unobserved dishonorable behavior would be a breach of etiquette. It seems unclear whether or not noting that behavior and conversation, assuming you witnessed it with your eyes, for later use would be. The text continues:

One of the more specialized variants on this social rule involves the use of shoji screens—folding screens of paper or silk, mounted in thin wooden frames. These can be moved anywhere within a residence, and by social compact they are considered the same as walls—so a pair of samurai may arrange “privacy” simply by stepping behind a convenient shoji, without ever leaving the room. Of course, whatever they say will be clearly audible, but the Empire’s social rules mean that anyone who refers to their “private” conversation will be confessing to eavesdropping, instantly placing themselves in the wrong."

Herein eavesdropping is defined as listening in on a conversation made "private" by use of a shoji screen. There are a number of other references in the books to eavesdropping but the context is always the same or ambiguous. It never seems to explicitly be used in the modern sense (listening to a conversation you are not party to).

Is there any text in any edition or fiction that specifically calls out listening to a conversation you are not party to as being dishonorable (that does not use the word eavesdropping or does so in a manner that illustrates that physical barriers were not involved)? Is there any text that clarifies that that acting on a conversation that is overheard is fine?

I can argue circles around this subject from both sides all day, so I'm specifically looking for references that provide a concrete answer.

Answer 1

I need to do some searching in my books, but I recall a passage saying that while it is dishonorable to blatantly say you heard it from eavesdropping, there is no dishonor on using what you now know to find it out in a legitimate way. There is nothing wrong with saying "I have a hunch Ichiru and Hitomi are having an affair", but saying "I listened in on Ichiru and Hitomi whispering sweet nothings through a screen" is a breach of etiquette. You can't "unknow" what you heard, so acting on it, as long as nobody can prove you did something dishonorable, is okay. It's how the Scorpion and Crane courtiers always seem to have strong intuition, and they definitely play on the clan stereotypes to get away with clandestine methods as long as they are the only ones who know how it happened.

Actually, the passage is a continuation of what the question includes from Emerald Empire's sidebar on pg43.

Of course, social convention does not prevent a samurai from acting on information he gained by overhearing a “private” conversation behind a shoji screen—he just has to avoid ever admitting where he got that information. Among skilled courtiers, the use and manipulation of information through conversations behind shoji can become a high art.

Answer 2

I've read most of the 4th edition books and I don't recall any passage that explicitly gives you the answer you seek so I hope my interpretation helps:

Court is a public space, everyone there is invited to be there and is expected to take part to some degree, even if that is just standing around silently representing their clan (Ie. court concerns them personally). Everything said in court is fair game until someone goes behind a shoji screen or otherwise makes it implicitly clear that their conversation is private. Even then, the realities of court and Rokugani life make true privacy difficult, odds are good someone is going to hear you. That, in itself, is not dishonourable; admitting to it is.

Rokugani culture is all about Face and keeping everything running as smoothly and gracefully on the surface as possible, even if everyone is actually struggling like hell underneath.

Answer 3

Depending who is doing the eavesdropping determines if such an action is dishonorable. A Doji courtier and even a Crab courtier would certainly find it dishonorable, but the Daidoji, Otomo, and Scorpions may be able to justify it. Samurai are sometimes known to utilize eta for such tasks as eta are essentially invisible and not subject to the same honor restrictions.