In Shizuko Go's Requiem, a painfully beautiful novel about the destruction of a vast web of social relationships in Japan through wartime deaths in the last months of World War II, the heroine Setsuko is entertained by an older woman whom she has never met before and is unlikely ever to see again. She recalls "the familiar precept of perfect hospitality: 'We meet but once'" (Go 1985, 107). There is strategic subtlety in this bit of popular wisdom. If I know we meet but once, my hospitality is not an initial move in a potential trust or exchange relationship. It does not encapsulate your interest in reciprocity over the long run. It is purely a gift or an expression of my hospitable character.

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'meet but once' hospitality is strategic, removing the possibility of long-term reciprocity from the exchange.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 817