I was thinking about the meaning of "reliable" in English and found out that it was more about a sense of responsability mixed with moral and rationality. The Japanese equivalent "tayorigai" refers to financial and practical things. This is one of the fundamental difference betwen the West and Japan, or even all East Asian cultures.
Let me develop this. For me a reliable person is someone who does not cause trouble by forgetting about their responsibility (not just according to their social position or function, but a wider meaning of responsibility as human being), common-sense and wisdom.
In everyday life that could be : arriving on time at appointments, take care of various things of one's own initiative, not making noise when we know that other people are sleeping, turning off the tap or fire when someone has forgotten about it, taking care of one's children or pets appropriately...
Reliability is also doing something when you accepted a task or said you would do it. For example, if a man is asked by his wife to buy food at the supermarket on his way back from work, and he forgets (esp. because of lack of care), he is not reliable. If the boss ask an employee to do a job, reliability is assessed by how well that employee does the job as requested.
In my opinion, most of the financial aspects (job stability, high-income, etc.) are not important in the Western sense of "reliability", as long as one has enough money or ressources to survive.
For Westerners, having money, a good-job, being well-educated, well-mannered, etc. are not connected to the meaning of "reliability", but rather to "status". In my opinion, reliablitity and status are two completely different things. But it seems that the Japanese word "tayorigai" encompasses both meanings and includes other things too like muscles, charm, looks, kindness (to women), and so on.
But "reliability" has also a more profound meaning in the West, e.g. in politics, when it equates to be humanitarian and selfless. Judging by this standard, lots of politicians are quite unreliable people, caring more about their career and personal profits than about what is "good for the people". That is why people can't rely on them. So, in the Japanese definition of "tayorigai", politicians may be seen as very reliable (for all the reason cited by Kara in "1) Social life", although they would be considered very unreliable using the Western meaning.
As I explained in the previous post, Kara's 2nd point "Personal life" is so typically Japanese (avoid 不安 or anxiety), that it can hardly be considered as a criterium of "reliability" in the West. Regarding the "home-making" things (cooking, do the washing, cleaning, gardening, electricity, carpentry...), I'd rather put it along with the third point, "Responding to emergencies", in what French call "debrouillardise". There is no translation in English, but it refers to being able to cope with any situation by oneself, or being self-sufficient. Again, it is not what spings to mind when talking about "reliability" in European languages.
It's interesting to see how different the 2 concepts of "reliability" can be. My wife said that she agreed 100% with Kara's explanation. I would like to hear other Japanese and Werterners' opinions about each definition (Japanese vs Western, as stated in this thread), just to make sure that everyone agrees on this basic cultural difference. What I mean is that I don't expect Westerners to understand "reliability" by the Japanese sense (Kara's), but the Western (my explanation in this post), while the Japanese should find Kara's explanation much more suitable to the meaning of "tayorigai" than my definition of "reliability".
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