A New Understanding of かしら
Today, I refined my understanding of the word かしら (kashira). This word is put at the end of a sentence to make it into a question or request for confirmation.
For example, if you want to go home, you could ask your boss the following.
帰っても良いでしょうか。
kaette mo ii deshou ka
Nuance: May I go home now?
If you are talking to one of your colleagues, however, you can use this instead. (This is kind of a standard way to say it -- not overly polite, but not casual.)
帰っても良いですか。
kaette mo ii desu ka
Nuance: Can I go home now?
If you are chatting with friends, the following are fine.
帰っても良いかしら。
kaette mo ii kashira
Nuance: Do you mind if I leave?
帰っても良いかな。
kaette mo ii kana
Nuance: I wonder if it's okay for me to leave. (Implies more doubt, like asking oneself in addition to asking the listener)
かしら is mainly used by women, but you will hear certain men use it too sometimes (very rarely). かしら is a casual way to ask a question (or ask for confirmation), but it has a nice sound, so it leaves the listener with a good impression -- AS LONG AS the listener is your friend and equal and not your superior.
I always thought that かしら was higher on the "politeness scale" because one of my very good (and very polite) friends uses it all the time. What I realize now is that she uses it with me because I am her friend AND she wants it to sound nice. My mistake was thinking that she uses it only because it is polite. (And that is a serious mistake in my thinking, because I should have recognized that she wouldn't be using very formal language with me.)
This is one of the most difficult things about learning Japanese. The choice of words depends on the relationship between the people who are talking, their gender, the situation, etc. This is, I'm sure, true of all languages to a certain extent, but it is extremely well developed in Japanese. This means that the usual language learner's trick of learning by mimicking what is said to you doesn't always work in Japanese, and can even be quite detrimental to your language development. (For example, it is very common to hear foreign men speak in a somewhat more feminine way because they learn by listening to their Japanese girlfriends and wives.)
Words in another language are like tools in your dad's workshop. Even if you know what a lot of them are, if you don't know how to use them, they are worthless, or worse yet, they may even hurt you. This means that it is important to give as much attention to learning the USAGE of the word as the MEANING by looking up examples of the word in use (http://www.alc.co.jp is good for this), asking your colleagues, and testing out the usage of words on good friends (since they are, hopefully, least likely to be offended if you use the wrong level of politeness).
So, to sum up, if you are a woman, you might want to try using かしら to make your Japanese sound more refined -- remembering that it just sounds nice and is not particularly polite. Just be sure to take account of the relationship between you and the listener (and all the other usage variables) before you do!
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A New Year`s Card Game- Hyakunin Isshu Karuta (百人一首かるた) is a Gateway to the Sublime World of Classical Japanese Poetry
A 17th century set of Hyakunin Isshu Karuta
The special dishes and decorations, the visits to shrines or temples, the family gatherings, the greetings, even the pre-holiday cleanings, make O-Shogatsu ( the Japanese New Year Celebration) fascinating for me. They reveal how the Japanese make a clean break with the past and then make a fresh, new start- with the strong desire for the health, prosperity and happiness of the family, the community and the nation, manifesting itself in the amassing of ENGI-MONO (縁起物)- objects, words, colors, etc, which are believed to have a POSITIVE impact on the world. In addition, there are also objects, words, colors etc, which are compiled to keep all forms of misfortune away. What is fascinating, is what it is that determines the making of GOOD ENGI- symbolism and connection expressed through shape, name,color, etc. I have given numerous examples of this in my past few Tsukublog articles.Here are some things which are symbolically auspicious:
Oranges (DAIDAI), because their Japanese name DAIDAI also means GENERATION BY GENERATION- thus representing the wish for the continuation of the family line.
Shrimp- because their bent backs resemble the bodies of extremely old people- expressing the hope to live a long life.
Buckwheat noodles (soba): are eaten on New Year`s Eve because ( among other reasons) they break easilly, representing a clean break with the past year.
As my articles show, the list of these ENGI MONO goes on and on.
The presence of this type of symbolism extends even, or should I say extends naturally, to traditional New Year`s games. For example, there is HANE TSUKI , a game in which decorative paddles ( HAGOITA, which are ENGI MONO in themselves) are used to battle a shuttle cock back and forth. This batting away of the birdy symbolizes batting away mosquitos, and illness.
Very clever.Like all the other ideas for ENGI MONO which have been popularized over the years.
There is another very popular traditional New Year`s game, however, which rather than having a significantly auspicious symbolism ( though I would suggest that it might), is a surprising celebration of Japan`s classical culture- specifically, its poetry- in which the players must familiarize themselves ( and in many cases memorize) one hundred poems of varying degrees of complexity and difficulty.
The name of the game is Hyakunin Isshu Karuta ( The One hundred Poets, One Hundred Poems Card Game), and I first encountered it years ago while spending an O-Shogatsu with a Japanese Family. After a long leasurely afternoon of eating and drinking, the everyone in the house, young and old suddenly got down on the TATAMI floor to play a card game. One hundred cards were spread on the floor. Each, I was told contained the last segment ( SHIMO KU) of a poem. What we were to do was to try to grab up these cards as their first portions (KAMI KU) were chanted.
Playing hyakunin Isshu Karuta with a wooden tablets insted of cards (Tsukuba 2011)
As you might have guessed, since I was a complete beginner in Japanese at that time ( and was unfamiliar with these poems), I ended up with not a single card when the game was over.
Still, I never forgot that game. Being the stubborn obssesive personiltiy that I am, in the subsequent years I studied and studied, until what was once an exotic hum to me ( as the peoms are recited), are now clearly understandable pieces, which evoke all their possible interpretations in my mind when I hear them.
Yes, it was that one game of Hyakunin Isshu Karuta, which started me off on my ongoing relationship with Japanese poetry.
The cards ( in this case wooden tablets) are usually arranged in alphabetical (A, I,U,E) order to make finding them easier
Let me tell you a little bit more about what the Hyakunin Isshu is- and maybe you too will catch the addiction.
The Hyakunin Isshu is a collection of WAKA (和歌)- Japanese poems of the TANKA variety.. Unlike English poetry which often invovles RHYME, these poems are created by fitting ideas into a set number of sylables- specifically 31 (MISOHITOMOJI, 三十一文字), broken up into phrases of 5-7-5-7-7 ( longer than the mere 5-7-5 pattern which was popularized later with HAIKU poems).
The reason that this unusual syllabic rhythm was set upon as the standard form for WAKA poetry was that it was in this particular pattern (5-7-5-7-7) that the God SUSANOO NO MIKOTO anounced his marriage. This form was thus deemed to be the WAY THE GODS SPEAK. Thus waka were used to express thoughts and feelings which could not be expressed in normal everyday speech.
As its title , ONE HUNDRED POETS. ONE HUNDRED POETS suggests, the Hyakunin Isshu is a selection of 1oo WAKA by 100 different poets - 79 men ( including 8 Emperors, and 13 Buddhist monks) and 21 women ( including 1 Emperess. The first poem of the collection is attributed to the Emperor Tenji (626-671), and the last to retired Emperor Juntokuin (1197-1242), and thus the anthology spans the works from a period of 500 years.
Among these works are some (one each of course) by Japan`s greatest NAMES in classical poetry and literature: Otomo no Yakamochi, Ono no Komachi, Ki no Tsurayuki, Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon.
All the poems in the Hyakunin Isshu strongly reflect the tastes and sensibilites of its compiler, FUJIWARA NO TEIKA (1162-1241), a highly respected poet in his own right and an advocate of aesthetic principles which he developed emphasizing the expression of the SPIRIT OF THINGS ( mono no kokoro) over realism ( Teika`s ideas would have a MAJOR impact on the Japanese culture of the Muromachi Period- especially on The Noh Theater, and The Tea Ceremony).
The subject matter dominating the collection also reflects Teika`s own particular preferences, with LOVE poems (43 out of 100)making up a large portion, followed by SEASONAL POEMS ( 32 out of 100), with works on what serely must have been Teika`s favorite season- autumn, predominating these.
With only 100 poems, the Hyakunin Isshu is the slimmest volume among Japan` great anthologies of classical poetry. But that`s what makes it so great ( for me, at least). Japan`s poetic traditional boiled down to its essence. It a most convenient medium through which to work your way into the world of traditional Japanese aesthetics.
And not only this. Working to understand these poems will lead you on the road to exploring many other aspect of Japanese culture nature and history.
It is interesting how this influential collection came into being ( whether the story is true or not, no one is sure). It is said that Teika was asked to select one hundred poems, which would be written on sheets of paper to decorate the sliding doors of a mountain villa in a place called Ogura ( this is why, though there have been many subsequent alternative Hyakunin Isshu, i.e. one hundred warrior poets, one hundred women poets, etc.) Teika`s collection, the standard, is referred to as the OGURA HYAKUNIN ISSHU).
This ( and more) is all detailed in Teika`s extant diary- the MEIGETSU KI (明月記).
An old set of hyakunin Isshu karuta
The fact that the poems Teika selected were originally written on sheets of paper ( at the even number of one hundred), made it conducive for them to be made into a card game- with distinctive illustrations of the poets and in an even more distinctive script( supposedly based on Teika`s idiosyncratic calligraphy).
The idea of this card game, by the way, most probably would not have arisen without the arrival in Japan of the Portuguese, who introduced playing card ( among other things) to this country. This is reflected in the use of the Portuguese based word KARUTA (carta) for the game.
For those who are not ready to tackle the poems Teika selected in their original language, there are MANY translations. In fact, some say that the first work in Japanese ever rendered into English was the Hyakunin Isshu.
You can find numerous translations online, including this 1909 version by William Porter:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/hvj/index.htm
Tsukuba`s very own Shaney Crawford (founding member, editor and frequent contributor to TsukuBlog), has also been working on a translation of the anthology, and she has already completed English renditions of the first 30 poems:
http://www.shaneycrawford.com/2002/03/hyakunin-isshu-my-interpretations/
These should help you get started off on your own road into the world of Hyakunin Isshu - which naturally should at some point get you into reading into the poems for yourself . It is only by close examination of each poem in its original that REAL appreciation can be achieved.
The reason for this is not only the fact that the poems are written a specialized form of classical Japanese ( if that were the case, looking up each word in the dictionary would be enough to achieve understanding), but these works abound in puns and allusions which are completely lost in translation. There is even a poem ( number 22), whose beauty lies in its play on the construction of the Chinese character for the word storm( 嵐), which is made of a mountain (山）on top of wind (wind)!- this makes for a mighty difficult challenge for tranlators.
Let me give you one more example. Since this is Tsukublog, I will present the case of poem number 13 of the collection, which just happens to be set in Tsukuba.
The second half ( shimo ku) of poem number 13- which is set in Tsukuba- it reads: KOI ZO TSUMORITE FUCHI TO NARI NURU
The poem is attributed to the Retired Emperor Yozei-In(868-949) and goes like this:
筑波嶺の峰より落つるみなの川
恋ぞつもりて淵となりぬる
Tsukuba ne no mine yori otsuru minano-gawa
Koi zo tsumorite fuchi to nari nuru
Which I will DIRECTLY translate, or rather explain the general meaning as:
From the peaks of Mt. Tsukuba flows the Minanogawa River which forms deep pools ( at the foot of the mountain) . In the same way my love for you has grown (strong and) deep.
What has to be dealt with by the translator in the case of this poem is conveying the significance of Mt. Tsukuba for the aristocrats at that time, as well as the meaning of the characters used to write the name of the river MINANOGAWA.
For the educated Japanese of Yozei-In`s time, Mt Tsukuba represented COUPLES, ROMANCE, and SEX.
This is because the oldest collection of Japanese poems the Manyoshu, as well as the Chronicles of the land of Hitachi ( Hitachi no Kuni no Fu-doki , refer to Mt Tsukuba as having been the most famous location for special COUPLING festivals, at which men and women, most of whom had never met before, would GET TOGETHER. These ceremonies which were held twice a year in spring and autumn were called KAGAI. The reason that Mt Tsukuba would have become an important place for such rites was because of its TWIN PEAKS, which for the Japanese naturally represented the male and the female.
According to poems in the Manyoshu, the men and women who wanted to participate in the KAGAI would gather on Mt Tsukuba at a river called the MINANOGAWA. The name of this river is spelled with the Kanji characters 男女川, which directly translated mean the MAN-WOMAN RIVER.
Thus we can see that the place at which the poem is set Mt Tsukuba, as well the MINANOGAWA river, were terms pregnant with meaning for educated Japanese, and this makes understanding the poem extremely difficult without delving deeper.
(It is obvious that Yozei-In did not ever actually visit Mt. Tsukuba ( there are no deep pools which form at its base), but rather selected the setting of his love poem for its symbolic significance).
(It is interesting that Tsukuba`s most most famous Sake Brewery, located at the foot of Mt Tsukuba calls its brand- Minanogawa (男女川).One reason its products are so delicious is that it uses the water that flows from the peaks of Mt. Tsukuba.)
Anyway, I`d better stop now. VOLUMES could be written about the complexities these poems and their backgrounds ( and many volumes HAVE in fact been written about them!).
I hope that you too take the leap into this special poetic world- maybe by O-Shogatsu ( New Year`s) next year you will be ready to take on your Japanese friends in a game of Hyakunin-Isshu Karuta!
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Akemashite Omedeto! -(Happy New Year!)- a revealing look at the origin of the expression
I have said it again and again. Japanese culture and the Japanese language are endlessly interesting. The deeper you look the more surprising it gets.To illustrate this point once more, this time on the the first day of the new year, I`d like to talk about something which in most countries and most languages is quite simple- New Year`s Greetings.
Well, as you might expect, in Japan things are a bit more complex. On the last days of December, when meeting people for what is probably the last time of the year, the Japanese part with an expression which is equivalent to what is used in most languages, YOI O TOSHI O, or Have a Good New Year.
What is difficult to remember ( for foreigners) when speaking Japanese, however, is that this expression is only used UP TO midnight of December 31st. Once the clock strikes midnight, for the next seven days or so, people greet each other with AKEMASHITE OMEDETO- GOZAIMASU, or in its simplest and most casual form OMEDETO-.
Since in modern Japanese OMEDETO is an expression used in very much the same way as the English word CONGRATULATIONS, this New Year`s greeting could now be literally translated as- CONGRATULATIONS UPON THE (OCCASSION OF THE) OPENING (OF THE NEW YEAR).
Besides the fact that there are different greetings for BEFORE and AFTER the ringing in of the new year, both these greetings sound quite usual, aand at first glance simply like two slighty different ways of saying the same thing.
However, a look at the etymology of the word OMEDETO- shows OMEDETO to have quite an unusual meaning for a New Year`s greeting . It is also quite revealing about the roots of Japanese culture.
Omedeto, originally derived from the Kanji characters ome (お芽) de (出） to (度う), which together mean: May your sprouts appear, or May your sprouts sprout forth.
In other words, the opening of the new year, which before the Japanese adopted the Western Calendar took place sometime in February, was a time to pray for good crops and the coming forth of vegetation in general, in the upcoming year.
This use of this expression as a New Year`s Greeting by the aristocrats and courtiers and the members of the Imperial Family was a reflection of the fact that it was the role of the Emperor , as a high priest of the nation of sorts, to carry out rituals and pray for bountiful crops. I think it could even be said that the romantic ( sexual) daliances so famously associated with the court,(which are celebrated at New Year`s by many Japanese through the card game Hyakunin Isshu- which is based on a collection of classical poetry) were in fact also believed to be part of the ritual function to guarantee success in agriculture throughout the land.
It goes without saying that it would have been only natural for farmers in early spring ( at the old New Year) to greet each other with- may your seeds sprout!
The connection of New Year`s to agriculture is still clearly evident by the fact that even in big cities Japanese families put up New Year`s decorations consisting of rice stalks and other plant matter. These decorations, and O-Shogatsu( New Year`s) itself, are a celebration of LIFE, RENEWAL and the BOUNTY of NATURE.
So on the occassion of this New Year`s Day, Id like to wish you a big OMEDETO-
may all your seeds take root and flourish!
And if you are interested I have written about an obscure but fascinating Japanese custom- to refrai from killing mice during the first 3 days of the year, during which the little critters are called YOME GA KIMI (嫁が君):
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Akemashite Omedeto! -(Happy New Year!)- a revealing look at the origin of the expression
By Avi Landau
I have said it again and again. Japanese culture and the Japanese language are endlessly interesting. The deeper you look the more surprising it gets.To illustrate this point once more, this time on the the first day of the new year, I`d like to talk about something which in most countries and most languages is quite simple- New Year`s Greetings.
Well, as you might expect, in Japan things are a bit more complex. On the last days of December, when meeting people for what is probably the last time of the year, the Japanese part with an expression which is equivalent to what is used in most languages, YOI OTOSHI O, or Have a Good New Year.
What is difficult to remember ( for foreigners) when speaking Japanese, however, is that this expression is only used UP TO midnight of December 31st. Once the clock strikes midnight, for the next seven days or so, people greet each other with AKEMASHITE OMEDETO- GOZAIMASU, or in its simplest and most casual form OMEDETO-.
Since in modern Japanese OMEDETO is an expression used in very much the same way as the English word CONGRATULATIONS, this New Year`s greeting could now be literally translated as- CONGRATULATIONS UPON THE (OCCASSION OF THE) OPENING (OF THE NEW YEAR).
Besides the fact that there are different greetings for BEFORE and AFTER the ringing in of the new year, both these greetings sound quite usual, aand at first glance simply like two slighty different ways of saying the same thing.
However, a look at the etymology of the word OMEDETO- shows OMEDETO to have quite an unusual meaning for a New Year`s greeting . It is also quite revealing about the roots of Japanese culture.
Omedeto, originally derived from the Kanji characters ome (お芽) de (出） to (度う), which together mean: May your sprouts appear, or May your sprouts sprout forth.
In other words, the opening of the new year, which before the Japanese adopted the Western Calendar took place sometime in February, was a time to pray for good crops and the coming forth of vegetation in general, in the upcoming year.
This use of this expression as a New Year`s Greeting by the aristocrats and courtiers and the members of the Imperial Family was a reflection of the fact that it was the role of the Emperor , as a high priest of the nation of sorts, to carry out rituals and pray for bountiful crops. I think it could even be said that the romantic ( sexual) daliances so famously associated with the court,(which are celebrated at New Year`s by many Japanese through the card game Hyakunin Isshu- which is based on a collection of classical poetry) were in fact also believed to be part of the ritual function to guarantee success in agriculture throughout the land.
It goes without saying that it would have been only natural for farmers in early spring ( at the old New Year) to greet each other with- may your seeds sprout!
The connection of New Year`s to agriculture is still clearly evident by the fact that even in big cities Japanese families put up New Year`s decorations consisting of rice stalks and other plant matter. These decorations, and O-Shogatsu ( New Year`s) itself, are a celebration of LIFE, RENEWAL and the BOUNTY of NATURE.
So on the occassion of this New Year`s Day, Id like to wish you a big OMEDETO-
may all your seeds take root and flourish!
And if you are interested I have written about an obscure but fascinating Japanese custom- to refrai from killing mice during the first 3 days of the year, during which the little critters are called YOME GA KIMI (嫁が君):
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Another of the 25 MANYOSHU Poems Which Refer to Mt. Tsukuba- translated into English and discussed
By Avi Landau
One of the great points of pride for the people who live in my town, Hojo, near the foot of Mt. Tsukuba, is that this mountain, so close at hand ( and to the people`s hearts), is mentioned in the Manyoshu- the oldest collection of classical Japanese poems ( compiled in the 8th century) and one of the cornerstones of Japanese civilization- more times than Mt Fuji !
Now how is it, you may ask, that in this land of majestic peaks and mysterious volcanoes, that what could be considered a mere hill ( at 877 meters in height) would be mentioned more times by the poets of yore than what is now one of the world`s most ( if not THE most) famous mountain?
Well, the answer lies in Mt. Tsukuba`s shape. Its twin peaks have long symbolized for the inhabitants of this archipelago the interaction of the MALE and FEMALE FORCES.
For this reason, mentioning the mountain implied not merely the geographical entity itself- or perhaps not even at all- but the powerful force it represented- the subject of so much of the worlds poetry- love and sex.
The best known of the Manyoshu`s poems mentioning Mt. Tsukuba, one which is part of the Hyakunin Isshu collection of poems, surely speaks of the mountain in a purely symbolic way ( as I have discussed in a previous post) as its author describes the Minanogawa River (男女川- these characters literally mean: the Man-Woman River), a stream which still flows down from the valley between the Male and Female peaks, as a gushing river. The Emperor who composed this well known work clearly had not actually visited the mountain ( or even if he did, used the mountain and the river in a symbolic way).
Today I will introduce another one of the 25 Manyoshu poems which mention Mt. Tsukuba ( as opposed to the 13 which refer to Mt. Fuji). Once again, the mountains symbolic presence is more important than the mountain itself. It goes like this:
筑波嶺の 彼面此面に 守部据ゑ 母い守れども 魂ぞ会ひにける
( TSUKUBANE NO OTEMONOMONI MORIHESUE HAHA IMOREDOMO TAMAZO AINIKERU)
Anonymous
Which I translate loosely in order to convey what I have found this poem to mean:
As the twin peaks of Mt Tsukuba watch out far and wide over the plain
my mother keeps watch over me
But despite her vigilance,
his soul and mine
have become mates
( Avi Landau)
Let me now break down the poem word by word so that you may interpret it for yourself and decide what the original writer had in mind.
TSUKUBAMINE NO- Mt. Tsukuba`s ( and as I have mentioned this name automatically carried with it connotations of men and women, marriage, and getting together physically)
OTEMONOMONI ( an archaic expression meaning here and there).
MORIHESUE ( guardmen)- I am not sure if this actually refers to specific guardmen who were actually present on Mt Tsukuba itself ( I have never heard of such a thing) or just symbolic chaperones or guardians of young girls virtues- I have omitted mentioning guardmen and make the whole mountain itself on vigilant guard over the Kanto Plain ( as it actually seems to be.
HAHA IMOREDOMO ( mother watches over me)
TAMA ZO ( SPIRITS, SOULS)
AINIKERU ( have met).
This poem was either written by, or from the point of view, of a young girl of good family. The difficult point, it seems to me, of interpreting this poem, is deciding whether or not the secret lovers have actually met and made physical love, or if they have merely come together IN A DREAM.
As I have said, Mt Tsukuba carries with it sexual connotations, and the mentioning of the mountain seems to me to be suggestive. However, the poet(ess) says- our TAMA (魂) have met, and this might indicate that the lovers have met in a dream ( which in those days might have had just as much significance as getting together in person.
I have decided to render the work in English with the latter interpretation. Though the young girl`s mothers is protective of her daughter and concerned about who she will marry to the point of obssession, it is the girl herself, in the freedom of dreams who decides her own destiny.
Still, I could change my opinion about it tomorrow- but thats what makes certain poems great- they carry different meanings for anyone who reads them- and can be understood differnetly at different times in ones own life.
No matter what you think the poem means, when I read it ( along with the 24 others that mention Mt. Tsukuba, I cant help but share the excitement of my neighbors, in that these works, so old- yet so fresh, were written with OUR mountain in mind.
I have written more about poems mentioning Mt. Tsukuba in this article on the HYAKUNIN ISSHU poetry collection:
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