Tag: Japan

Things I Want Decided – Izumi Shikibu

Which shouldn’t exist
in his world,
the one who forgets
or the one
who is forgotten?

Which is better,
to love
one who has died
or not to see
each other when you’re alive?

Which is better,
the distant lover
you long for
or the one you see daily
without desire?

Which is the least unreliable
among fickle things –
the swift rapids,
a flowing river,
or this human world?

Izumi Shikibu
c. 976–c. 1030
‘Things I Want Decided’
Japan
Translated by Jane Hirshfield

Shikibu was a member of Japan’s famed ‘Thirty-six Medieval Poetry Immortals’, a legendary collective of Japanese masters from antiquity. Here, Shikibu weaves two different kinds of absence – absence from the earth and the absence of desire. With this braid, she challenges readers to reflect upon which fate is truly worse.

The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine
Kaveh Akbar

Macaroni Rascals – Interpreting Jersey Shore


https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/qgu59b/me_irl/

brandnameshawn
@japan is this true?

Sarugetchu
Yes it’s true, although it is a subtitle to “Jersey Shore” transcribed into Japanese syllables.

Source: https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/gp/video/detail/B08FD187Q5/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s1

It could be debated whether “yarou” is best translated to “rascals” though – used in conversation it’s usually a bit more derogatory and translated a bit more negatively (like “bastard”), but in this case in a title that doesn’t address a single person in particular it takes on a lighter tone.

konydanza
MACARONI BASTARDS
New band name, called it!

Tsundoku

There are some words out there that are brilliantly evocative and at the same time impossible to fully translate. Yiddish has the word shlimazl, which basically means a perpetually unlucky person. German has the word Backpfeifengesicht, which roughly means a face that is badly in need of a fist. And then there’s the Japanese word tsundoku, which perfectly describes the state of my apartment. It means buying books and letting them pile up unread.

via Open Culture

20180804_140218

Floating World

Ukiyo (浮世, “Floating World”) describes the urban lifestyle, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of the Edo-period Japan (1600–1867). The Floating World culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo), which was the site of many brothels, chashitsu, and kabuki theaters frequented by Japan’s growing middle class. A prominent author of the ukiyo genre was Ihara Saikaku, who wrote The Life of an Amorous Woman. The ukiyo culture also arose in other cities such as Osaka and Kyoto.
The famous Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the Floating World”, had their origins in these districts and often depicted scenes of the Floating World itself such as geisha, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, samurai, chōnin, and prostitutes.
The term ukiyo (when meaning the Floating World) is also an ironic allusion to the homophone ukiyo (憂き世, “Sorrowful World”), the earthly plane of death and rebirth from which Buddhists sought release.[2]


wikipedia