Yoji Apparel - 四字服

ビーチ

Meaning: beach

This is a yojijukugo that I translated for fun and figured Tumblr would be interested in it.

Yojijukugo are four-character idioms in Japanese. There are many classical yojijukugo, and they are often used in everyday conversation. I decided it would be cool to try and make them with modern internet sayings in order to teach a little about Japanese vocabulary, and while I was doing that I came up with this little wallpaper.

This yoji is conformed by the following characters:

愚行　「ぐこう」: This word, pronounced "kugou", means folly or foolish acts. It seemed like an appropriate interpretation of the idea of "fucking around".

見付　「みつけ」: These kanji belong to the begining of the verb 見付ける "mitsukeru", to discover or come across something, e.g. the consequences of your actions.

I'm planning to make a lot more of these; please let me know in an ask if you have a suggestion of a phrase I should translate. I am also going to sell T-shirts on Etsy with the designs very soon. If you like it and want to support I will reblog with a link later.

むびょうそくさい

Sound health

(“nis-shin-gep-po”)

Constant Progress

This Japanese phrase is an example of a 四字熟語 (“yo-ji-juku-go”). This is often translated as “4-character idiom” - a saying or phrase made of 4 kanji characters whose meaning might not be obvious at first.

The characters in this 4-character idiom are:

日 sun or day

進 continue

月 moon or night

歩 walk or step

一蓮托生> ichi ren taku shou> “born of the same lotus”

There’s a tenet in Buddhism that humans have a common ancestor who sprang from a Sacred Lotus. Thus, 一蓮托生 is a phrase that often means that humans are all spiritual brethren and should avoid conflict (“we’re all in this together”).

This is one of many Japanese 四字熟語、yojijukugo, idioms written with four kanji characters. Some of them were adopted from existing Chinese cousins, but lots are unique to Japanese. 

晴耕雨読 seikouudoku, literally means to be “working in the fields during the good weather and reading during rainy weather,” but is interpreted to mean “dividing time quietly between your labors and intellectual pursuits/a quiet sort of life.”

I love finding idioms in languages I’m trying to learn, especially ones like these which are written in a certain way, because it almost feels more like memorizing little poems which you can recite in conversation. 

This particular one comprises of the four kanji: 

晴：read as せい sei; literally meaning, “clear up,” containing the radicals for “sun, daylight” and “blue;” it appears in many pleasant phrases referring to cheerful, refreshing, beautiful weather

耕：read as こう kou; literally meaning, “to till, cultivate,” made up of the radicals for “ploughing” and “town or community, or (sometimes) well;” exists mostly in compounds relating to agriculture

雨：read as う u; literally meaning, “rain;” the character itself is classified as a pictogram

読：read as どく doku; literally meaning, “to read,” uses the radicals for “to say, tell” and “to sell;” although primarily meaning to read literally, as in books or written material, it may also suggest “reading someone’s heart, to predict or divine”

To bundle together 、 lumping together all sorts of things

*多くの人はこの頃の日本の小説を十把一からげにして面白くなという。

げんこうそご

言葉にして言った事と、実際の行動が一致しないこと。

Inconsistency in speech and actions, not practicing what one preaches

“Kyoka Suigetsu (鏡花水月 – literally 鏡 mirror, 花 flower, 水 water, 月 moon) is a Japanese idiom for something beautiful or desirable, but unattainable.” 

…what? This is… a well-known Japanese idiom? Do – do American Aizen fans know this? Is it just me that didn’t know this? (Probably; I tend to maintain a willful ignorance about all things Aizen 😂)

Ogata and Yuusaku sitting arm in arm with the prostitutes in the red light district is one of my favourite scene from Golden Kamuy. I was always very interested what are those strange Japanese expressions what Ogata used for his half-brother. I reckon his words are hard to understand for a non-native speaker, including me. This is the sentence I’m talking about, it’s in the 164th chapter of the manga:

Bimoku-shuurei, seiseki-yuushuu, hinkou-housei… Kishu wa iwaba rentai no kao da.

Bimoku-shuurei 眉目秀麗 (handsomeness) and hinkou-housei 品行方正 (irreproachable conduct) aren’t ordinary words but so called four-character idioms or yojijukugo  四字熟語 in Japanese. Although there are a lot of four-character compound words in Japanese, for example daigaku-kyouiku 大学教育 (university education) or denki-ryoukin 電気料金 (electricity charges), these are non-idiomatic words because they have no particular meaning.

Real yojijukugo phrases have idiomatic meanings, which can’t be easily determined just by looking at the characters, although some are quite easy to understand. Let’s take the popular example of ISSEKI-NICHOU 一石二鳥, which means ’killing two birds with one stone’. To use this phrase, instead of aiming birds it’s enough if we manage to achieve two different things by a single action. But this meaning is not obvious if you’re looking at the kanji symbols only: one-stone-two-bird.

There are tousands of idiomatic yojijukugo phrases in Japanese, I used this dictionary to confirm whether my examples are correct. Many of the idioms have Chinese origin, but Buddhist literature and Japanese proverbs also provide a large number of yojijukugo. Some of them sound a bit weird, because the four kanji characters should be read in the Chinese-originated on’yomi (’sound reading’) way.

I listed some common yojijukugo phrases at the end of this post, but now let’s get back to Golden Kamuy and check some four-character idioms directly from the manga!

Ikkaku-senkin yume mite Tokyo kara utsutte kitatte noni…

yojijukugo of the day:

人海戦術

じんかいせんじゅつ

“throwing people at a problem”

(in this case, having a lot of people handle some work, rather than automating it or finding a different way to approach it)