Cultural dislocation

[flemmings]

I'm sure my Chinese-speaking friends go through this all the time, but it's a first for me.

So here I am with my Power Japanese book, Kanji Idioms, a run-down of four-kanji expressions such as, say, shoushin shoumei 正真正銘　(the real thing, the genuine article) or the famous kiyou binbou　器用貧乏 (inevitably-- 'jack of all trades but master of none'). And then I come to a familiar one-- 臥薪嘗胆-- which in Japanese turns into 'gashin shoutan.' Yeah, well, OK. Once I too would have read woxin changdan as 'gashin shoutan' and thought nothing of it. But the explanation that follows---

"In ancient China the Go and the Etsu were at war. After fifteen years of conflict, Kousen, the Etsu king, led his troops to victory over the Go, whose leader Kouryo was slain in battle. Kouryo's son, Fusa, was determined to revenge his father. Every night he slept on a pile of firewood, to inflame his desire for revenge. It obviously did the trick as within three years he won the Battle of Kaikei, where he defeated the Etsu king Kousen. Kousen pleaded for mercy and was allowed to return home after a period of imprisonment. His shame at having surrendered to his fallen foe's son weighed heavily upon him and he resolved to restore his pride the only way he knew how-- by beating Fusa in battle. To give himself courage to carry out this endeavour, he covered the floor of his bedroom with the livers of wild animals (in Japanese the character for liver also means courage.) He licked up all the liver to give him courage, and thus fortified, set out with his faithful retainer Hanrei to wreak terrible revenge on Fusa. It took them twenty-two years, but eventually they did it.

From which I conclude that either there's a totally different story current in Japan about Gou Jian and Fu Chai, or the Japanese author of the book supplied the story as she remembered it from a chance encounter somewhere in middle school, the way the authors of the bad quartos (supposedly) reproduced Shakespeare's plays from memory after a lapse of many years.

Quite apart from liver-strewn chambers and Fu Chai sleeping on brushwood, it just strikes me as *weird* now to call a kingdom Etsu, and rather worse to call the king of Go a word that means 'tuft' or 'tassel.'

Comments

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think up until Ming dynasty the story apparently did refer to Fu Chai in certain sources. It was only later that the story was transferred to Gou Jian.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Odd, then, that so old and so non-mainstream a version should have stuck around in someone's Japanese memory, when modern-day Japanese works go by the version we're used to.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

my theory has always been that it's in waves -- there's the Tang dynasty imports, and then there are the later ones. I guess it depends on the which wave it falls in.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I can't see anyone but the Tokugawa taking an interest in Gou Jian, and the Tokugawa were well after the start of Ming so should have promulgated our received version. Tang stuff influenced uhh Heian IIRC, and the Heian people didn't do resolute warriors. So when did this older alternate source get stuck in the Japanese consciousness, I wonder.Can't even see Kamakura being up on t.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Also 正真正銘 and 器用貧乏 are phrase that the Japanese made up. They're quite mystifying to me.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You can sort of tell which phrases were originally Chinese and which are Japanese manufacture. The Chinese ones have the recherche 'we'll have to borrow the fonts from the Chinese wordpack' kanji.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is what the servants said when they saw all that liver on the floor.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The Etsu were tattooed barbarians. Probably the servants said 'Yum!'

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

he covered the floor of his bedroom with the livers of wild animals...licked up all the liver

*CANNOT UNSEE*

ded of lulz brb

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

It's worse if you see it as Uncle Ming, down on all fours like Nebuchadnezzar eating grass licking livers.

...oh dear. I think I just broke something inside.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

LICKED UP ALL THE LIVER

Too awesome for words.

[avalonjones.livejournal.com]

Clearly the man was a badass beyond compare!

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

You know, it actually makes more sense. I always thought the bit about the bitterness of gall not very intuitive.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Licking up liver? Eating, yes, but covering your floor in liver carpet? Yuck.

Christian-derived me thinks licking gall is perfectly reasonable, since that's what the Romans offered crucified prisoners. Though it seems the gall might have been some other pain-killing plant instead.