shy : moon : close : flower
Coming up in this week's blog post is a yoji-jukugo so rare by etymological standards that using it with your Japanese colleagues may prompt them to claim you know more Japanese than they do: 羞月閉花. It belongs to Rank 2 of the Kanji Kentei, which means that most Japanese high school students will have come across it in their studies, but it is obscure enough that some online Japanese dictionaries merely cite a reference of it without providing a full-page definition.
Individually, the four kanji may seem to have little in common, but this is actually another example of a two-by-two composition, as I first introduced with 勇猛果敢 a few weeks back. Both "shy" (羞) and "close" (閉) evoke feelings of withdrawal, while "moon" (月) and "flower" (花) represent different aspects of nature. Thus, the metaphorical concept of "nature withdrawing itself" is uniquely stacked by using separate kanji. Knowing this, it is now much easier to explain the definition of this yoji-jukugo, which is: "the charms of a uniquely beautiful woman, so beautiful that the moon is abashed and flowers wilt."
The origin of 羞月閉花 is, not surprisingly, Chinese. What is slightly interesting, however, is that this is the only yoji-jukugo to come from this specific source. As we delve further into the etymology of these idioms, we'll see that while most do come from Chinese literature, they are quite variegated within that categorization. 羞月閉花 in particular comes from a poem written by Yang Guo (楊果, Japanese pronunciation: ようか), a poet who lived from 1195 to 1269. It took quite a bit of digging around the internet, but I finally found the English title of the poem: The Lotus Gatherer (采蓮女, Japanese pronunciation: さいれんじょ). Unfortunately, after a long-winded yet fruitless search, it would appear that only two of the eleven verses of the poem have been translated into English, neither of which being the verse that contains the phrase 羞月閉花. That being said, the overall imagery and thematic elements in the translated verses are just as beautiful as you would expect from classical Chinese poetry; no doubt, this yoji-jukugo is right at home among the other elegant phrases in The Lotus Gatherer.
The origin of 羞月閉花 is, not surprisingly, Chinese. What is slightly interesting, however, is that this is the only yoji-jukugo to come from this specific source. As we delve further into the etymology of these idioms, we'll see that while most do come from Chinese literature, they are quite variegated within that categorization. 羞月閉花 in particular comes from a poem written by Yang Guo (楊果, Japanese pronunciation: ようか), a poet who lived from 1195 to 1269. It took quite a bit of digging around the internet, but I finally found the English title of the poem: The Lotus Gatherer (采蓮女, Japanese pronunciation: さいれんじょ). Unfortunately, after a long-winded yet fruitless search, it would appear that only two of the eleven verses of the poem have been translated into English, neither of which being the verse that contains the phrase 羞月閉花. That being said, the overall imagery and thematic elements in the translated verses are just as beautiful as you would expect from classical Chinese poetry; no doubt, this yoji-jukugo is right at home among the other elegant phrases in The Lotus Gatherer.
My attempt at a four-word translation of 羞月閉花
Nature Blushes Before Her
No comments:
Post a Comment