flemmings | (no subject)

Oh happy day. A post from

cougarfang sends me off to squint at Minekura's wp, which I've avoided for several years because even at my ridiculous resolution and even bolding to read it gives me migraines in about three seconds. And all fuman about the Japanese and their damnable love of frames and their damnably high resolutions (must be a Mac thing) being taken as read, the woman has a Homura short story 'The People of Illusion,' preceded by neat dragons and "Tell me what you desire. I'll give it to you. In return for everything you are."

(More Buddhist phrases. 色即是空, all is illusion, I suppose, unless there's another more common translation than illusion. Oh, and

paleaswater, if you're here- a question about Chinese titles.

In Onmyouji- the Phoenix volume, for reference- Seimei's tutelary deity is 泰山府君. From the Japanese webpages I'm getting that the 府 is a kind of office where the dead are dealt with. (What a pity I know nothing of YnM's set up because that's what this sounds like. The Buddhist texts have Taishanfu as a regular stop souls make on the road after death.) This however turns Seimei's deity from the terrible Lord of Tai Mountain into Chief Official of the Taishan Post-mortem Sorting Office. OK, I'm being facetious, but what was your instinctive reaction to the title? Buddhist or bureaucrat or possibly Taoist? (I'm getting that, once again, the Buddhists insinuated themselves into an older belief system here.) Thanks.

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You know, I've just been watching Doctor Who, and I thought that all my worldly desires were appeased for the moment. You have just made me realise the hole in my life. Sniff.

(looks through post) You've always wanted a Homura short story written by Minekura? Or a Chief Official of the Taishan Post-mortem Sorting Office? The first you shall have and the second may not exist, you know.

The first. The second may be an unrecognised desire, but its flame has not yet touched my heart. (Sorry, am rereading some Mary Renault and the prose goes to one's fingers.)

I didn't remember The Last of the Wine being *quite* that flowery, but you'd know. ^_^

I think I'd just been reading one of the more flowery bits.

色即是空-- it's more commonly translated as form is emptiness.

府 -- that's perfecture in Chinese. So it's the official of taishan perfecture. But to me it's a very japanese title. The Chinese don't go for 君 or 府 in titles. But I think it's meant to be kind of archaic sounding, and Taishan is a very famous Buddhist mountain in China, so certainly I wouldn't think it's meant to be bureaucratic. If I was to go by the Chinese way of naming themselves I would say it's more Taoist -- who are more into nature, and like to name themselves as immortal of this and that mountain or river. The Buddhist names are always either to suggest power/role.

I assume you've already looked at this dictionary definition and are asking for more and different information, but there it is just in case. Sorry if this is redundant.

Rooting around on google brings up a reference to an article I'd love to read:

"“Introduction of the Chinese God of the Dead into Medieval Japanese Religious Culture: A Study of Taizanfukun-san (Rites Honoring T’ai-shan Fu-chün),” in Asaeda Zensho Hakase kanreki kinen ronbunsh¥: Bukkyo to ningen shagaki no kenkyu (Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 2004), 277–299."

And here's one last possibly useless link. Alas that I do not actually have a learned opinion of my own to offer. (But this is livejournal, so I must offer an uneducated, unsolicited, and lengthy one.)

Thanks for the links. ^_^ Yes, that article sounds interesting, though everything I read is tending to reinforce my idea of Buddhist co-option of Daoist divinity. But from Seimei's pov I'd say the Daoist connotations were still uppermost: there's something very unchancy about the god in the story that bears his name.

What I wanted was an idea of what fujun would convey to a Chinese mind- some archaic meaning to fu that gets left out of modern dictionaries or what?- as a guideline on how to translate the thing. As it is I guess I'll go with M's suggestion up there of it being a Daoist WTF kind of name that needn't be rendered literally. And ignore the Japanese webpages that want to incorporate the thing into Buddhist schematics.

Oops, a search on Chinese google seems to indicate that Chief Offical is closer. (I told you that the Chinese collective unconscious is a bueacracy. :P) Taishan is the destination of all Buddhists when they die. Chief Offical is a reasonable translation for 府君, though Lord is perfect ok as well. He was most popular around the time of Six Dynasties -- he was the Taoist equivalent of Hades, having power over life and death. He was also worshipped by Buddhists, and it was in this shape that he was introduced to Japan.

-_- I was afraid of that.

Really, the Chinese collective unconscious is so... prosaic that I have to wonder how western Orientalism came to be in the first place. 'The strange, mysterious, violent and romantic realm of whole-grain vitamin fortified brown bread.' (I suppose I should read those Sax Rohmers to see what it was on about.)

My fave opera is Turandot, and the first production I saw had a set lifted from Apocalype Now: lurid red lights, swampy air, severed heads, and people in robes or rags as per character. No particular time or place, and scary as hell. The second one was set in China, all walled villas, and the chorus was in grey pajamas and coolie head scarves, and it just didn't *work*. Never mind that what the first emperor got up to was quite as arbitrary as Turandot: these good citizens of Beijing looked all wrong singing Turn the grinding wheel and sharpen the axe. C'mon guys, who's minding the store?

That's what I'm always asking myself as well. I sometime wonder if it's simply that people nowadays don't know how to describe these sort of things -- if one translated some of the most ravishing beautiful Chinese poetry one often got the brother number ten ox effect -- perhaps this is the same thing. Perhaps these gods & immortals would feel terrifyingly primative if one actually know what people thought about them, instead of only having a couple bland lines about the chief-official of taishan perfecture dining and wining a passerby.

I should reread this story I'm translating, but the impression I got first time through it was pretty creepy. As of people dealing with something that neither thinks nor acts the way we do.

It that an Onmyouji story or something else?

Onmyouji- Phoenix.