Language Log

What accounts for Japan's smoothly functioning society and exquisite esthetics?  Is there a word for it?

Bunkum Alert: The Ancient Wisdom of Japan", by Howard Chua-Eoan, Opinion Today, Bloomberg; appears to be an earlier version of "The land of the rising sun isn’t a life-hack wonderland despite the busy market in its ancient wisdom", by Howard Chua-Eoan, Opinion Today, Bloomberg (12/13/24)

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I just spent two weeks in Japan. But if you think I’ve brought back exotic pearls of wisdom, you’ll be disappointed. That’s because I’ve been talking to my Tokyo-based colleague Gearoid Reidy — a great admirer of Japan but a cold critic of Western fetishization of almost everything out of the country. As he describes it in a recent column: “Talking to first-time tourists or perusing online forums, I often find astonishment: Why does everything work so well? How else could public safety and famed attention to detail be sustained, if not from some secret knowledge the West has lost?” The search for alleged life hacks out of Japan has resulted in a plethora of books on “the Japanese secret to everything: Eat less, save money, be more productive. Ikigai, wabi-sabi or shinrin yoku will fix what’s wrong with your life.”

"Japan’s autumn eggplant: Too delicious for your daughter-in-law"
By Elizabeth Andoh, The Japan Times (Sep 1, 2024)

Cooked properly, nothing beats an eggplant for succulence, softness, and savoriness.  It's so good that you almost want to keep it for yourself.

In Japan, eggplants reach their peak of flavor during a period of time known as zansho (literally "lingering heat"), the equivalent of mid-August through late September. Such aki nasu, or autumn eggplants, are especially tasty. And, because eggplant is thought to cool the body (probably due to an unusually high concentration of minerals and phytonutrients in late-harvest fruit), dishes made with them are particularly inviting on days when heat and humidity sap the appetite.

Most varieties of Japanese eggplants boast tender, deeply purple skins and juicy, pale yellow-green flesh. They are all nearly seedless, and some varieties, such as Kamo nasu grown around Kyoto, are bulbous and squat. Others, such as Hakata nasu grown in Kyushu, are long and slender. All true Japanese varieties have a dark calyx, not a green one. Most people think of eggplant and other members of the nightshade family such as tomatoes as vegetables because of their savory taste — botanically, however, they are fruit.

One of my favorite expressions of ineffability in Chinese is yǒuyuán 有緣, which is what two people feel when they are drawn together by some inexplicable, indisputable attraction.  Considerations of beauty and practicality are not what matter.  They simply are fated / predestined to be together.  They have an undeniable affinity for each other.

I first gained a serious appreciation for the idea of affinity in college when I read Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), the third novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).  The concept was taken up in chemistry (Robert Boyle [1627-1691] — check out his hair!), then sociology (Max Weber [1864-1920]), then in psychology to describe the magnetism between individuals, and in dozens of other fields (commerce, finance, and law; religion and belief; science and technology; business; music; literature; history; mathematics; language studies; etc.).  Needless to say, "affinity" is a powerful, productive concept, just as it is an actual force in relations between entities in the microcosm and macrocosm.

Economics buzzword.  From the Wall Street Journal's China newsletter:

[Prefatory note:  The material for this post was sent to me by a usually trustworthy source.  Moreover, it comes from a blog that sounds and looks as though it should have done its homework and know its stuff, and the blog drew their material from Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s  Medieval Wordbook that has been in circulation since 1996, with enthusiastic reviews (avg. 4.5) on Amazon.   Cosman (1937-2006) had a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University (1964) and a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (1995) at Yeshiva University.  She was a professor in the Department of English at City College of New York for nearly three decades (1964-1993), lectured on medieval daily life at the Metropolitan Museum of New York for years, and was active in medical, judicial, and other fields across the United States. I must confess that, as I prepared the post, I felt qualms over the quality of some of the entries.  I should have followed my instincts and investigated further, and apologize for having failed to do so.  Mea culpa — straight from the Middle Ages (Confiteor [1100]).]

You'd be surprised by how many of our most common, comfortable expressions come from the medieval period.  Here are twelve collected by Madeleine Pelner Cosman as part of her book on words and phrases from the medieval period that you are likely to be quite familiar with.

12 Expressions that we got from the Middle Ages, Medievalists.net, May 21, 2024

Crocodile tears

To display insincere sadness. A few ancient and medieval writers believed that crocodiles would cry while eating their victims. The story was spread in England by the 14th-century travel writer John Mandeville. He explains that “these serpents slay men, and they eat them weeping; and when they eat they move the over jaw, and not the nether jaw, and they have no tongue.”

Bring home the bacon

To earn a living or achieve success. This expression dates back to 1104 when a nobleman and his wife dressed themselves as peasants and asked the local Prior for a blessing for not arguing after a year of being married. In response, the Prior gave them a side of bacon. Afterwards, the nobleman gave land to the monastery on the condition they gave couples who accomplished the same deed with the same reward.

Basic background, from Wikipedia:

The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; lit. 'Three-Body') is a story by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin which became the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy—though the series as a whole is often referred to as The Three-Body Problem, or simply as Three-Body. The series portrays a fictional past, present and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics.

Nectar Gan, "Netflix blockbuster ‘3 Body Problem’ divides opinion and sparks nationalist anger in China", CNN 3/22/2024:

A Netflix adaptation of wildly popular Chinese sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem” has split opinions in China and sparked online nationalist anger over scenes depicting a violent and tumultuous period in the country’s modern history.

Linkedin post by Matías Otero Johansson:

The Orientalism Problem: Edgar Snow's last interview with Mao

In an article published in Life Magazine in 1971, journalist Edgar Snow (1905-1972) ends his account of the last interview Mao Zedong would grant him thus:

"As he curteously escorted me to the door, he said he was not a complicated man, but really very simple. He was, he said, only a lone monk walking the world with a leaky umbrella. … I believe #China will seek to cooperate with all friendly states, and all friendly people within hostile states, who welcome her full participation in world affairs."

As soon as I saw the word "umbrella", I knew what this turn of phrase was about.

It is covered in John Rohsenow's magisterial dictionary of xiēhòuyǔ 歇後語, which I refer to as "truncated witticisms".

The following is a Facebook advertisement for how people from Hong Kong can readily gain permanent residency in Canada.  Check out the unusual Sinoglyph inside the red bubble.

From the Wall Street Journal:

‘The Oldest Book in the World’ Review: Also Sprach Ptahhatp

A set of maxims attributed to an adviser of an Egyptian pharaoh may be the world’s earliest surviving work of philosophy.

By Dominic Green

July 6, 2023 6:20 pm ET

What have we?  Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids?  Philosophy before there were Greek philosophers?

Green launches his review:

In 1847 the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris acquired a 16-page scroll from the antiquarian Émile Prisse d’Avennes (1807-1879). He had bought it from one of the local men then excavating a cemetery near a pharaonic temple complex at Thebes in Egypt. The Papyrus Prisse, as it is known, contains the only complete version of a set of philosophical epigrams called “The Teaching of Ptahhatp.” Recognized upon its publication in 1858 as “the oldest book in the world,” the “Teaching” is attributed to a vizier to Izezi, the eighth and penultimate pharaoh of the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty, who ruled Egypt in the late 25th and early 24th centuries B.C.

Main dish served as part of a college cafeteria lunch in Nanchang, China:

Here I am in the middle of Missouri, Macon, to be exact (not precisely the geographical center, but not very far from it either, and certainly not near the edges of the state), and I still don't know the origins of this authentic Doggyism:  "Move out of Missouri!"

As I explained in "How to pronounce the surname 'Mair' and other Doggie talk" (2/17/22),

My basketball coach at Dartmouth was a very colorful character known as "Doggie Julian" (1901-1967).  Doggie was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and, in his 66 years of life, held an incredible number of positions as professional athlete and coach (football, basketball, and baseball) at one high school, many colleges, and one professional sports team.  He coached the legendary Bob Cousy (b. 1928) at Holy Cross and with the Boston Celtics.  It's difficult for me to imagine how he could arrange and sign for so many jobs, let alone move to such a large number of locations and coach thousands of games, but he had a steel will and dogged tenacity.

From the recent meeting between Putin and Wang Yi (Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party):

I've never heard of this "Chinese" proverb, but some American friends are asking if I can tell them the original proverb in Chinese.  I can't tell them the original proverb in Chinese, but I can tell them about its origins in Japanese.