#sengai

Sengai Gibon (1750-1837)

or, rather, yojijukugo (四字熟語, four-kanji compound) of the week. There are lots of idioms (or, ‘proverbs’) of this type, though not all of them are commonly used. The one I’d like to talk about today is

自画自賛 (ji-ga-ji-san), meaning “to sing one’s own praises”.

Read literally, the kanji of this idiom mean “own-picture, own-praise”. However, while 賛 can be translated as “to praise”, it meant something different in this context originally. There used to be a tradition in Eastern painting, to put thematically connected poems or other commentary on pictures. Such inscriptions were called 画賛, or 賛 for short. Usually, the inscription would have been made by a different person than the painter.

At first, the phrase 自画自賛 probably meant  simply “to write something on your own picture”. But as 賛 has the second meaning of “praise”, with time the idiom came to be understood and used in a more negative sense: “to praise one’s own work”.

By the way, there's another yojijukugo with a similar meaning: 手前味噌 (temae-miso, lit. "[to boast of the unique taste of one's] homemade miso paste").

Here are some dictionaries I used.

Also, here's a couple of examples of 画賛:

A painting called Six Gentlemen by Yuan dynasty painter Ni Zan, with inscriptions by multiple people.

There's a chance that some of the writing is Ni Zan's, since he was also a poet and a calligrapher, but judging by the red stamps most of it must have been made later on by different owners. And, to be fair, according to wikipedia it already wouldn't have been called 画賛 in Yuan China, but it's not like I have all day to look for pre-Tang paintings. It's the spirit that counts and also Ni Zan rules

A painting called 坐禅蛙画賛 (something along the lines of A meditating frog, with inscription) by Edo-period zen monk Sengai.

Giuliano Vigini su “La Lettura” di oggi, inserto culturale del “Corriere della sera” segnala il nostro Leonardo Lugaresi senza “Andare all’inferno (e uscirne)”. Dante come esercizio di meditazione sulle nostre avventure umane... e divine.