落花狼藉

らっか　ろうぜき
rakka rouzeki

Are you tired of flowers yet? I hope not, cause we've got one final day of flower-related Japanese here on the Yoji. Stick with me though, cause today's definitions and usages are good ones, and not as... well, not as flowery as you might think.

You'll notice that the first two kanji in today's yoji are 落花, which means falling petals, but also means PEANUT when attached to ー生, as we mentioned in yesterday's flower trivia. If we think of this 生 in the same sense as 生まれる, what makes a peanut a "falling petal birth?" Well, apparently, the way peanuts grow is that when peaflowers get pollinated, that peanut flower's fruit turns into a nut which forces its way underground. The flowers fall, and from where they lay, new peanut flowers grow up out of the nut... unless they get harvested and eaten by Chinese people, who coined the term 落花生, albeit with a completely different pronunciation. To update yesterday's info slightly, it should be known that in Japan peanuts still in the shell are called 落花生、while peanuts that have been shucked are called ピーナツ。

Peanut explanation taken care of, let's get back to the yoji, whose second two kanji mean "wolf carpet."

Wait... what?

Definition:
花が散り乱れているようす。転じて物が入り乱れて散らかっているさま。
Translations:
1. Chaos
2. Running amok
3. Complete and utter disorder
4. Committing wanton acts of violence, especially against women.

This yoji has some fun nuances. First let's look into the whole 狼藉 thing. While this kanji compound can be used to indicate violence, outrage, riot, or confusion, it does still directly translate as "wolf carpet." Why is this?

The origin, according to the databank, is in the idea of a wolf going to bed. The ground, grass, or flowers that a wolf sleeps on might have been pristine the night before, but when he leaves the next day, it will be disturbed looking, and can you blame it? It spent the night under a wolf.

Add to this visual the idea of scattered, fallen petals, which often connote disarray in Japanese metaphor. If the wolf sleeps on these as well, then things just get crazy.

And then this yoji can also be interpreted/applied in the same direction as Monday's in the sense that, yes, women are flowers. So if the next Akihabara stabbist happens to target only women, get your ears ready: the newsmedia will go nuts with over-application of 落花狼藉.

Here's a link to a news story about an incident that involved a Japanese wolf sleeping on a bunch of women.


















No, not really.

And last, because not even I want to do another day of flowers (why couldn't we have done a wolf week?), I'm giving you this Japanese proverb that uses today's 落花.

落花枝に帰らず、破鏡再び照らさず。
らっかえだにかえらず、はきょうふたたびてらさず。
rakka eda ni kaerazu, hakyou futatabi terasazu.

The fallen flower will not return to the branch, the broken mirror will not shine again.

例文：
女性だけが乗れる車両ができたけど、痴漢の問題がまだまだ止められない。落花狼藉の犯人を掴めにくいことが現状である。
Even with the institution of women only cars, the molestation problem still hasn't been stopped. The criminals who are running amok are just so difficult to identify and apprehend.

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.