Category Archives: Japan

by | 19 May 2008 · 7:12 am

Wordcatcher Tales: gatvol, makwerekwere, utari

I’m still bogged down with obscure linguistic research projects that are not yet bloggable, and already half-blogged books on depressing 20th-century European history that I haven’t finished reading. But I see that two other bloggers, Khanya and No-sword, have explored the social context of some interesting vocabulary from two far-outlying parts of the globe, the northernmost island of Japan and the southernmost country in Africa. So, without further ado, here are snippets of Wordcatcher Tales by proxy.

Steve at Khanya appends the following glossary to a post on Xenophobia – the gatvol factor in South Africa:

1. Gatvol – which being interpreted for the benefit of makwerekwere [2], is Afrikaans, meaning literally “hole full”, or more idiomatically, “Fed up”, or “had enough”, or “had it up to here”.

2. Makwerekwere – which, being interpreted for the benefit of foreigners, means foreigners.

Another South African blogger who in his home country was mistaken for a Nigerian explains the second term more specifically at The Zeleza Post:

Makwerekwere is the derogatory term used by Black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks. It reminds one of how the ancient Greeks referred to foreigners whose language they did not understand as the Barbaroi. To the Black South African, makwerekwere refers to Black immigrants from the rest of Africa, especially Nigerians. I was confounded by the fact that Black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own kaffirs so soon after apartheid.

Meanwhile, Matt at No-sword investigates why the Hokkaido Ainu Association, founded in 1930, changed its name to the Hokkaido Utari Association in 1961, and has now announced it will revert once again to its original name.

Ainu is obviously the name used to refer to the Ainu as a people distinct from other peoples; this is directly from the Ainu word aynu which means, predictably, “man” or “person” (as opposed to “supernatural being”).

Utari is a more interesting word. As a loan word in Japanese, it is usually glossed as “compatriot” (“同胞”, dōhō), which usually implies “fellow Ainu”. Its etymology in Ainu is more interesting.

Leave a comment

Filed under Africa, Japan, language, nationalism

by | 20 April 2008 · 1:21 pm

Jenkins in Jakarta

The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea, by Charles Robert Jenkins with Jim Frederick (U. California Press, 2008), pp. 163-165:

Once we touched down in Jakarta, my wife was there on the tarmac along with throngs of media…. The bus ride into the city took two hours. I had never seen such a bad traffic jam in my life. In Pyongyang there was rarely any traffic at all, even in the center of the city, but here the streets were jammed with cars. I did not wait long before getting down to business with my wife. I had already been waiting so long, I didn’t see any reason to delay the discussion any further. The bus was full of the Japanese delegation, so I still had to be a little discreet. We sat side by side, not looking at each other while we talked. “Why didn’t you want to have this meeting in China?” I asked. “If we met in China,” she said, “I may have been sent back to North Korea.” So I asked, “You don’t want to go back to North Korea?” “No,” she said quietly but firmly. “But I thought you did,” I said. “The [Korean Workers Party] Organization told me that you have been trying and wanting to come back this whole time.” “Gae-so-ri,” she said. (That is dog talk.) “Well,” I thought, “that’s it, then. The decision has been made. We are not going back.”

They put us up in a hotel downtown that was the nicest place I think I have ever stayed. We were in a suite on the fourteenth floor. It was larger than any house I had ever lived in. Brinda and Mika were in a state of shock. The television just blew them away. Actually, it blew me away, too. All those channels. The size of it. The brightness of all the colors. Some of the stuff that was shown, and the fact that it was on twenty-four hours a day. I think that was their very first whiff that there might be a lot more to the outside world than the North Koreans had ever told them. It didn’t take them long to sense that the rest of the world was much more free than North Korea had been. At the same time, there was only so much freedom for us: There was a guard on our door (officers from the Niigata police force, to be specific) twenty-four hours a day. Right across the hall from us was the Japanese delegation, including Saiki and Nakayama.

The next morning, my wife and I continued the discussion we had been having on the bus. To test her resolve on the matter, I said to her, “If you are not going back, then there is no point to me being here. The girls and I will go to China for a little while and then return to North Korea to pick up our new house. I don’t see what the problem is for you to come to North Korea. The Organization says you can go and come as you please. You can take the ferry back and forth. You can visit anytime you want.” She responded, “You know one big reason why I am not going back? It is not just because of me. It is because of you. Because of your family in the United States. If you go back to North Korea, you will never see your mother and sisters again.” “But I am not going to see them anyway, since I am going to go to jail for life!” I yelled. “You are not going to go to jail!” she yelled back. “How can you say that? ” I asked. “You can’t say that for sure.” I had realized by then that she and Koizumi were doing everything they could to appeal to the Americans for understanding and leniency in my case, but I also knew that my wife was in no position to offer me assurances about how the U.S. Army was going to choose to punish me. Whenever it was I had to face my accusers, I knew at least on that count, I would be doing it alone.

It was around that time I also realized that the power between my wife and me had changed. In North Korea, I was primarily responsible for protecting her and providing for her, and she would do what I thought was best for us almost without exception. She needed me. Now, however, the equation had changed. I would have to listen to her; she would be my guide. I now needed her more than she needed me. This change in our relationship has been one of the most noteworthy parts of our lives together since 2002, and, to be honest, sometimes one of the hardest for me to adjust to.

Leave a comment

Filed under Indonesia, Japan, Korea, military, U.S.

by | 28 March 2008 · 8:27 pm

Akebono: From Rikishi to Pro-Wrestler

Japan-based blogger Ampontan backs into a retrospective of former yokozuna Akebono’s spectacular career in sumo and his troubled career afterwards. The story starts with a wrestling match at Yasukuni Shrine and ends up being a requiem for a yokozuna. Here are a few paragraphs to whet your appetite.

There is a long tradition of professional wrestlers fighting at Yasukuni Shrine. The most recent occasion was April 23, 1961, when Japanese wrestling legend Rikidozan presided over a card that featured youngsters Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki, who would become stars in their own right. (Inoki also would later form his own political party and win election to a seat in the upper house.) The event attracted 15,000 people….

Holding wrestling matches for the divinities at a Shinto shrine is not as outlandish as it may seem. There is a very long tradition in Japan of festivals with competitive events at Shinto shrines. In addition to sumo, which is closely linked to Shinto, competitions at shrines include archery, tug-of-war, and, according to my reference, even cock-fighting. The idea is that the divinities will favor the more deserving competitor, and the victors in these events will have good fortune in the year ahead….

The primary draw this year was the appearance in the ring of the former sumo yokozuna Akebono fighting as one member of a six-man tag team match….

Akebono’s career match record was 654 wins and 232 losses. He won 11 tournament championships, ranking him 7th in the modern era at the time. (After Akebono retired, another foreign rikishi, Musashimaru, racked up 12. Today’s fallen superstar, the Mongolian Asashoryu, later broke Akebono’s records for speed of promotion, and won 22 championships to place fourth on the all-time list. But that’s another story.)…

Eight years ago, Akebono appeared in a sumo ritual at Yasukuni at the pinnacle of his professional fame. Last weekend, few even in Japan noticed as he threw his weight around once again to take down his opponents. He said he was nervous at first, but happy to be back.

He seems to have found his niche. He said he wants to continue his career as a professional wrestler as a single instead of being part of a tag team.

Rikidozan and Giant Baba were the first pro-wrestlers I ever saw—and that was on a black and white Sharp TV in Kyoto in the 1950s, the same place I used to catch the end of sumo tournaments after school. Sumo captured my imagination in a way that pro-wrestling never did.

Leave a comment

Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, sumo

by | 22 March 2008 · 6:26 pm

Osaka Grand Sumo Finale and Freakonomics

Going into the final day of this year’s Osaka Grand Sumo Tournament, the two Mongolian yokozunas, Asashoryu and Hakuho, are tied for the lead with 2 losses each and will meet each other for the deciding match. Right behind them are two mid-level maegashira, the Georgian Kokkai and Estonian Baruto, with 3 losses each.

Seven rikishi are going into their final day with records of 7 wins and 7 losses, and therefore must win to retain their rank. It will be interesting to see how many of them win. (According to stats compiled in Freakonomics, about 5 out of 7 them will win.) All but one are facing opponents who have already secured a winning record, and the sole exception (Asasekiryu) faces an opponent who has no chance at securing one.

  • Goeido (M8, 7-7) vs. Kakizoe (M14, 8-6)
  • Wakanoho (M4, 7-7) vs. Tochinonada (M8, 8-6)
  • Miyabiyama (M2, 7-7) vs. Baruto (M7, 11-3)
  • Asasekiryu (M1, 7-7) vs. Aminishiki (M2, 6-8)
  • Kotoshogiku (S, 7-7) vs. Kisenosato (K, 8-6)
  • Ama (S, 7-7) vs. Kyokutenho (M4, 9-5)
  • Kotomitsuki (O, 7-7) vs. Chiyotaikai (O, 8-6)

UPDATE: Sure enough, six out of seven won their final bouts. (The winners are in boldface.) Baruto had too much to prove to go easy on Miyabiyama. He and Kokkai ended up at 12-3, tied with Hakuho, who lost his final match with fellow yokozuna Asashoryu. Baruto and Kokkai both shared the Fighting Spirit Award for the tournament.

Did the losers intentionally take a fall? Maybe not. Maybe the winners were just hungrier for that last win. Also, except for the ozeki (O) and Baruto, the winners also outranked their respective opponents, which meant they had better records in the previous tournament than today’s losers did.

UPDATE 2: Like every major sport worldwide, sumo has its ongoing scandals. Washington Post foreign reporter Blaine Harden updates us on one of them, the beating death last year of a trainee.

Leave a comment

Filed under economics, Japan, Mongolia, sumo

by | 20 March 2008 · 9:41 pm

On the Origins of Stalin’s Great Terror

From The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia, by Orlando Figes (Metropolitan, 2007), pp. 234-236:

Extraordinary even by the standards of the Stalinist regime, the Great Terror was not a routine wave of mass arrests, such as those that swept across the country throughout Stalin’s reign, but a calculated policy of mass murder. No longer satisfied with imprisoning his real or imagined ‘political enemies’, Stalin now ordered the police to take people out of the prisons and labour camps and murder them. In the two years of 1937 and 1938, according to incomplete statistics, a staggering total of at least 681,692 people, and probably far more, were shot for ‘crimes against the state’ (91 per cent of all death sentences for political crimes between 1921 and 1940, if NKVD figures are to be believed). The population of the Gulag labour camps and colonies grew in these same years from 1,196,369 to 1,881,570 people (a figure which excludes at least 140,000 deaths within the camps themselves and an unknown number of deaths during transport to the camps). Other periods of Soviet history had also seen mass arrests of ‘enemies’, but never had so many of the victims been killed. More than half the people arrested during the Great Terror were later shot, compared to less than 10 per cent of arrests in 1930, the second highest peak of executions in the Stalin period, when 20,201 death sentences were carried out. During the ‘anti-kulak operation’ of 1929-32, the number of arrests was also very high (586,904), but of these victims only 6 per cent (35,689 people) were subsequently shot.

The origins of the Great Terror are not easy to explain. Nor is it immediately clear why it was so concentrated in these two years. To begin to understand it, we must look at the Great Terror not as an uncontrolled or accidental happening, a product of the chaos of the Stalinist regime that could have erupted at almost any time – a view occasionally put forward – but as an operation masterminded and controlled by Stalin in response to the specific circumstances he perceived in 1937….

The key to understanding the Great Terror as a whole lies perhaps in Stalin’s fear of an approaching war and his perception of an international threat to the Soviet Union. The military aggression of Hitler’s Germany, signalled by its occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, and the occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese, convinced Stalin that the USSR was endangered by the Axis powers on two fronts. Stalin’s fears were reinforced in November 1936, when Berlin and Tokyo united in a pact (later joined by Fascist Italy) against the Comintern. Despite his continuing support of ‘collective security’, Stalin did not place much hope in the Soviet alliance with the Western powers to contain the Axis threat: the Western states had failed to intervene in Spain; they appeared committed to the appeasement of Nazi Germany; and they reportedly gave Stalin the impression that it was their hidden aim to divert Hitler’s forces to the East and engage them in a war with the USSR rather than confront them in the West. By 1937, Stalin was convinced that the Soviet Union was on the brink of war with the Fascist states in Europe and with Japan in the East. The Soviet press typically portrayed the country as threatened on all sides and undermined by Fascist infiltrators – ‘spies’ and ‘hidden enemies’ – in every corner of society.

‘Our enemies from the capitalist circles are tireless. They infiltrate everywhere,’ Stalin told the writer Romain Rolland in 1935. Stalin’s view of politics – like many Bolsheviks’ – had been profoundly shaped by the lessons of the First World War, when the tsarist regime was brought down by social revolution in the rear. He feared a similar reaction against the Soviet regime in the event of war with Nazi Germany. The Spanish Civil War reinforced his fears on this account. Stalin took a close interest in the Spanish conflict, seeing it (as did most of his advisers) as a ‘valid scenario for a future European war’ between Communism and Fascism. Stalin put the military defeats of the Republicans in 1936 down to the factional infighting between the Spanish Communists, the Trotskyists, the Anarchists and other left-wing groups. It led him to conclude that in the Soviet Union political repression was urgently required to crush not just a ‘fifth column’ of ‘Fascist spies and enemies’ but all potential opposition before the outbreak of a war with the Fascists.

Leave a comment

Filed under Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, USSR, war

by | 6 March 2008 · 5:46 pm

St. Olaf Website on Hidden Christians in Japan

Japanese Bible verseIn 2006, Brendan Eagan put together an impressive online documentary on the history of Kakure (Hidden) Christians in Japan, based on firsthand interviews and site visits in southern Japan by a team from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. Here are links to the Statement of Purpose, Historical Overview, Photographs, and Interview Transcripts.

via The Marmot’s Hole

Leave a comment

Filed under Japan, religion

by | 2 March 2008 · 9:25 pm

Braille Family Resemblances and Mutations

Matt’s recent post on No-sword about Japanese Braille prompted me to look at other varieties, all of which derive in one way or another from the system first invented in France between 1821 and 1824 by Louis Braille (1809-1852), who was himself inspired by a more complex system of night-writing designed to allow military units to communicate in the dark without betraying their positions.

All varieties of Braille render the characters of their respective languages in a six-dot matrix (or did until until recently); all are read from left to right, even in Hebrew; all use word-spacing, even in Chinese and Japanese; and all tend to place diacritic characters before the characters they modify.

14   0_   0_   00
25   __   0_   __
36   __   __   __
EN:  a    b    c 

14   __ 0_   __ 0_   __ 00   _0 0_   _0 0_   _0 00
25   __ __   __ 0_   __ __   _0 __   _0 0_   _0 __
36   _0 __   _0 __   _0 __   00 __   00 __   00 __
EN:     A       B       C        1       2      3
   = cap-a   cap-b   cap-c   num-a   num-b   num-c

In English, the same formation of dots can represent either a letter or a number, depending on the preceding context. Each formation can also serve as a contraction, so that b = be, c = can, d = do, e = every, f = from, j = just, l = like, v = very, and so on.

The designers of Japanese Braille (点字) retained the letter = number equivalency, marking numbers with the same prefix, but introduced some genetic mutations to adapt to the kana syllabary. They redefined a b c d e as the vowels a i u e o, which is how everyone nowadays begins to recite the kana syllabary. The dots for these five letters are confined to positions 1-2-4 (a = 1, i = 1+2, u = 1+4, e = 1+2+4, o = 2+4), leaving positions 3-5-6 to render the consonant on each syllable, so that k = 6, s = 5+6, t = 3+5, n = 3, h = 3+6, m = 3+5+6, r = 5. The syllable n is written as m without any vowel in positions 1-2-4.

There are no capital letters in Japanese kana, but the same method is used to add the dakuten and handakuten marks to following consonants: a prefix with a dot in position 6 is used to transform h- into p-, while a prefix with a dot in position 5 is used as a to transform voiceless initials into their voiced equivalents.

14   0_   0_   00
25   __   0_   __
36   00   00   00
JP:  ha   hi   hu

14   __ 0_   __ 0_   __ 00   __ 0_   __ 0_   __ 00
25   __ __   __ 0_   __ __   _0 __   _0 0_   _0 __
36   _0 00   _0 00   _0 00   __ 00   __ __   __ __
JP:    pa      pi      pu      ba      bi      bu
   =  '-ha    '-hi    '-hu   ''-ha   ''-hi   ''-hu

Braille takes up a lot of space, so its regular users rely a lot on contractions. (There’s also a kind of Braille shorthand.) The word Braille itself is usually written with just the letters B-r-l. These contractions can have different meanings even in closely related members of the Braille family, like French and English. For instance, the French circumflex vowels are rendered by adding an extra dot in position six (which I will show as ^) to the first five letters of the alphabet, so â = a+^ (1+6), ê = b+^ (1+2+6), î = c+^ (1+4+6), ô = d+^ (1+4+5+6), and û = e+^ (1+5+6). (The filled dot 6 also adds a circumflex to Esperanto versions of Braille.) In English, these same contractions respectively indicate ch/child, gh, sh, th/this, and wh/which.

English double letters are contracted and rendered within a single cell by a different method: shifting the position of the dots but retaining their shape. Thus, the dots for b/but occupy positions 1+2, while bb drops to positions 2+3; c/can sits at 1+4, while cc drops to 2+5; d/do sits at 1+4+5, while dd drops to 2+5+6; and g/go sits at 1+2+4+5, while gg drops to 2+3+5+6.

A similar principle plays a key role in Korean Braille, invented in 1894 by a Canadian missionary who introduced some radical (and brilliant) mutations to adapt it to the (equally brilliant) Korean alphabet. Korean vowels occupy their own cells, while some diphthongs take up two cells. The letterㅏ(a) occupies dots 1+2+6, whileㅑ(ya) occupies its mirror image, dots 3+4+5. Similarly,ㅓ(eo) at 2+3+4 is a mirror image ofㅕ(yeo) at 1+5+6; ㅗ (o) at 1+3+6 is a mirror image ofㅛ (yo) at 4+3+6; ㅜ (u) at 1+4+3 is a mirror image ofㅠ (yu) at 1+4+6; and ㅡ (eu) at 2+4+6 is a mirror image ofㅣ(i) at 1+3+5.

The possible syllable structures of Korean are too numerous to fit into a six-dot matrix, so Korean syllables are written sequentially, typically (C)V(C), just as in French or English. In order to avoid putting spaces around each syllable, so that readers can distinguish initial from final consonants, Korean braille has two versions of every consonant, one for initial position, the other for final. Each consonant has the same shape in each position, but the one in final position is either lower than its initial counterpart or a mirror image.

Thus,ㄴ(n) occupies dots 1+4 if initial, but drops to 2+5 if final; ㄷ(d) occupies dots 2+4 if initial, but drops to 3+5 if final; andㅁ(m) occupies dots 1+5 if initial, but drops to 2+6 if final. Meanwhile, mirror-image consonants don’t drop, they flip:ㄱ(g) flips from dot 4 in initial position to dot 1 in final position; whileㄹ(r) flips from dot 5 to dot 3; andㅂ(b) flips from dots 4+5 to dots 1+2. As a result, Korean 점자 ‘dot characters’ display the same kinds of symmetry and inversion that the Korean alphabet itself displays.

Chinese Braille comes in at least two flavors, Cantonese and Mandarin. Both represent Chinese characters in three cells, one for the onset, the second for the rime, and the third for the tone, just as in Zhuyin/Bopomofo. In practice, however, tone is frequently left unmarked, generating a good deal of ambiguity. Perhaps the new system designed in the 1970s, which represents all three components in just two cells, will eventually solve that problem.

UPDATE: Matt has added a new post about attempts to render Japanese kanji in Braille. The more complicated method is geared to the shape of the kanji and requires two extra dots in each cell. The other method uses three six-dot cells per kanji. The first cell broadly classifies the type of character to follow, the second gives one mora of the Sino-Japanese reading of the character, and the third gives one mora of the native Japanese reading of the character. The second method strikes me as akin to the structural division of many written kanji into one part that broadly classifies the semantic domain, and another that indicates the (Sino-Japanese) sound value. The combination of native and Sinitic reading is also how Koreans routinely distinguish similar-sounding Chinese characters. It’s as if English speakers routinely distinguished similar-sounding Latin roots by saying ‘foot-ped-‘ vs. ‘child-ped-‘. The typical Japanese strategy, by contrast, is to cite a well-known compound in which the kanji occurs, just as English-speakers might distinguish ‘ped- as in pedestrian’ from ‘ped- as in pediatrics’.

2 Comments

Filed under China, Japan, Korea, language

by | 25 February 2008 · 9:21 pm

Néojaponisme on Katakana Typography Reform

Matt of No-sword has posted on Néojaponisme an interesting profile of Yamashita Yoshitarō and the efforts of the Kanamojikai (カナモジカイ, “Kana Character Society”) in the 1920s to abandon kanji and convert entirely to katakana to write Japanese. Yamashita designed a katakana typewriter keyboard (similar to the current computer keyboard) and proposed typographical innovations such as word-spacing and ascenders and descenders to improve legibility over the old block-spaced typography.

In practice, this meant:

* Horizontal writing from left to right
* Spaces between words
* Careful word choice to avoid homonym problems
* New letterforms

The first three ideas are nothing special and are actually working out quite well in modern Korean. To propose new letterforms, however, takes chutzpah.

Leave a comment

Filed under Japan, language

by | 19 February 2008 · 9:45 pm

Japanese Internment in Canada and the U.S.

A recent article by Stephanie Bangarth in Japan Focus examines Nikkei Loyalty and Resistance in Canada and the United States, 1942-1947. Here is an excerpt.

A basic accounting of the similarities and differences in the situation of American and Canadian Nikkei sets forth something like this: In North [and South] America in general, the Japanese were subjected to discriminatory treatment upon arrival, including the denial of citizenship rights in the US and franchise rights in Canada; they negotiated this impediment by clustering in “ethnic enclaves” primarily on the west coast and increasingly became objects of suspicion, fear, and envy over the course of the early twentieth century. Following the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, both countries “evacuated” Japanese aliens, Japanese nationals, and their North American–born children from their west coasts and “relocated” them to inland camps on the basis of “military necessity,” a politically expedient term legitimating an historic racist animus. This movement involved about 112,000 people in the US and nearly 22,000 in Canada.

In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, both the US and Canada also developed policies that were used to defraud the Nikkei of their property and to encourage a more even “dispersal” of the population throughout the country. The policies diverged in the mid-1940s when the Canadian government expatriated Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry and deported some Japanese aliens (those who signed repatriation forms requesting to be sent to Japan). The Americans also deported some, but only those who renounced American citizenship. Japanese Canadians were disfranchised by provincial and federal legislation; by virtue of the Bill of Rights, those Japanese Americans who had been born in the US were not. In addition, they were permitted to enlist and many did so proudly in the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. It is also worth noting that many Nisei who joined the armed forces did so while their families remained in the camps; still others resisted pressures to join, particularly after 20 January 1944 when the draft was reinstated for Japanese Americans.

Throughout much of the war, by contrast, their Canadian counterparts were prohibited from serving in the armed forces and thereby demonstrating their loyalty. Canadian government officials feared that in return for serving their country, Japanese Canadians might agitate for the franchise. It was only toward the end of the war that about 150 Nisei were permitted to work as translators for the Canadian military. Another important difference is that the US government allowed persons of Japanese ancestry to return to the Pacific coast in 1945 as a result of the Endo decision, whereas Japanese Canadians had to wait until 1949 when wartime government legislation finally lapsed.

via K. M. Lawson’s Asian History Carnival #19 at Frog in a Well

Leave a comment

Filed under Canada, Japan, U.S., war

by | 11 February 2008 · 8:46 pm

Changing Color Values in World History

Anthropologists and cognitive linguists have done a lot of work on the acquisition, psycholinguistic status, typology, and relation to neurophysiology of basic color terms. Now a world history professor has published a fascinating article on the evolution, elaboration, social status, and trickle-down economics of colors in human societies: Robert Finlay, Weaving the Rainbow: Visions of Color in World History (on Project Muse), Journal of World History 18:383-431. Here are a few excerpts (footnotes omitted).

Dyed garments were the most visible, widespread, and extensively used signs of social status and conspicuous consumption. Rural laborers and common townsfolk everywhere dressed in homespun fabrics of lackluster tones, mainly washed-out browns, blues, and grays. In northern Europe during the late medieval period, wool in natural shades of tan or gray provided most of the clothing. Clerics were supposed to wear linen liturgical vestments of pure white but had to settle for shades of light gray and yellowish-white since the various whitening agents, such as ash, chalk, and magnesium, yielded muddy results. In sixteenth-century England, some common hues for clothing were known as “horseflesh,” “gooseturd,” “rat’s color,” “pease porridge,” and “puke.” In eighteenth-century France, “flea’s belly,” “Paris mud,” and “goose-droppings” identified a dark brown cloth. In China at the same time, “camel lung,” “rat skin,” “nose mucus,” and “dribbling spittle” numbered among the disagreeable colors.

Only the elite could afford or legally wear clothing of certain colors. Sumptuary legislation almost everywhere prohibited low-status persons from dressing in the sort of colors and costumes worn by those in privileged circles. Japanese samurai, Chinese mandarins, Javanese chiefs, Indian Brahmans, Swahili oligarchs, Byzantine ecclesiastics, Venetian patricians, French aristocrats, Spanish hildagos, Aztec and Maya warriors—all dressed in costly dyed garments that set them proudly apart from color-deprived commoners….

Japanese color values were established by the Heian era (794–1185), a couple of centuries after sophisticated Chinese dyeing technology came to the islands. Since Japan entered a lengthy era of national isolation in 794, the prolonged cultural supremacy of the Heian court meant that its color values dominated the elite and remained a reference point on the subject for many centuries. In fact, the Heian preference for “cold and withered” (hiekareru) metaphorical colors of the mind paradoxically resulted in an exquisitely subtle perception of color, one that remains unparalleled in cultural history….

The word for “color” in ancient Japan was iro, which originally denoted a beautiful woman as well as desire for sex with one—the ideogram signifies intercourse, with one person lying on top of another. Iro evolved to evoke the idea of passing time and transient hues. In like fashion, the verb shimiru (to penetrate) came to mean “to dip in dye” and “to absorb color,” while also taking on the nuance of inconstant feelings and fading beauty. The Japanese looked down upon peaches and plums, the most admired flowering plants in China, as vulgar and voluptuous because of their deep-pink blooms. Instead, they esteemed the delicate pinkish-white tint of cherry blossoms, whose petals flowered so briefly. In general, contemporary Western taste highlights the climactic moment of the full-blooming rose and resplendent tulip, but traditional Japan favored the beginning and ending of things, transitional moments epitomized in barely opened buds, faded flowers, and withered autumn leaves.

Leave a comment

Filed under economics, Japan, language