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.