JSLL #4 - Urashima Tarou - Third sentence

 Here's the third sentence from Urashima Tarou:

ある日、浦島太郎は海から帰る途中、浜で子供たちが集まって騒いでいるのを見ました。

The sentence starts with ある日, meaning "one day, on a certain day." The construction is explained in JSLL #2, and the kanji 日 is explained in the previous JSLL post.

Next is the topic 浦島太郎, Urashima Tarou, followed by the topic marker は. The only noteworthy thing here is that the topic is repeated in this sentence, even though it's the same as in the previous sentence. Either this was done deliberately for the audience (foreign readers or children, or both), but I don't think this is typical practice in Japanese. You would just omit the topic.

Next is 海から帰る途中、where 途中 (とちゅう, tochuu) is an adverb meaning "en route, on the way." It consists of two kanji:

• 途, an N3 kanji occurring in 23 common words. It has connotations or road, route etc.
• 中, an N5 kanji occurring in 150 common words. It conveys "middle" or "inside" depending on context.

Modifying this adverb is 海から帰る. The word 海, "sea," which we discussed earlier, is followed by the particle から meaning "from" and the verb 帰る (かえる, kaeru), "to return." This verb is used specifically to refer to returning to one's home or to one's home base, for example, back to the office from a business trip, or back to HQ after a mission. 

So the adverbial as a whole means "en route returning from the sea," or, more logically, "on his way back from the sea." 

Next is the main clause, whose main verb at the end is 見ました. This comes from 見る, "to see." 見 is an N5 kanji occurring in 123 common words, mostly associated with seeing (also metaphorically, such as in 意見 meaning "opinion" or more similarly "viewpoint." 見ました is the polite past tense and it takes an object that is followed by the を particle. That is, the object of seeing is the entire phrase 浜で子供たちが集まって騒いでいるの. This is a verb phrase follow by the nominalizer particle の. This particle is needed to make the verb phrase usable as an object.

So the sentence we have so far is, "One day, on his way back from the sea, Urashima Tarou saw..."

The verb phrase that is the missing object is itself complex, and breaks down into a number of parts.

First there's a location, 浜で. This is the noun 浜 (はま, hama), which means "beach" or "seashore," followed by the particle で meaning "in, on, at." で is used if the verb indicates an action rather than a state.

The kanji 浜 is N1 and occurs in only 6 common words. It always means something like "shore." It's also the second kanji of the place name 横浜, Yokohama.

Next is 子供たちが, with the particle が indicating that this is the subject of the verb in the clause. That subject is 子供たち, the noun 子供 (こども, kodomo, "child") followed by the plural suffix たち, so "children." Note that たち is not used very often, and that you should absolutely not infer that a noun is singular if there's no たち present (like you would in English). 

The kanji 子 is an N5 kanji, which also means "child" on its own. It occurs in 131 common words, which often have nothing to do with children.

The kanji 供 is an N3 kanji occurring in just 14 common words. It often has a connotation of submitting or providing something.

After が is a verb in the -te form, which means that at least one other verb will follow. The verb is 集まって (あつまって, atsumatte), which means "to gather, to come together, to assemble." Because this verb can only apply to multiple people or things (one person cannot assemble), the たち suffix after 子供 seems especially unnecessary. This may again be a concession made for foreign speakers or children.

The second and last verb in the clause 騒いでいる (さわいでいる, suwaideiru), which is the ~ている　form of すわぐ, to make noise, to be noisy, to make a racket. The use of the ~ている here implies a progressive (= "making noise, being noisy").

So the sentence in full is something like, "One day, on his way back from the sea, Urashima Tarou saw children on the beach gathered together making noise."

Book Review: Kohei Saito - "Slown Down: How Degrowth Communism can Save the Earth

 

I don't know what made me decide to buy and read this book, but I found it an interesting read, if ultimately unsatisfying. I expected a Japanese philosopher to offer a fresh, unusual look at the ecological crisis threatening the world today, but he ended up sounding disappointingly like a Western marxist intellectual.

Saito claims that even the most "radical" and ambitious plans for combatting climate change, such as the Green New Deal, are doomed to fail. The reason, he claims, is that those plans are trying to preserve the capitalist illusion of unlimited growth, which by its very nature will exhaust the earth's resources. For example, even if we would all switch to electric cars, we'd soon deplete the earth's rare earth metals that those cars' batteries need.

Next, Saito takes a detour to discuss the intricacies of Marxism. He first explains that the Marx that most marxists know and recognize is an advocate for growth, just as much as capitalism is; it's just that in Marx' vision, the workers, as the adage goes, have seized the means of production. Saito then spends many paragraphs explaining that this is a misconception, and that Karl actually had a change of heart in his later years, and turned into an eco-warrior. That fact is not very well known, Saito argues, because marxists don't spend enough time reading Marx' lesser-known writings. All this seems like one marxist trying desperately to convince other marxists, which strikes me as not only typical for the discipline, but also uninteresting to me, who doesn't find something more worthwhile just because Marx thought it.

What's also typical for marxists is this: when confronted with a big, intractable problem, they tend to offer an even bigger, even more intractable, non-solution. Saito keeps hammering on the fact that dismantling capitalism itself, not to mention reinventing democracy as a side project, is the only way to combat climate change. It never seems to occur to him that those goals form an even bigger challenge than climate change itself.

And this to me is the core problem of the book. It's not a book about how to stop climate change; it's a book about how climate change is the kind of crisis that communism has been looking for all this time as the ultimate opportunity to get rid of capitalism. Saito suffers from the Golden Hammer delusion: if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Is capitalism, and the capitalist mindset, at the heart of the climate crisis? Absolutely. Would abolishing capitalism stop climate change in its tracks? Probably. Is abolishing capitalism feasible? Definitely not. In short, Saito offers a destination, but no real directions showing how to reach it. He does talk admiringly about small-scale cooperative initiatives that exist here and there, for example in Barcelona, that to him are hopeful signs of a rejection of capitalism in pursuit of what he calls "degrowth." But it's hardly a real solution.

JSLL #3 - Urashima Tarо̄ - Second sentence

 The second sentence of this story is long:

浦島太郎は心のやさしい若者で、毎日海へ出かけて魚をつって年老いたお父さんとお母さんを養っていました。

Grammatically, it's a sequence of -te forms followed by a main sentence:

• The first one ends in で, the -te form of です.
• The second one ends in 出かけて, the -te form of でかける
• The third one ends in つって, the -te form of つる.
• The main sentence ends in the main verb, 養っていました.

Because the main verb is in the past tense, the three clauses before it also need to be translated in the past tense. 

Let's look at each clause in turn:

First clause

浦島太郎は心のやさしい若者で、

In kana: うらしまたろうはこころのやさしいわかもので、

In romaji: urashima tarou ha kokoro no yasashii wakamono de,

The first four kanji form Urashima Tarou's name, as discussed in previous post. Following it is the topic particle は (ha, pronounced wa), indicating that everything that follows concerns Tarou.

This first part says who Tarou was: 若者 (わかもの, wakamono), "a young person." The kanji are:

• 若 N3 kanji that occurs in 21 common words and means either "young" or "perhaps, possibly."
• 者 N4 kanji that occurs in 118 common words. It's almost never pronounced もの (mono) but rather しゃ (sha) or じゃ (ja). It usually acts as a suffix meaning "person who..." or "-er" like in 芸者 (geisha, literally "one who performs") and 忍者 (ninja, literally "one who spies").

Qualifying this "youngster" noun is 心のやさしい which breaks down into 心の (こころの, kokoro no, "of heart") and やさしい (yasashii). So the whole thing means "kind of heart."

The kanji 心  is an N4 kanji that occurs in 77 common words, most of which have something to do with a mental state or emotion. It's also used as a metaphor, such as the "heart of the city."

やさしい, an i-adjective, is written in kana, which is important: the meaning is different depending on the kanji used:

• 優しい means tender, kind, gentle
• 易しい means easy, plain, simple

By avoiding the kanji, the writer implies both meanings, although "kind" is the more logical choice.

So this part means: Urashima Tarou was a youngster with a kind heart.

Second part

毎日海へ出かけて

In kana: まいにちうみへでかけて

In romaji: mainichi umi e dekakete

毎日 (まいにち, mainichi) means "every day." 

毎 is an N5 kanji which means "every" in almost all of the 11 common words in which it occurs.

日 is an N5 kanji which occurs in 184 common words. It's probably the most frequently occurring kanji in Japanese. It means "day" or "sun." It occurs twice in the word 日曜日 (にちようび, nichiyoubi, "Sunday") and is pronounced differently both times. It's also the first kanji of 日本  (にほん, nihon, "Japan").

We've already talked about 海 ("sea") in a previous post. Here, it's followed by the particle へ (he or e), which means "to" or "toward."

出かけて (でかけて, dekakete) is the te-form of 出かける, "to go out."

出 is an N5 kanji that occurs in 173 common words. Most of the words have a connotation of departure or going outward.

So this part means: [Tarou] went out to sea every day.

Third part

魚をつって

In kana: さかなをつって

In romaji: sakana wo tsutte

We briefly mentioned the kanji 魚 (fish) before when we discussed the first kanji of 漁師 (fisherman). The kanji 魚 is N4 and occurs in 12 common words, all of which are related to fish. Here, it's followed by the object particle を (wo or o).

つって is the -te form of つる, "to fish, to catch." The verb is not commonly written with a kana, and I'm not sure why a kanji wasn't used.

So this part means: [Tarou] caught fish.

Combined with the previous part, it makes sense to translate the two parts as: [Tarou] went out to sea every day in order to catch fish.

Fourth part

年老いたお父さんとお母さんを養っていました。

In kana: としおいたおとうさんとおかあさんをやしなっていました。

In romaji: toshioita otousan to okaasan wo yashinatteimashita.

The verb at the end is the ～ている past tense of 養う, whose first meaning (applicable here) is "to support, to maintain, to provide for." I'm not sure why the ～ている form is being used here.

The kanji 養 is N1 and occurs in 25 common words.

So who is being supported? It's a complex object consisting of two nouns joined by と, to ("and" as a noun connector), and qualified by a past participle 年老いた (としおいた, toshioita).

The two nouns are お父さん (おとうさん, otousan) and お母さん (おかあさん, okaasan), meaning "father" and "mother," respectively. Both are being referred to in a respectful way, preceded by the exalted prefix お (o-) and followed by the "Mr/Ms" suffix さん (-san, also used when referring to people: 浦島さん is roughly equivalent to "Mr Urashima").

The kanji 父 is an N5 kanji that occurs in 17 words. It always refers to a male family member (father, grandfather, uncle).

The kanji 母 is an N5 kanji that occurs in 27 words. It always refers to a female family member (mother, grandmother, aunt), mostly a mother, including in compounds like motherland and mother tongue.

The qualifier 年老いた (としおいた, toshioita) is the past participle of 年老いる, to grow old. So it means "grown old" or "aged."

The kanji 年, an N5 kanji, occurs in 117 common words. On its own, it means "year." It mostly means "year" or "age" when combined with other kanji.

The kanji 老 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 28 common words. It refers to old age/elderly.

So this part means: [Tarou] supported his aged father and mother.

The whole sentence

The -te form can indicate all kinds of connections between clauses. The most basic connection is simply "and," which could be used to string all the clauses in this sentence together. It's even possible to translate this one Japanese sentence as up to four English ones. But it's also easy to see causal connections between the clauses. So I think a good translation would be:

Tarou was a kind-hearted young man, who went out to sea every day to catch fish, to support his elderly father and mother.

Note the theme of filial piety, the love and respect for one's parents, which is highly valued in Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, and by extension in Japanese culture.

JSLL #2 - Urashima Tarо̄ - First sentence

Continuing from our previous post, we now have our first sentence.

昔々、ある海辺の村に、浦島太郎という漁師が住んでいました。

昔々、is pronounced むかしむかし (mukashi mukashi) and is the Japanese equivalent of the English fairy-tale opening "Once upon a time." Literally, it means "long, long ago." The kanji 昔 on its own means "the old days, the past, long ago." It's an N3 kanji that occurs in only 4 common words. The second symbol, 々, is a repeater symbol: it simply means, "repeat the previous kanji." After the repeater symbol comes 、(a Japanese comma).

ある海辺の村に、is an adverbial phrase of place. Reading it from right to left, it breaks down as:

• 村に (むらに, mura ni) "in a village"
• 海辺の (うみべの, umibe no) "of the coast"
• ある (aru) "some"

Which amounts to "in some coastal village" for the whole phrase. "Aru" normally means "to exist" when applied to things without a heart, like plants and inanimate objects. But when placed on its own before a noun, like here, it means "some." A typical combination is ある日, "one day, on a certain day."

Words with kanji are as follows in this phrase:

• 村 is an N2 kanji that occurs in 11 common words (and it means "village" in all of them).
• 海辺 "coast" consists of the N4 kanji 海 meaning "sea" on its own, which occurs in 60 common words; and the N2 kanji 辺 meaning "area, vicinity, region; side, edge" on its own, which occurs in 20 common words.

Next is the subject of the sentence, 浦島太郎という漁師が, marked by the subject particle が.

The main noun is 漁師 (りょうし, ryoushi), "fisherman." Qualifying this noun is 浦島太郎という, which consists of the proper name 浦島太郎 (Urashima Tarou, explained in the previous post), and という, "who is/was called." Note how this is just the particle と combined with いう, the verb "to say," but いう in this sentence is not written with a kanji ,言う. Compare:

• はいと言う人 (はいというひと, hai to iu hito) "Someone who says yes"
• 太郎という人 (たろうというひと, Tarou to iu hito)  "Someone called Tarou"

Returning to 漁師, it consists of two kanji:

• 漁 is an N2 kanji that occurs in 10 common words. It always refers to fishing or fishery. The kanji very obviously resembles 魚, the kanji for fish.
• 師 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 24 common words. It occurs mostly as the last kanji, best translated as "-er" or "-ist" or "person doing X."

So the whole phrase 浦島太郎という漁師が translates to "A fisherman called Urashima Tarou"

Finally, there is the main verb of the sentence, 住んでいました (followed by the Japanese period 。). This is 住んで (すんで, sunde), the te-form of the verb 住む, "to live" (in the sense of "to reside" rather than "to be alive") followed by いました, the polite past tense. A ~ていました ending of a verb would normally be translated as a past progressive ("was Xing") or as a perfective (indicating a finished state), but 住む is a bit unusual: it takes the ～ていました form where in English you would say "lived."

The kanji 住 is N4 and occurs in 27 common words. It always refers to residence or habitation.

Putting it all together, the sentence reads:

"Long, long ago, in some coastal village, there lived a fisherman called Urashima Tarou."

Japanese Stories for Language Learners (JSLL) - #1 - Urashima Tarо̄ - Story title

 Warning: This blog post is about the Japanese language. If you're not learning Japanese, this post is probably not interesting to you.

A friend who had traveled to Japan brought back the book "Japanese Stories for Language Learners: Bilingual Stories in Japanese and English" by Anne McNulty & Eriko Sato, illustrated by Rose Goldberg (StoryGraph link). It contains five short stories, in English and in Japanese.

I'm going to translate these five stories, one sentence at a time, and walk you through the translation. 

The title of the first story is 浦島太郎 (うらしまたろう, Urashima Tarо̄). It's the name of the main character, where Tarо̄ is the given name (and a common name for a Japanese man) and Urashima is the surname. 

The first kanji of the surname, 浦, means "inlet" or "seashore, beach" on its own (also pronounced うら, ura). This is one of the jо̄yо̄ kanji, the roughly 2000 kanji taught in Japanese primary and secondary school, and you're supposed to know it for the N1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), the last of the JLPT tests. (Unless indicated otherwise, all kanji mentioned from here on in are jо̄yо̄ kanji.)  The standalone kanji is the only common word containing this kanji.

The second kanji of the surname, 島, means "island" on its own  (also pronounced しま, shima). (It can also mean the territory or turf of a gang or a prostitute.) This is JLPT level N2.  There are 17 common words containing this kanji. You might encounter it as the "shima" in "Hiroshima" (広島, ひろしま, literally "the wide island"), the 6th largest city in Japan.

The first two kanji together are not a word, only a name.

The first kanji of the given name, 太, means "fat" (noun) or "fatty" (noun as prefix) on its own (pronounced ふと, futo).  This is JLPT level N3. There are 24 common words containing this kanji, including 太い (ふとい, futoi) meaning fat, and 太陽 (たいよう, taiyо̄) meaning the Sun.

The last kanji of the given name, 郎, means "son" (as a counter) on its own (also pronounced ろう, rо̄).  This is JLPT level N1. There are 82 common words containing this kanji. Combined with 太, the combination 太郎 literally means "first-born son."

 

Coq au vin

 

I renounced meat some time ago, but sometimes, circumstances make it awkward and difficult to stick to that rule. So for this New Year's Eve, I made coq au vin, and I finally figured out how to do it right (thanks to Chef Jean Pierre). This serves 6 people, or 3 people over two days.

Take the skin off 8 pieces of chicken, where each piece is either a drumstick or the roughly square thigh part of a chicken leg. In a big dish, spread out flour, season the flour and the chicken pieces, and coat all the chicken in the flour. Melt a big chunk of butter to obtain 3 tbsp of clarified butter. Heat half of this in a big skillet and put as many chicken pieces in as will fit. Fry on both sites till golden brown, then remove and put aside. Fry in batches as needed.

While you're searing the chicken, heat the rest of the clarified butter in a big pot and throw in 225g (8 oz) of lardons, bacon, speck, pancetta or similar fatty pork-belly meat, diced from a piece if possible, slices if necessary. Stir-fry so that it releases its fat, then throw in some 150g (5 oz) of pearl onions. If those are impossible to find (as was the case for me), peel and quarter shallots and throw them in instead. In a pinch, regular onions, cut in eighths, will also do. Do NOT use pickled onions. Fry the onions till golden brown, then add 150g (5 oz) of button mushrooms. If you're lucky enough to get really small ones, throw them in as is; otherwise, halve or quarter before adding. Again, fry till golden brown.

Mince 3 cloves of garlic and add them to the pot. As soon as you can smell the garlic (which is in seconds, a minute at most), add 660 ml (1.4 pints or 2 and 2/3 cups) red wine, and some thyme leaves (I stripped the leaves off some 3-4 branches). The red wine should be dry and not too fruity. Tradition demands a Burgundy, but really, any strong red wine will do, like a pinot noir, a Côtes du Rhône, or whatever your neck of the woods has. The main rule here is: don't skimp on the wine, or put another way, don't add cheap wine you wouldn't drink.

Bring to the boil and reduce by half. Please note that decades of cooking have not yet taught me a reliable method of determining when a liquid is reduced by half. I gave it 5 minutes, which was probably not long enough.

At this point, add the chicken to the pot and add 450 ml (2 cups) of chicken stock, or enough to cover the chicken. Bring to the boil, simmer and cover. Leave alone for 15 minutes.

After the 15 minutes are up, check back and see if the liquid is thick. If it's not (and trust me, it won't be), do the following: get your biggest sieve, put it in the pot so that it's partially submerged in the liquid, then put in a tablespoon of flour and whisk it. Whatever is fine will mix with the liquid, whatever is big will stay in the sieve. Check if the liquid is now thick; if not, repeat until it is. Cover again and leave to simmer for 30 minutes.

Use the 30 minutes to make mashed potatoes. Serve alongside the coq au vin, on which you sprinkle some chopped parsley just before serving.

Book Review: Le Corbeau: Une histoire culturelle (The Raven: a cultural history) by Michel Pastoureau

 

Michel Pastoureau likes to write books about the (Western) cultural history of very specific things. He wrote a whole series of books about colors, for example: everything about blue, or red, or black. "Le Corbeau" (which in French means raven, but can also refer to crows or corvids more generally) is one of a series of books about specific animals and their significance in European culture.

Pastoureau shows us how Northern European pagan cultures in Scandinavia and Scotland gave much respect to the bird, who they correctly identified as being intelligent. But Christianity was less kind to the corvid. The trouble starts in the book of Genesis: we all know how Noah, after the great flood, sent out a dove to check for dry land, and how the bird returned with good news in the form of an olive branch. But what's less commonly known is that Noah had first released a crow, who had proved useless: instead of finding land, it feasted on the human corpses floating around. And thus, the crow's fate was sealed for centuries. Sure, there are a few anecdotes about saints having a friendlier relationship with the black bird, but he remained an ominous symbol for centuries.

And even when his reputation changed, it was only because the culture changed to align with him: the Romantics, who reveled in all things dark and lugubrious, enjoyed the odd crow in their gothic paintings, poems or plays (Edgar Allen Poe springs to mind). He's frequently depicted as hanging around cemeteries at night, even though he's not a nocturnal creature.

It's only very recently that crows are seen more favorably, mostly because scientific research has revealed them as the big brains in the world of birds, often giving even chimpanzees and small human children a run for their money. They're also silly and playful. But especially in the countryside, they're still seen as a big nuisance. More than a millennium's worth of mudslinging can't so easily be discarded. Pastoureau's book fights the good fight, while showing us beautiful works of art throughout the ages that feature crows and ravens.