Vestiges of the Totalitarianism

Any person that has studied the Japanese language gets frustrated by the amount of English (and other languages) that have seamlessly been brought into the language. I once spend time flipping through my dictionary for the word "franchise" only to find out that they commonly used their syllabic version of it "Fu-ra-n-cha-i-zu." However, when you really think about it, it is exactly the same as Americans calling a kimono a kimono instead of trying to create an "american" word for something that was not created in America.

However, it was not always like that in Japan. Prior to and during WWII, the Japanese government tried to create a totalitarian regime in Japan. In order to glorify Japan, they had to wipe out outside influences on "Japanese things" like language. This came up in class a couple of weeks ago as we read from an excerpt. The word seidouki came up in the passage. If you don't know Japanese, don't bother remembering this word (I unfortunately have...) because no one will understand you if you say it. Instead, use the syllabic form of the word break, "bu-re-ki." During this period they wiped out such words as "break" and made Japanese words such as seidouki which breaks down to sei (can mean "restrain"), dou ("movement"), and ki (machine), if you look at the characters that make up the word.

This is what the teacher said, but it is natural to ask if there weren't anything that resembled a break in Japan before the West came knocking on its door.

To make the point clearer, you have to look at Japanese baseball. Japanese baseball was introduced to Japan through America (it would be amazing if they created the same game independently). They call strikes "su-to-ra-i-ku" and balls "bo-ru" in the same fashion as they call breaks "bu-re-ki," but during the war period it became yoshi for strikes and dame for balls. First base became ichirui and you couldn't call the pitcher anything but toushu (throwing hand/person). I'm not an expert on Japanese baseball terminology, so I don't know exactly what was there before and changed into "pure" Japanese during the period, so I can't really say how much of the changes still remain; yet it is still interesting to see the power and importance of language....and hell, I thought it would make an interesting post.

Blame it on the Mountains

Those of you from Cincinnati know that we have a favorite phrase to describe the weather: if you don't like, wait five minutes. The whole idea is that the weather in Cincinnati is unpredictable, you're liable to have a day go from extremely cold to extremely hot. When I was younger, I thought that was a Cincinnati phrase that people in the US knew. Then as I got older and met people from different parts of the country, I found out Cincinnati wasn't famous for the phrase. In fact, I was shocked to hear someone from Colorado say, "We have a phrase in Colorado: if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes." It seems that no matter where you live, you complain about the weather.

The case is the same over here in Japan where they manage to have long summers and long winters depending on what time of year you are talking to a Japanese person. However, one common phrase I hear is that the mountains are to blame for the extreme weather. In the winter everyone blames the mountain wind for how cold it is. In the summer they blame the mountains for keeping all of the hot air stagnant and just hot.

Now there is science to the weather effects of mountains, but here in Kyoto they act as if Kyoto is famous for having this kind of weather. However, I am more native to the Gunma area of Japan having worked there for most of my time in Japan. In Gunma, they always blamed Mt. Akagi for the cold winters and the hot summers. At that time, all of my friends who had spent time in Kyoto said that Kyoto is famous for its cold winters and hot summers because of the mountains. When I asked them about whether Gunma was famous, they asked me where Gunma was again.

When you have a mountainous terrain like Japan, granted the mountains will play a role in the weather from day-to-day, but no single region can really claim to be the only one affected. You might offend the entire population of Gunma.

Accepting Modernity

Never before has mankind been so connected, and yet so alone. As I get ready for my oral comps (to be administered in written form since I am out of the US), I'm reading up on the classics such as Robert Putnam and his Bowling Alone material. Back in 1995 he wrote that the rise of the television took us away from engaging each other as the tube took more and more of our leisure time starting around the 60s. I haven't read anything of his past the 90s, so I don't know his opinion on the internet's effect on what he calls social capital. What I do know is that society is constantly changing for better or worse; accepting change is always tough for people though.

I got a little Japanese taste of this the other day on the way home. I've written in the past about how maiko-san (like geisha) who adorn the streets of Kyoto now use taxis to get from teahouse to teahouse. To everyone I know, there is nothing wrong with that at all. I've never heard anyone complain they should be taking rickshaw or walking from place to place.

However, maiko-san used to use their beautiful sleeves to keep necessary belongings such as coin purses and the like. Nowadays, though, cellphone have entered their sleeves.

The other day as I rode my bike home from dinner, I passed by a cab with clients in the back and a maiko-san in the front. As I approached, I was drawn to this girl's beauty. Now in all honesty, people have a fear of clowns, and although I don't fear them, I don't really see the beauty in all of that white paint on their faces.

Yet, this girl looked like a manikin in her beauty. The makeup accented the almost perfect features of her face, or perhaps hid the faults. Her kimono was gold with a majestic pattern. At that moment I felt like I understood why maiko-san have stood the test of time and continued to this day. The way she sat in the front seat of the cab unflinching as she looked down only added to the appearance of a manikin. As I thought, "is this real?" I slowly gained ground on the cab and peered more inside.

Yes, it was real. Nevermind the clients in the backseat of the cab, she was busy texting on her cellphone possibly about her favorite SMAP singer Kusanagi being arrested for exposing himself in a Tokyo park in the wee hours of the morning. The beautiful creature wasn't a piece of old Japan time-warped into the present for our pleasure, but rather the future of the past (which equals the present or modern) doing what all idle girls do here in Japan.

The pure maiko-san has gone to the pasture just like bowling leagues (from Putnam). This is just something we have to accept.

However, as technology changes and old forms of association change into different forms, have we become more alone than our predecessors? Would it be more valuable for that girl to put away her cellphone and draw up conversation with her clients in the backseat?

Chicken or Egg?

In my first entry since hell month ended a week and a half ago, I was pondering which topic I wanted to hit in this next post. I have a few ideas, but decided it would be nice to have some pictures to go along with them, so I'm going to my fall back idea, etymology.

Etymology, or the study of words, is extremely interesting because it not only gives an insight into people may have interacted in the past, but also words and cultures have developed within themself. This little entry is more about the former than the latter, but when you think about the former, you also have to think about the latter because interaction has had an effect on cultural development. Through my readings, I've found that it was apparently popular to show the Persian influence on Japanese culture via the silk road throughout the 80's as a number of books were produced on the topic; haven't heard much about that since but....

This is more of a question of phraseology than etymology, but I can't help but ask the questions in this blog...even if they are chicken and egg questions. In English, the phrase "long time no see" comes from a direct translation of a chinese phrase, hence the odd grammatical structure. How about the phrase "to kill two birds with one stone"? There are equivalent Chinese and Japanese phrases (isseki nicho: literally 1 stone, 2 birds; I guess we're supposed to get the idea from that), but where did the phrase originate? The other day, my teacher used the word "blood fest" (chi matsuri) much to my surprise (Japanese teachers don't typically use such phrases....).

How about common expressions? In Japanese, the concept of being dizzy is literally "eyes going in circles" (me ga mawatteiru) which does not really translate literally into English, but "to draw a blank" in Japanese is literally "mind turns white (blank)" (atama ga masshiro). When you think about it, to present the same concepts in similar words is a miracle in itself. How can English and Japanese produce the same general phrases even though they are in other ways polar opposites in structure and grammar?

It would take a detailed study of ancient texts to really find the answer to this question, but it is an interesting one that makes you think about what you are really saying, for example when you "take a shower" (Where are you taking it to?) or when you "have breakfast" (you have it, but will you eat it?).

Or maybe it is only interesting to me, the language freak...

PC: Japanese Style

If you looked at the title and thought I was talking about the personal computer, the whole concept of political correctness has failed. OK, I'm bound to have critics hounding me for making such a broad statement on such little evidence, but I see that as evidence of PC's failure in America and beyond. That is not to say that women's rights have not made progress in recent history. One group recently wrote a paper for President Obama to show the areas where progress needs to be made. I'm all over the concept of pay based on merit and not on sex, color, or political affiliation.

With that ode to women's rights out of the way, it's time for some PC bashing (not the kind that happened in the movie Office Space of a fax machine). PC is about altering the structures that inhibit the thought process through words. For example: the word "chairman" automatically includes the meaning that women cannot attain that position. To me, this is absurd because before PC activists drew attention to the concept, I associated the word with mankind a.k.a. human beings. It didn't matter if a woman became chairman because women are humans too.

However, English isn't the only language to experience this. Discriminatory (sabetsuteki) words are often avoided; I am usually corrected if I use one. Examples of this include chieokure (retarded); gaijin (foreigner, but literally outsider); and the reason I thought of this topic, shikimo (color blind). The correct words are shogai no aru hito (handicapped), gaikokujin (literally outside country person), and shikijyaku (color deficient). As you can see, it is very similar to the way words were changed in English to be less "discriminatory" toward people of certain conditions. As a colorblind person.....color-deficient person, I am supposed to take offense at the implication that I cannot see color, when I really can, just not the same way you can. However, do two people really see the same color? That's like asking how many licks it takes to eat a tootsie roll pop (that owl bites it in the commercial, so it is not 3!).

To put a Japanese spin on PC, you first have to understand the writing system. In Japan, they have a syllabic alphabet they use in conjunction with Chinese characters that were imported into Japan I believe during the Tang Dynasty of China. All of the Chinese characters have pronunciations that can be written in the Japanese syllabic alphabet. Chinese characters themselves are made up of "radicals" or different parts that you see often. One such radical is "river" represented as three lines (like a picture of a river). Words that have something to do with water or flowing usually have this radical in them. In fact, the character for flow as the river radical in it. However, the character for the verb "to decide" also has it (because ideas flow? The idea character doesn't have it though!). I always point to the word "to be troubled" as a perfect example of a character that doesn't make sense. It is made up of the "tree" radical and the "mouth/entrance" radical. For sure, a tree in the mouth is troubling, but I have proposed having the "person" radical above the "fire" radical because that is troubling.

This all relates to PC because there is a "man" radical and a "female" radical. One recent blog I read had a "study" in it which concluded that most of the almost 800 characters that contain the "female" radical have negative connotations while there are no characters that use the "man" radical. Right off the bat, I can think of a character that uses the "man" radical: yuki (bravery). Also, when I think of characters that contain the "female" radical I think of characters like suki (like) and sakura (cherry blossoms). However, to really think that these radicals affect connotations of women, I am highly skeptical. These may be vestiges of misogynistic ages past, but to say it affects connotations is like believing Hiroshima (literally broad island, but is located on the main island of Japan) really is an island because it says so.

If you don't catch what I'm saying, you can sum it up this way: languages are dynamic and changing and the meaning of words comes from socialization, not from etymology. The word sinister etymologically comes from the Latin word for "left-handed" but I don't associate left-handedness with evil because I was educated to the modern definition as evil. Similarly, Japanese people do not look for horses when they go to Gunma Prefecture (Gunma= herding horses). Drawing attention to the words make actually do harm because it draws awareness to discrimination that wasn't discrimination until it was deemed as such. No woman was denied a chairmanship because the title was chairman, it was socialization that attached being a man with the position and not the word; and this needs to be stopped! I hope there are lots of female chairmen in the future that earned the position in an egalitarian workplace!

Why the Obsession with Walking Robots?

Last spring, I worked on a project for a class measuring the risk of building an assembly plant in Southeast Asian countries for the Honda Robotics robot Asimo. In the process, I began to appreciate the robot that could walk, push carts, climb steps, and as it turns out, calculate its own path and determine if someone is going to walk in front of him so he can stop. It's amazing how much the little guy that measures somewhere in the 4 feet tall range can do.

But now this article in the Japan Times talks about how Japan plans to send a walking robot to the moon. Why a walking robot? The ones on wheels aren't good enough? The article says they are sending it to show how their technology can be applied, but I take that to mean they are showing it off to legitimize the time and money they have applied to developing it.

Why is there a need to have a robot with legs walking around in space. Humans had no control over their shape, but if they had, would they have chosen legs? Are legs the most efficient way to get around? There may be a study out there called "Legs are the Most Efficient Method of Moving," but I haven't read it. If it is so efficient and agile, why don't we replace the wheels on cars with legs? OK, I'm going overboard now, but you see my point. I respect the work they are doing with robots and think there might be some psychological reasoning for creating robots in our image; yet I don't think we need to send them to the moon because we can. For that, we should focus on the most efficient model for the task out hand whether it be sifting through moon dust or collecting rocks. Hey, isn't that Mars robot doing just fine?

Japan Gives Immigrants Money....to go home

Some of you may have read this story in the BBC about the Japanese government paying immigrants of Japanese decent to go back to their homes in Latin America. I read this story yesterday in either the Japan Times or Japan Today, and attached to the article was a comment section for people to voice their opinions. One common thread in the comments was that it was just another example of the Japanese government descriminating against foreigners. I for one wish that the government would pass a law outlawing blatant descrimination e.g. not being able to rent an apartment because I am foreign, but this is a little more complex than it may appear on the surface.

Japan's labor system prides itself on providing permanent jobs for its Japanese employees. This means that when it is time to trim fat during a recession, it is the temporary workers (usually foreign) that lose their jobs. The problem is compounded by the fact that the employer provides housing, thus creating a situation where one day you are working, and the next you are on the street. Having lots of people living on the street is not good regardless of their nationality.

So, the Japanese invented a way of getting rid of this problem by exporting laborers back to their country, right? Well, this is actually more of a common practice than one my think. Spain started doing this in July of last year to give agriculture jobs back to Spanish people. Malaysia has a tendency to round up Indonesians and send them home without a cash bonus, although it is more lax on these measures when there is a need for more labor (as in 2005).

I haven't drawn any correlations on the numbers, but I'm willing to bet that countries expel more immigrants when times are rough than they do during boom periods. It is quite interesting that the Japanese have chosen this method to send immigrants back home, but it isn't just another case of Japanese descrimination; they are emulating practices of other countries' attempts to stabilize the labor market. They target it at immigrants because Japan can't send Japanese home to some place that isn't Japan. Though, immigrants of non-Japanese decent will be sent home without the money putting Japan somewhere between Spain and Malaysia in their policy.