岡目八目（おかめはちもく）

hill : eyes : eight : eyes

This week's yoji-jukugo will take us down the delightful little rabbit hole of literary culture in the Edo period. For those who need a crash course in Japanese history, the Edo period lasted from 1603 to 1868, and is considered to have been a landmark era for the country's social and cultural development. After feudal lord Tokugawa Ieyasu's decisive military victories led him to take the seat of shogun, Japan closed all but a handful of its naval ports and the spent the better half of the next three centuries forming a rich and unique cultural identity, with the country's newfound passion for literature playing an extremely influential role.

I could talk for hours about the Edo period in general, but for this yoji-jukugo I'm going to focus in on a short-lived yet widely popular medium for social and political satire known as kibyoshi (黄表紙 : きびょうし). Recognizable from their yellow-backed covers (the first kanji of 黄表紙 means "yellow"), kibyoshi began appearing in the late 1700s and quickly gained popularity for their sophisticated and contemporary political satire, as well as their comedic and somewhat debaucherous stories of Yoshiwara and other pleasure quarters. They were also often used to post reviews of theatrical performances and other literary works, and even carried woodblock print artwork by various artists. Unfortunately, censorship reforms and other factors led to the quick death of kibyoshi; the medium only lasted about three decades.

Again, I could go on for hours, but let's get back to 岡目八目. Credited with the creation of this yoji-jukugo is the late poet and fiction writer, Ota Nanpo. Popular in the 1770s and 1780s for his comedic poetry (狂歌：きょうか), Nanpo was quick to take up kibyoshi as a literary medium. One of his 1782 publications was entitled 岡目八目. By a stroke of luck, I found a complete and wonderfully detailed scan of this kibyoshi in the National Diet Library Digital Collections database. Take a look if you're interested.

On its own, the yoji-jukugo 岡目八目 is defined as "the bystander's vantage point." Meanwhile, the title of Nanpo's kibyoshi has been translated similarly albeit inconsistently as both The Observer and Onlookers See It Better. 岡目八目 is actually often used in Go, the Japanese board game, to refer to the strategic phenomenon that bystanders often see better moves as they have a calmer and more objective viewpoint than the players themselves. Captured territories in Go are referred to as "eyes," which perhaps helps to explain the use of the particular kanji in this idiom. The use of the "hill" kanji (岡) is to metaphorically emphasize the bystander's objective distance, and thankfully has nothing to do with the 2006 slasher film The Hills Have Eyes.

Nanpo's choice title of 岡目八目 was likely a stab at the political hierarchy, echoing the timeless opinion that policymakers are blind to the ramifications of their actions on the rest of the social classes. Given current political trends, it's no far stretch to say that this yoji-jukugo could definitely still be used today for the same purpose.

My attempt at a four-word translation of 岡目八目

Bystanders Have Better Judgment