#Japanese Language

[japanwords]

富士 Fuji

The kanji for the tallest and most famous mountain in Japan are suitably distinguished:

富 = riches, wealth, fortune

士 = gentleman, scholar

However there is a theory that the above kanji are ateji (kanji which are used to phonetically represent other words) for 不 and 死.

不 = un, not

死 = death

In other words, Mount Fuji is the "Undying Mountain".

Here's a photo I took of Fuji (I was in a bath, hence the little water droplet on the window).

[haru-dipthong]

Gendered pronouns in Japanese vs English

In Revolutionary Girl Utena, the main character Utena is a girl (it says so in the title), but very conspicuously uses the masculine first person pronoun 僕 (boku) and dresses in (a variation of) the boys school uniform. Utena's gender, and gender in general, is a core theme of the work. And yet, I haven’t seen a single translation or analysis post where anyone considers using anything other than she/her for Utena when speaking of her in English. This made me wonder: how does one’s choice of pronouns in Japanese correspond to what one’s preferred pronouns would be in English?

There are 3 main differences between gendered pronouns in Japanese vs English

Japanese pronouns are used to refer to yourself (first-person), while English pronouns are used to refer to others (third-person)

The Japanese pronoun you use will differ based on context

Japanese pronouns signify more than just gender

Let’s look at each of these differences in turn and how these differences might lead to a seeming incongruity between one’s Japanese pronoun choice and one’s English pronoun choice (such as the 僕 (boku) vs she/her discrepancy with Utena).

Part 1: First-person vs third-person

While Japanese does technically have gendered third person pronouns （彼、彼女） they are used infrequently¹ and have much less cultural importance placed on them than English third person pronouns. Therefore, I would argue that the cultural equivalent of the gender-signifying third-person pronoun in English is the Japanese first-person pronoun. Much like English “pronouns in bio”, Japanese first-person pronoun choice is considered an expression of identity.

Japanese pronouns are used exclusively to refer to yourself, and therefore a speaker can change the pronoun they’re using for themself on a whim, sometimes mid-conversation, without it being much of an incident. Meanwhile in English, Marquis Bey argues that “Pronouns are like tiny vessels of verification that others are picking up what you are putting down” (2021). By having others use them and externally verify the internal truth of one’s gender, English pronouns, I believe, are seen as more truthful, less frivolous, than Japanese pronouns. They are seen as signifying an objective truth of the referent’s gender; if not objective then at least socially agreed-upon, while Japanese pronouns only signify how the subject feels at this particular moment — purely subjective.

Part 2: Context dependent pronoun use

Japanese speakers often don’t use just one pronoun. As you can see in the below chart, a young man using 俺 (ore) among friends might use 私 (watashi) or 自分 (jibun) when speaking to a teacher. This complicates the idea that these pronouns are gendered, because their gendering depends heavily on context. A man using 私 (watashi) to a teacher is gender-conforming, a man using 私 (watashi) while drinking with friends is gender-non-conforming. Again, this reinforces the relative instability of Japanese pronoun choice, and distances it from gender.

Part 3: Signifying more than gender

English pronouns signify little besides the gender of the antecedent. Because of this, pronouns in English have come to be a shorthand for expressing one’s own gender experience - they reflect an internal gendered truth. However, Japanese pronoun choice doesn’t reflect an “internal truth” of gender. It can signify multiple aspects of your self - gender, sexuality, personality.

For example, 僕 (boku) is used by gay men to communicate that they are bottoms, contrasted with the use of 俺 (ore) by tops. 僕 (boku) may also be used by softer, academic men and boys (in casual contexts - note that many men use 僕 (boku) in more formal contexts) as a personality signifier - maybe to communicate something as simplistic as “I’m not the kind of guy who’s into sports.” 俺 (ore) could be used by a butch lesbian who still strongly identifies as a woman, in order to signify sexuality and an assertive personality. 私 (watashi) may be used by people of all genders to convey professionalism. The list goes on.

I believe this is what’s happening with Utena - she is signifying her rebellion against traditional feminine gender roles with her use of 僕 (boku), but as part of this rebellion, she necessarily must still be a girl. Rather than saying “girls don’t use boku, so I’m not a girl”, her pronoun choice is saying “your conception of femininity is bullshit, girls can use boku too”.

Through translation, gendered assumptions need to be made, sometimes about real people. Remember that he/they, she/her, they/them are purely English linguistic constructs, and don’t correspond directly to one’s gender, just as they don’t correspond directly to the Japanese pronouns one might use. Imagine a scenario where you are translating a news story about a Japanese genderqueer person. The most ethical way to determine what pronouns they would prefer would be to get in contact with them and ask them, right? But what if they don’t speak English? Are you going to have to teach them English, and the nuances of English pronoun choice, before you can translate the piece? That would be ridiculous! It’s simply not a viable option². So you must make a gendered assumption based on all the factors - their Japanese pronoun use (context dependent!), their clothing, the way they present their body, their speech patterns, etc.

If translation is about rewriting the text as if it were originally in the target language, you must also rewrite the gender of those people and characters in the translation. The question you must ask yourself is: How does their gender presentation, which has been tailored to a Japanese-language understanding of gender, correspond to an equivalent English-language understanding of gender? This is an incredibly fraught decision, but nonetheless a necessary one. It’s an unsatisfying dilemma, and one that poignantly exposes the fickle, unstable, culture-dependent nature of gender.

Notes and References

¹ Usually in Japanese, speakers use the person’s name directly to address someone in second or third person

² And has colonialist undertones as a solution if you ask me - “You need to pick English pronouns! You ought to understand your gender through our language!”

Bey, Marquis— 2021 Re: [No Subject]—On Nonbinary Gender

Rose divider taken from this post

[goodplan-ipromise]

[todayintokyo]

Kuebiko (久延毘古) is the Shinto kami of folk wisdom, knowledge and agriculture, and is represented in Japanese mythology as a scarecrow who cannot walk but has comprehensive awareness.

[x]

[writerofscratch]

　火火火火火火火火火火火火火火火火

　火炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎火

　火炎焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱炎火

　火炎焱燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚焱炎火

　火炎焱燚　　ｔｈｉｓ　　燚焱炎火

　火炎焱燚　　　ｉｓ　　　燚焱炎火

　火炎焱燚　 ｆｉｎｅ 🐶　燚焱炎火

　火炎焱燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚燚焱炎火

　火炎焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱焱炎火

　火炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎炎火

　火火火火火火火火火火火火火火火火

[nihongonotabi]

In Japanese language, describing a third person’s emotion is different from describing a first person’s emotion: in English, the sentences "I am happy" and "He is happy" are grammatically structured in the same way. However, in Japanese, this direct equivalence is not possible: you can say "私は嬉しいです" (Watashi wa ureshii desu), but you can't simply say "彼は嬉しいです" (Kare wa ureshii desu).

This is due to cultural and linguistic nuances that emphasize the acknowledgment of another's internal state as somewhat inaccessible. In fact, Japanese typically employs expressions that convey a level of inference or indirectness, such as:

Using observational phrases: one might say 「彼は嬉しそうです」 (Kare wa ureshisō desu), which translates to "He seems happy" or "He/she looks happy." This phrasing respects the notion that one can only observe outward signs of emotion, not definitively know another's internal state.

Adding "ようだ" or "みたい": these suffixes add a sense of speculation. For example, 「彼は嬉しいようだ」 (Kare wa ureshii yō da) or 「彼は嬉しいみたいです」 (Kare wa ureshii mitai desu), both meaning "He appears to be happy."

Using conditional clauses: Another approach is to use conditional forms, like 「彼が嬉しければ」 (Kare ga ureshikereba), meaning "If he is happy," which implicitly acknowledges the uncertainty of truly knowing his feelings.

One characteristic of Japanese syntax is its extreme sensitivity to epistemological considerations based on the ego/nonego distinction or the distinction of I/the other. Our knowledge about the mental state of another person must necessarily come from our interpretation of external evidence, and this is well reflected in the Japanese language.

Source material: http://human.kanagawa-u.ac.jp/gakkai/publ/pdf/no157/15712.pdf

[expiationist]

sunday study sesh— wishin for fall 🍂

[sammilearns]

here are a few podcasts I listen to weekly for practice!

Japanese with Teppei and Noriko

short, concise episodes covering various topics! easy to follow along!

Let's Learn Japanese from Small Talk

longer more detailed episodes with very casual Japanese! they explain some of the vocab they use while speaking (especially slang) and have a vocab list at the end that they go over with a link to read along!

Japanese with Kanako

great for shadowing practice with a few listening exercises mixed in. perfect if you are using the genki series!

what are some podcasts you like to listen to? 教えてください！😊

[youghvaudough]

I will forever appreciate a theme in my fictional stories, & that’s exactly what Wind Breaker (by Nii Satoru) has, so, I present:

Wind Breaker characters have a theme to their names.. a thread:

Bōfūrin / 防風鈴

so, even though our protag group’s name is written and visually represented as “wind chime”, Bōfūrin’s name is where this group’s theme of trees/plants start:

防風鈴 (“prevent/protect” “wind chime”) has the same reading as 防風林, a type of forest planted strategically to prevent wind erosion of soil — much like Fūrin’s mission of protecting and serving their town

all of Bōfūrin’s named members (and close associations) so far have some element of tree/plant/wood in their last name (if you look at the kanji of their last names, you’d see a lot of wood radicals/木字旁):

桜 遥 • Sakura Haruka: 桜 / cherry tree

(fun fact: his name 遥 / haruka means "far"; also it's commonly a feminine given name)

蘇枋 隼飛 • Suō Hayato: �� / sandalwood (?) or tree used as timber, general term for wooden beams in houses

(fun fact: his last name 苏枋 is the Chinese name of a traditional reddish brown color, named after a pigment made from 苏木!)

楡井 秋彦 • Nirei Akihiko: 楡 / Siberian elm

杉下 京太郎 • Sugishita Kyōtarō: 杉 / Japanese cedar (cryptomeria japonica)

柊 登馬 • Hiiragi Tōma: 柊 / holly osmanthus (osmanthus heterophyllus)

(fun fact: his name 登馬 means "to mount a horse"; no, not that kind of mount, the regular horseback riding kind)

梅宮 一 • Umemiya Hajime: 梅 / plum tree

(fun fact: his name 一 is just "one")

This association also extends to Kotoha, who is very closely associated with Bōfūrin:

橘 琴叶 • Tachibana Kotoha: 橘 / orange tree

now, Bōfūrin members yet to be featured in the show: (spoilers below the break)

(if you want to go to later parts: part 2 - shishitoren & part 3 - noroshi!)

梶 蓮 • Kaji Ren: 梶 / paper mulberry (broussonetia papyrifera)

(fun fact: his name 蓮 / Ren means "lotus")

椿野 佑 • Tsubakino Tasuku: 椿 / Japanese camellia

(fun fact: their name 佑 means "to help/protect" or "to bless"!)

桐生 三輝 • Kiryū Mitsuki: 桐 / empress tree (paulownia tomentosa)

柘浦 大河 • Tsugeura Taiga: 柘 / mandarin melon berry (maclura tricuspidata)

There's also 桃瀬 匠 (Momose Takumi, "peach tree") & 水木 聡久 (Mizuki Saku, "wood"), the two other Heavenly Kings

I hope I have rly driven the point home here,, /lh

[vashtijoy]

have you seen the commentary from the p5r artbook going around? the shuake part of my dash is losing it a bit at the implication that their wishes were mutual!!! that seems to be what some people are getting from the commentary at least… amy insights?

Hi! I have been through the artbook. It's great, isn't it? :D

The image above is called "One Ending", and the creator caption (by illustrator Akane Kabayashi) reads:

When I think about how Akechi's wish was to play chess after school with the protagonist, I almost want to call him out with "You liked him after all, didn't you!"

Look at that. We're told about Akechi's wish, and what it included. We're as good as told outright that he likes Joker—and this isn't the only time, there's also this:

—There are a whole lot of things we can imagine, based on how the protagonist was depicted as someone special to Akechi. Those are more or less the exact emotions represented during Akechi's confidant. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

"someone special" here is 特別な存在 tokubetsuna sonzai—literally "a special presence". It means a special person, and more than that; it describes someone you find compelling, someone you can't look away from, someone who becomes one of your most important people, the centre of your world. It's another term that is often romantic, but isn't necessarily romantic.

(In the same way, I think Kabayashi's suki jan! is more tongue-in-cheek than it is a cast-iron confirmation that Akechi was canonly in love with Joker. The language there is teasing, it's ambiguous, it's baity; Kabayashi is joking. This is a rank 6—as they say, if you know, you know. But it is of course ultimately up to all of you.)

There's another mention of this image, down in the creator interview:

Out of all the Maruki ending illustrations, it was Akechi's that stuck with me the most. It made such an impression to see them opening up as friends, having a fun, peaceful time together like high school students should. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

What really strikes me in all of this is the emphasis the creators put on the fact that this is Akechi's illustration, Akechi's wish. Because I've thought for a while that we know Akechi has a wish. You can see him struggling with his refusals to Maruki in the first week of January. And you can hear his wish spoken—when Maruki repeats it back to him, during the boss fight, on 2/3:

Maruki {F1 81}君たちとなら、君も過ちのない道を歩めるかも知れないじゃないか！ {F1 81}-kun-tachi to nara, kimi mo ayamachi no nai michi o ayumeru kamoshirenai ja nai ka! If you're with {F1 81}―kun and his friends, you could begin to atone for what you've done! Think about it! With [Amamiya]-kun and his friends beside you, you could choose a path with no mistakes as well!

So this wish has several parts. First, there's that kimi mo, "you also"; it's tempting to read this as Maruki also wanting his new world to erase his past mistakes. Second, there's the first part, "if you're with [Amamiya]-kun and his friends". Where to even start here?

Being with Joker and the others is a prerequisite for the second half of Akechi's wish. It doesn't just coexist, it enables the rest of it. Just like his words in the engine room, "I wonder why we couldn't have met a few years earlier, [Ren]..."

Remember, Akechi's whole arc is about his rejection of trust and friendship, and his insistence on doing everything himself. This is precisely what Futaba calls him out on—"you trusted no one", or "you played life in single-player mode". This is what he unlearns at the climax of the engine room, when he realises he isn't prepared to let the others die—and follows through to save them.

Akechi is nothing without others, and he knows it. Without their support, which he believes he has no right to, he has no hope of living a better life, even were he to be given the chance—and he knows that, too. He has learned, and he has grown—and yet he knows the things he needs and wants so badly are forever inaccessible.

And his wish is about all the Phantom Thieves, not just Joker. There are many tiny references to this end—not least the original Japanese rank 10 line for his confidant, where he sacrifices himself for all of you. Joker is his compelling presence, his someone special, but he's formed small bonds with the others too, God help him.

and then there's the crime thing

The localisation frames Akechi's wish in terms of atonement, but that's not what's on offer. You cannot, after all, atone for things you never did. We see Akechi's wish put into practice, in the Maruki ending, where he appears with his friends beside him, wholly innocent and with unstained hands. And we see it in the first week of January, after he has finally met Maruki and spoken to him:

Akechi: Ah, that reminds me—there was one more thing I wanted to tell you. Akechi: About the reality Maruki's put us in... Akechi: It seems that Okumura and Wakaba are both considered alive by all accounts. [Ren: They're not dead anymore? / What do you mean?] Akechi: They aren't mere illusions, or cognitive beings—they truly are alive and existing in this world. Akechi: In fact, their deaths seem to have never taken place at all in this reality. [Ren: What happened to Shido?] Akechi: Shido was the only one arrested on the crime of attempting to overthrow the government... Akechi: It seems the Phantom Thieves were causing a stir in this society as well, but there's no record of your arrest now. Akechi: Basically, in this reality, you and I haven't committed any crimes.

While Akechi still remembers his crimes, they never took place. They have been undone, and only his lingering memory—and Joker's, at this point—speaks to them. He objects to this on countless levels, he summons all the strength he has to refuse it, but don't make the mistake of thinking that means he doesn't want it. This is Akechi's wish in action.

People are often very certain that Akechi's resolve in the third semester is like iron—that he rejects Maruki's offers right away, is never tempted, never wavers. But that can't be true. We know he's afraid to die. We know about the bad end where you don't complete the Palace, where Akechi says nothing and stares at the floor, seemingly blaming himself internally while all the others blame themselves aloud, for being unable to say no to Maruki's temptations. We know how he responds to this assertion of Maruki's—Maruki, who has perfectly summed up what we know all the other PTs wanted, and who (even if Word of God hadn't just confirmed Akechi's wish) we have, honestly, no reason to doubt.

Because Akechi never refutes this wish that Maruki describes. He never says he doesn't want it. He just rejects it—like all the others, who so desperately want what Maruki could give them. Futaba's mother, Haru's father. Akechi's life, and his innocence. And the people who might have been his friends, if he could dare, one day, to ask.

Akechi is tested just like the others, and the price he pays for his defiance is perhaps the highest of all.

and finally

[The Maruki ending illustrations are] of Maruki's world, where everyone's wishes are granted and they seem happy. The scene shows their actualised wishes, which were never granted in the real world. (Mumon Usuda, chief designer)

We shouldn't forget the price Akechi pays for his impossible wish. Sure, the vision of himself being altered like Sumire clearly haunts him, and I'm sure it made the choice easier—but I don't think it made it that easy. Instead of taking the dream Maruki offered him, Akechi chose to face up to what he'd done, and who he'd become; at the very end, in the third semester and in the engine room, he always makes the right choice.

And that choice was taken away from him. Agency over his life and death, his own acts, and who he would even be—Joker and Maruki take it all away from him and make him a puppet, just like Shido.

Maruki's ending isn't pretty.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/03/29)—first published.

[acquired-stardust]

LSD Dream Emulator Playstation 1998

[japanwords]

神無月 (kan-na-zuki) "October" (archaic)

神 = god 無 = not 月 = month

The modern Japanese word for October is 十月 (literally "10th Month), however in the old-fashioned calendar is was known as 神無月, or "the month with no gods". 

In October, all the gods in Japan (there are believed to be 8 million of them) go to Izumo Shrine in Shimane Prefecture for a meeting, thus leaving most of Japan with no gods.

The huge shimenawa (sacred rope) at Izumo Shrine.

[haru-dipthong]

I’ve been having trouble putting this idea into words so you’ll have to bear with me, but I was struck when I saw a Japanese news program interviewing foreign tourists in Japan, and some australian women were dubbed over with a stereotypically feminine speech register (lots of のs and わs), and my first thought was “they weren’t speaking that femininely in english”.

A friend of mine from the UK recently mentioned that he noticed that australia has a generally more masculine culture than england - he felt that everyone is a bit more masculine here, including women. This kind of confirmed to me that my impressions of the dubbing were right - the tourists were speaking in a relatively (internationally) more masculine way. Yet their dub made them sound so much more feminine.

It made me wonder. When translating something, do you translate the manner of speaking “directly”, or “relatively” in terms of cultural norms? Maybe this graph will help me explain the question.

A direct appoach in this case might appear to a Japanese person to result in an unexpectedly masculine register, but preserves how the speaker's cultural upbringing has influenced their speech.

The news program translators chose the relative approach - I think I would prefer the direct approach. I think I prefer it because I believe translation should be a rewriting of the original utterance as if the speaker was originally speaking the target language, and the direct approach compliments that way of thinking the best.

Actually now that I type that, I’m second guessing myself. Does it? It does, if for the purposes of the “rewrite it as if they spoke japanese” thought experiment, we suppose the speaker magically learned japanese seconds before making the utterance, but what if we suppose the speaker magically grew up learning japanese - then maybe they would conform to the relative cultural values. But also, maybe they would never have said such a thing in the first place - their original utterance was informed by their upbringing and cultural values, so how could you possibly know what they would have said if they had known japanese from birth? Maybe my initial instinct was right after all?

If you work in translation, I’m very interested to hear if you have come across this problem and how you deal with it 🙏

Further reading: I think this question also ties into this problem I’ve been struggling to answer for a while.

[goodplan-ipromise]

[todayintokyo]

Japanese, the most beautiful language posted by Ali Al Samahi and Massimo