割鶏牛刀

かっけい ぎゅうとう
kakkei gyuutou

This is not the first yo-ji that I've come across that befuddles my Japanese Kanji conversion software, but it is the first I've found that has interchangeable halves. Google tells me that this one is acceptable as either,　割鶏牛刀 or 牛刀割鶏.

Let's check the kanji to find out why:

割 is all about divisions. Read either 「かつ」 (meaning to divide, halve, cut, or any other form of dividing something, ranging from the mild "dilute," to the violent "Smash!") or 「わり」 (meaning the ratio, the proportion, or again "diluted with," for talking about drinks, as in CaptainのCola割り.

鶏 is （にわ）とり and is as straightforward as they come: chicken, of the domestic variety.

牛 is coincidental, I swear. Even though this is the year of the ox, I wasn't trying to foist any cow themed learnings on you. Besides, when it comes to the year, this kanji gets used: 丑. You might remember it from a lengthy post about why Japan is crazy for unagi on 土用の丑の日.

And last but not least, 刀, which most of you will recognize as "katana," and has popped up with a とう pronunciation at least once before on the Daily Yo-ji, in its very early days: 一刀両断 from all the way back in November of 2007.

Anyhow, I have an English equivalent expression for this rolling around in my head somewhere, but I can't seem to grasp it. のどがかゆい！

So I like to think of it as the inverse of that metaphor about "bringing a knife to a gun fight." 割鶏牛刀 is more like "bringing THIS GUN to a knife fight."

Definition:
牛を料理する大きな包丁で、鶏をさくという意味。伝じて、小さいことをするのに、大げさな道具や過分な力を用いること。
Translation:
Literal: Using a meat ax to carve a chicken.
1. Going to unnecessary and showy lengths to accomplish something simple.
2. Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The thing that you want to keep in mind, if you ever have the chance to USE this expression, is that you probably shouldn't. Well, at least not in Yo-ji form. See, the problem is that the phrase 割鶏 （かっけい） is something you will NEVER come across in spoken Japanese. It's rare enough in written Japanese. So any usage of 割鶏牛刀 that I can find solves this problem by employing　one of the much more common words that you can make with 割、namely 割く (さく;saku).

Like this: 「鶏を割くに牛刀,」 which means that in today's post, you've effectively learned one yo-ji and one non-yo-ji ことわざ. You're welcome!

例文 (loosely based on true events) :
Brett: coughs.
Fumiko: あなた、そこで横になって、少々お待ちしてね。
Lie down over there and wait, okay?
Brett: 何を？
For what?
Fumiko: 今先、救急車を呼んだから、着く前に死なないようにガマンしてください！
I just called for an ambulance, so PLEASE try not to die before they get here!
Brett：ええと、どういうことか？
Uh... What?
Fumiko: もう、近づかないでお願い！インフルエンザは映すものだわ！
STOP! Don't come any closer! Influenza is contagious!
Brett: おらー！インフルエンザに罹っとらんさ！救急車をカンセルしろお前！
What? I DON'T have the flu! Call off the ambulance!
Fumiko: あなた入院したほうがいいよ！
Babe, you should go to the hospital!
Brett: 咳のため、入院？鶏を割くに牛刀を用いんだぜ！
The hospital? For a cough? That's like amputating for a splinter!

信成万事

しんせい　ばんじ
shinsei banji

And, after a few days off, we're back with another one of those yojis that will make you question the validity of the site...

This is a yoji that defeats not only Rikai-chan, but it defeats the Japanese keyboard language pack, the Yojijukugo-databank, my yojijukugo dictionary, and all of my books. And yet, at a table full of Japanese co-workers, when someone listed it as their favorite, everybody recognized it and acknowledged it. It is a good one.

Definition:
きっと出来ると信じてやればそのとおりに出来るが、心配したり不安がったりしてやっていると成就しないこと。
Translations:
1. Success or failure is determined by your own belief in your abilities.
2. If you believe you'll be successful, you will. If you doubt yourself, you will fail.
3. Believe in yourself and the magic will happen.

There's another Japanese saying that fits up with this one pretty nicely: 信ずる者は救われる; Those who believe will be rescued. Whenever I've heard this one used, it hasn't been in the sense of "If you sit around and wait faithfully, someone will come along and save you," but rather, things will work out in the end for people who believe that they will.

例文：「信成万事」とよく言われますが、躁うつ病にかかている上に精神分裂症です。どうしたらいいだろう？
People are always saying "Those who believe, succeed; Those who doubt, fail," but I'm a manic depressive schizophrenic. What should I do?

兎死狗烹

とし　くほう
toshi kuhou

Okay, today's yoji is a special-bonus-hyper-super yoji. Why? Well, it's ridiculously rare. The yoji databank we link to has no mention of it, and rikaichan breaks down and starts crying if you hover your cursor over it. As such, finding information was especially difficult, but it became more worth it the more I knew.

For some background on how I even found out about this yoji, I was digging around online with a few different searches hoping to get some wartime expressions that found their way into every day language. This is common with yojis since a many of them come from China's Warring States Period, which is long and well-documented. Unsurprisingly, I found a few expressions we've already covered here, but took pause when I found this one. Rabbit die dog boil? The more strange the literal translation, the better the actual meaning. So without further ado...

Definition:
うさぎが死んでしまえば、それを捕らえるのに用いられた猟犬は不必要となって、煮て食べられてしまう意。戦時に活躍した武将は、ひとたび太平の世となると、用なしとして殺されてしまうことをたとえた言葉。また、後に広く、利用価値があるときだけ用いられ、無用になると捨てられてしまうことのたとえ。
Translations:
1. Outliving one's usefulness.
2. Only using something or someone as long as they are useful.

The examples nestled in the definition are both excellent. The first is the idea of going on a hunting trip and, what do you know, you kill all the rabbits in the area. So now what are you going to do with those hunting dogs? Easy - boil `em and eat `em! The second example is not much better, and cites examples of wartime vets getting killed in times of peace after they are no longer needed. Good times!

The source on this one is an old book called "韓非子" that records a bunch of ideology from the Warring States period. I wish I could have found more information on how it was used, but most Japanese sources I found stopped at that book title. The really interesting thing is how often searching for this yielded Korean websites, which I cannot yet pin on racism or it being an expression with some Korean roots (which I initially thought when seeing the book's title). For the past few days my Korean friend has mysteriously gone MIA, which is inconvenient, as he has not yet outlived his usefulness...but maybe he knows what will happen after I grill him about this yoji...

First thing tomorrow, I'm going to quiz my fellow workers on this yoji. You all do the same, so we can see if this only exists in rare texts or you can get away with saying it without looking like you're just making stuff up.

Bonus edit: My friend popped up online first thing in the morning, and we had a nice little yoji-related chat. It turns out that A. he knew the yoji I was talking about, and B. Koreans study 四字熟語 and other Chinese in junior high and high school the same way English speakers might study Latin. That revelation aside, even though he did know it, he admitted soon after that it's rare even in Korea, and all the teachers I'd asked today had never seen this yoji. So, a word of warning - if you do use this yoji, be prepared to explain the origin, and then to explain why you are SO AWESOME.

(hint - it's the DY)

例文：
競馬の世界の中で,怪我すると言うことは殺されるも同然だ。つまり兎死狗烹だ。
In the world of horse racing, an injury is as good as death. Having outlived their usefulness, they die for their troubles.