Japanese Cultural Trivia:

Surprise!

You get a bonus third post today and a bit of Japanese Cultural trivia that includes some history, some culinary customs, some vocabulary, and some awesome.

Monday, as you know, was 海の日(umi no hi), but did you know that today is 土用の丑の日 (doyou no ushi no hi)?

I bet that you did not.

In it's most common usage, and according to Rikai-chan, 土用 means "midsummer" or "the dog days of summer," but actually, EVERY season has it's 土用。As this site explains, each season has an official starting day (you can find it on most calendars) and the 土用 period comprises the 18 days before the official start of the next season. For example, the first day of Autumn usually falls on or near August 8th, and the 18 days before that (where we are now) is considered 夏の土用.

(Traditionally, 夏の土用 is the most important of all the 土用s because it's an extremely busy time for agriculture, which is why most people only use it to refer to the summer.)

Now, 丑の日 or the day of the ox, is borrowed from Chinese astrology, and before I spend nine hours on the internet trying to find out what makes 丑の日 different from the other 11 kinds of days, I'm just going to acknowledge the fact that it's not THAT important to this post. The point is that since the Chinese astrological cycle of days repeats every 12 days, and there are 18 days in 土用, you're guaranteed at least one 土用の丑の日.

土用の丑の日 traditionally represents the hottest, most humid, nastiest summer day (not in terms of actual temperature records or humidity indexes, but just... in general) and it's a day when you might be particularly susceptible to today's bonus word:

夏バテ
なつばて
natsubate

夏バテ is a term that might also be misleading, depending on your dictionary. I've seen it listed as "adaptation to the summer heat," which sounds to me like getting used to/dealing with it. In actual usage, 夏バテ is closer to "heat stroke." It's a term for exhaustion, fatigue, general malaise and physical misery that you suffer during the nearly unbearable summer months.

But don't worry. There is a trick to beating 夏バテ that every person living in Japan should know, and I'm going to reveal it to. You might even have noticed it yourself at restaurants, or supermarkets, or in advertisements for either of the above. Today, all across Japan, Japanese people will be consuming massive quantities of うなぎ、fresh-water eel.

If you've ever tried unagi, basted in a mildly sweet barbecue sauce (think 繊細） served over steamed rice (even better when the rice and eel are steamed together) with sliced tamago yaki and crisp toasted nori, maybe with some daikon sukemono on the side, good lord... if you've had that, you should know that you don't NEED a reason to eat うなぎ.


But as for it's value as a weapon against the dreaded 夏バテ, consult the nutritional advice of... this lady:

ウナギには、ビタミンＡが豊富に含まれています。
他にもタンパク質、脂質、ビタミンＢ群、ビタミンＤ、Ｅ、カルシウム、鉄など
豊富な栄養素が含まれている栄養満点な食品です。

Chock-full of vitamin-A, plus proper quantities of protein, lipids, vitamins B, D, E, calcium, and iron, うなぎ is just the ticket for a highly nourishing meal.

But for those of you who, like me, aren't satisfied with surface explanations of why things are the way they are, it gets even better. Nutritious and delicious though it may be, how did the entire country of Japan start a tradition of eating eel on 土用の丑の日?

Back in the Edo Period, there was a renaissance man by the name of 平賀源内 (Hiraga Gennai). He studied it all, and did it all. He was a painter, a physician, a scientist, an avid follower of Western studies, an inventor (his エレキテル;electrostatic generator has earned him immortality in Japanese anime, often as an eccentric or even MAD scientist), and an author, writing novels, satire, and articles about nature or science. He was considered an expert on all matter of subjects, and rendered his intellectual services to those who needed them.

So when the Edo Period うなぎ vendors had a problem, they knew exactly who to turn to. How to ensure strong うなぎ sales in summer? Hiraga Gennai had the answer. Create an advertising campaign ensuring the masses that eating eel was a great way to beat the heat. True story. The 土用の丑の日 tradition started because うなぎ vendors and restaurants once asked Hiraga Gennai to help them recover from a sales slump.

It's possible then, that Hiraga Gennai was the first person to become a celebrity endorser in Japanese history, and at the very least he must rank as the most successful. The entire country still buys into the advertising, and Gennai is responsible for billions and billions of yen in うなぎ sales, hundreds of years after his death.

(If that's not enough to make you question his moral integrity, here's a slight footnote: He was also passionate about performing experiments on ore. So much so that his anger at being unable to open new mines and procure more samples drove him into a fit that led to the death of one of his students. He died in a Japanese prison.)

So... enjoy your bonus post, eat some eel today (I will), and stay out of the heat!

Hope everybody's having a great summer!

温故知新

おん　こち　しん
on kochi shin

You'll notice that the hiragana and romaji formatting of today's yoji is broken in different places than usual. This is because, while many times yoji can be made by combining two niji compounds, today's has a niji compound stuck right in the middle: "故知： the wisdom of the ancients." How cool is that?

You'll recognize 温 from 温泉 (onsen) and 新 (new), and if you apply the meanings, in order, you get: from the warm wisdom of the ancients, comes the new. But the wisdom wouldn't be warm still, if we didn't keep it warm. Read on to get a better definition.

Definition:
古きを温め、新しきを知る。経験のない新しいことを進めるにも、過去を充分学ぶことから知恵を得ようということ。
Translations:
1. Learning from the past
2. Build new things on proven foundations
3. Develop new things by studying the past
4. Learn new things by applying old things

=

You've heard the famous quotation from George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it?" This same idea applies pretty well to 温故知新. Remembering the past keeps it alive, keeps it warm, but the purpose of keeping it alive is not to keep living in it... but to prevent yourself from repeating it.

The connotation of 温故知新 is more on advancement, creation, and moving forward, not just prevention.

What I find intensely interesting is the possibility that Santayana's saying might BE an example of 温故知新, as 温故知新 is itself part of a famous Confucian saying. Is there a chance that a philosopher like Santayana writing in the early 1900s might have been familiar with Confucianism and based his new ideas on a similar, old principle?*

For those of you who are interested, check out this article about a case of real life 温故知新 and a case of real life Jurassic Parking in Dubai!


例文：　地球が爆破したことはまことに残念ではあるけれども、温故知新の精神で、生き残ったみんなで、ここでもう一回緒戦しましょう。
-メーター大統領
火星, 2057

The fact that earth blew up was a terrible shame, BUT, if everyone can keep the lessons of the past fresh in their hearts, those of us who are still alive can give it another shot, here.
-President Mehta
Mars, 2057


* The internet says "NO."

Japanese Language Trivia of the Day:

Picked some of these up from my friends over at Lang-8, which I highly recommend for your Japanese writing practice (thanks for introducing me to it, Clay).

I was writing about movies and was at a loss for the right word to describe Paul Newman's character in Cool Hand Luke, and in trying to find it, I came up with all sorts of words that are close... so today, we've got all kinds of good vocab for describing people who don't fit in.

• 人外 (にんがい; ningai): outcast, usually because of being a law-breaker*


• のけ者 (のけもの; nokemono)：odd man out; pariah


• よそ者 (よそもの; yosomono): outsider, because of being from somewhere foreign; newcomer


• 食み出し者 (はみだしもの; hamidashimono): someone who sticks out; misfit

There are two more related terms that I want to include, that for me, elevate this post from "Themed Vocab" to "Trivia."

一匹狼
いっぴきおおかみ
ippiki ookami

I think this constitutes a 三字熟語, and was suggested by someone who was correcting my Lang-8 journal. It translates perfectly into English as "lone wolf." And just as in English, an internet search reveals three pretty distinct categories of usage:

1. Used to describe the behavioral patterns of actual wolves.
2. Used to describe fictional characters, particularly in movies, television, video games, or manga (一匹狼 comes up in relation to the movies Cool Hand Luke, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spy Game, Bullitt, Shoot 'Em Up, and Hitman, just to name a few).
3. Used by people on blogs or SNSs to describe themselves (hmmmm...)

The other one I want to include is something that I came across forever ago through random Kanji-jisho browsing and it might be one way that you end up an 一匹狼.

村八分
むらはちぶ
murahachibu

This term means "village ostracism," and it's fascinating when you read about the way it was applied in Japan during the Edo period, often associated with society under Tokugawa**. By popular interpretation, the Kanji it's spelled with ("village, eight, parts") refer to the idea that an ostracized family (entire families suffered for the failure of one person to abide by community rules or regulations) were denied eight of the ten privileges associated with village life, these being: coming-of-age ceremonies, weddings, memorial services, as well as assistance with births, sickness, floods, travel, building and repairs. They were still granted assistance when it came to fire and funerals, but they were not allowed to take part in any community meetings or celebrations, and other villagers were forbidden to greet them.

The kind of offenses that people could commit that might bring about such treatment varied, but sometimes they were kicked out of the village before their offensive nature could draw the attention of officials, which might mean trouble for the whole town. To prevent this, the people were cast out (these kinds of outcasts were called 非人（ひにん）***), and they were sometimes forced to live in special villages for such outcasts called 部落; buraku.

Incidences of 村八分 still occurred occasionally; there were scattered reports up until 1952, but one of the more interesting pieces of information I came across was an incident of 村八分 that happened in Niigata in 2004! Apparently, in the town of Sekigawa, some of the community leaders were upset with a local household whose members hadn't done enough to help out with the preparations and clean up for a local fishing contest, and so he incited 11 other townspeople to help ostracize this family. What did they do? They discontinued garbage collection and prohibited the family from picking local edible wild plants. The family sued, and ended up winning a decision of 2,200,000 yen for their trouble!

Notes:

• 一匹狼 is surprisingly NOT used in the original Japanese title of the manga series "Lone Wolf and Cub"


• 村八 is a common name for bars, pubs, and izakayas in Japan. There's a chain of izakayas that uses that name in Kyuushuu.


• If you want to grammar it, 村八分 takes 「にする」 or 「に遭う」 after it.


• You can read all about 村八分 in English or in Japanese.


• Don't ever call yourself a "lone wolf" in ANY language. It's not cool.

* Be careful using this word. The same Kanji can be read じんがい, which means "inhuman treatment." Don't mix them up!
** Tokugawa is referenced to indicated time period and not association with Tokugawa rule. 村八分 was a local practice, undertaken by influential community members who didn't necessarily wield any official government or military power.
***Thanks to Lane for correcting my kanji in the comments below.

諸行無常

しょぎょう　むじょう
shogyou mujyou

Oh MAN, do I have a long and intense post for you. And I just wanted to write about fireflies...

See, firefly season is just wrapping up in Saga, and there are some really nice places to go and watch them: long winding walks along the river in Ogi, or Tafusegawa in Saga City. I went last year and I loved it. This year, however, I've been busy, the weather's been bad, and I didn't have the time to make it out there, which makes me feel the poignancy of today's yoji all the more intensely.

Last year, when we were watching the fireflies, I heard about today's

BONUS WORD: 物の哀れ (mono no aware)

for the first time. 物の哀れ is famous for being the aesthetic heart of the Japanese literary classic The Tale of Genji*. Nirav, who was kind enough to educate me, since I've never formally studied Japanese literature, said that it was like the beauty of a sunset that reminds you that another day is ending, or the beauty of the fireflies who will light up the night for a few brief weeks and then pass away into the Grave of the Fireflies. Rikai-chan, who is smarter than me, translates 物の哀れ as an "appreciation of the fleeting nature of beauty," but I like to think of it as a little bit deeper than that. I define it as having to do with the existential sadness of being, with kind of a melancholy appreciation of the value of life due to an understanding of its transitory nature. Can you see how this concept might be deeply, deeply rooted in the Japanese psyche even to this day? No? Click here, and then read on to see why we're talking about this in relation to today's yoji: 諸行無常

Definition:
生きていることは、儚いこと。この世のいっさいの現象は常に変化・消滅して絶えない形容。
Translations:
1. The impermanence of worldly things
2. The transitory nature of life

Much as the concept of 物の哀れ was given a voice in The Tale of Genji, 諸行無常 has it's place in the opening lines of the Tale of the Heike, which tells the story of the Genpei war.

The Genpei war was fought at the end of the 12th century, between the Taira and Minamoto clans, which are also referred to as the Heike and Genji clans, respectively. Does this sound familiar to any one yet? The Original Tale of the Heike, collected in the late 1300s, has been retold and re-imagined many times, providing inspiration for manga, woodblock art, and most recently, the Miike Takashi film, Sukiyaki Western Django, which I watched last week. It features an all Japanese cast who recite their lines in English, to a very interesting effect, and it transports the feud between the clans to a place claims to be Nevada, but is clearly not. In it, Quentin Tarantino actually recites, in a bizarre narrative voice, the first lines of the book, which go something like this:

祗園精舎の鐘の声、諸行無常の響きあり。娑羅双樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理をあらわす。
おごれる人も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢のごとし。たけき者も遂にはほろびぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.
-trans. Helen Craig McCullough

Those lines alone are enough to make me want to read the whole thing. There's another yoji buried in there, for those of you who noticed, but I'll leave it alone today because this post is dense enough.

For those of you who made it this far, know that any of this knowledge and vocab will earn you MAJOR えらい points, but if that's not enough of a reward for putting up with my ramblings, I'll also give you this small piece of advice.:

This is 紅音ほたる. She's an actress of sorts. She's also the reason that you don't EVER, EVER want to do an unfiltered Google Image search for ほたる (firefly) from your computer at work, unless you want to be reminded of the transitory and impermanent nature of having a job as a school teacher, and the fleeting beauty of receiving a paycheck. Yikes.

Notes:

• Articles on the Genpei war, the Taira and Minamoto Clans (and alternate readings of their names) all come from Wikipedia, where you too can read about them.
• Sukiyaki Western Django hasn't yet been released in the US yet, but you can probably find a DVD rip from the Japanese copy, as it's already out here. It's filmed in English, but when we watched it, we had to rely on the Japanese subtitles to understand what they were saying sometimes, so try to get those too.
• If you're going to immediately search for that girl in Google images, as I assume all of our male readers will, search in hiragana. Both ホタル and 蛍 searches will get you... pictures of fireflies.
  

例文:　Fireflyの短い寿命は諸行無常を感じさせる。Joss Whedonはまだ生きていてよかった。
The short lifespan of Firefly really makes you reflect on the impermanence of things. I'm just glad that Joss Whedon is still alive.

*Though The Tale of Genji was written in the Heian Period, the idea of 物の哀れ didn't find itself popularized until Motoori Norinaga articulated it in his definitive criticism of Genji during the Edo period.

犬猿の仲: Part Two (There are 3 Kinds of People, and They All Have Cuckoos)

For anyone who's learning a foreign language, and who's doing so by immersion, you know that the route to learning is by no means a straight-forward one. You learn by meandering down long, weird side roads, and what you started looking for is not necessarily what you get. With that in mind, please forgive me a lengthy post. I hope that, like me, you find it full of interesting information, must-know phrases, and, as always, impress-your-friends-and-family trivia.

So, remember when we looked at the phrase　犬猿の仲？At the time, I couldn't find any explanations that rang true enough to satisfy me (nor have I yet; this post will not provide that satisfaction). Why are dogs and monkeys so hostile towards each other? Despite having already posted it up on the site, I kept bringing it up to Japanese people: kokugo-senseis, eikawa-students, taxi drivers, anyone who might know something. And one guy (a taxi driver) told me that he heard that the phrase originated from the rivalry between two important figures in Japanese history: Akechi Mitsuhide and Toyotomi Hideyoshi.　According to the taxi driver, Akechi's nickname was 犬 and Hideyoshi's was サル; according to others, 犬猿の仲 predates these two in history, and they were nicknamed BECAUSE of the phrase.

Akechi Mitsuhide is famous for being 三日天下： the three day king. While this qualifies as a yo-ji-juku-go, it's not really used except to refer to him. He was a general under Oda Nobunaga, but because of various political intrigues that involved the murder of Mitsuhide's mother, Mitsuhide betrayed Nobunaga, forcing him to commit seppuku at Honno-ji in 1582.

Oda Nobunaga had been a very famous daimyo, leading campaign after campaign until he had conquered and unified over one third of Japan. He inspired fierce loyalty in many of his followers, namely the aforementioned Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu (yes, THE Tokugawa), who raced to avenge Nobunaga's death. Toyotomi was the one to defeat Akechi at the Battle of Yamazaki. Akechi had retained military power for only three days.

Toyotomi went on to unify the rest of Japan, but upon his death the nation split into warring factions once more.

Japan only finally unified after Tokugawa Ieyasu won the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, was declared shogun by Emperor Go-Yozei in 1603, and established the Tokugawa shogunate, which essentially ruled Japan for 250 years.

If you're reading this blog, it's safe to assume that you have some interest in things Japanese, and therefore probably knew most of that, or at least have heard the names. What was new to me was the fact that Japanese people have a system of classifying personalities based on these figures. I was told that this is the kind of thing that Japanese learners "really should know."

According to the system, everyone is one of 3 types of people: Oda type, Toyotomi type, or Tokugawa type. You can tell which one you are by how you would relate to birds, specifically, the cuckoo, or ホトトギス.

Oda Type: 鳴くぬなら、殺してしまう.
If the cuckoo doesn't sing, let's kill it.

Toyotomi Type: 鳴くぬなら、鳴かせてみよう。
If the cuckoo doesn't sing, let's MAKE it sing.

Tokugawa Type: 鳴くぬなら、鳴くまで待とう。
If the cuckoo doesn't sing, let's wait until it does.

So the Oda type is brash and aggressive, and acts hastily. It's important to note that the Toyotomi type is not seen as forceful or demanding, but rather as someone who takes on challenges, a problem solver. And the Tokugawa type is patient. Which one are you? If you've made it all the way through this post, you just might be the Tokugawa type...

Post script: 鳴くぬなら、is the way the phrase is said. It's means the same as 鳴かないなら, it's just an archaic form. Don't use it to grammar anything else. Yes, I just used 'grammar' as a verb.