Weaponizing your Language
Weaponizing your Language
Sword fans have an exaggerated tendency to use Japanese words, which I suppose is meant to separate the chaff from the wheat, and the vocabulary they build up out of this smug mentality is actually quite impressive. But if you have gone through all that trouble of learning those words, it is a shame not to be able to let the same words go an extra mile or two in expressing a richer range of topics to make that “sword talk” a springboard to learn some real Japanese useful in daily life.
While European nations switched to firearms long enough ago to dilute their vocabulary with gun lingo, the Japanese stuck with swords for hundreds of years. So in Japan, countless purely sword related situations have become "fossilized" as euphemisms or idioms that survive to this day, though most native speakers themselves do not even realize anymore that they are actually speaking a “heavily weaponized language”.
Let me demonstrate what I mean. The following paragraphs I made up are literal translations into English of very typical real life conversations in Japanese. This is how daily Japanese conversation sounds when sword idioms are translated literally, word for word.
I do not always “have a curvature that matches (Sori ga Awanai)” that of my wife, so a small “scabbard poking (Saya-ate)” with her often snowballs into a fight that takes us to the brink of divorce, but after talking to each other “with real swords (Shinken ni)” and voicing our grievances “in single sword direct attacks (Tantoh Chokunyu ni)”, we both realize that we still love each other “with real swords (Shinken ni)” and always end up “going back into our scabbards (Moto no Saya ni Osamaru)”. Of course it helps that I don’t get into any serious hanky-panky outside my marriage “where I can neither draw nor sheath my sword (Nukisashi Naranai Kankei)”, because my wife would occasionally do a “draw and slash (Nuki-uchi)” check of my pants pockets for any motel matches and the like. Once, when coming home and about to enter the house, I remembered “at the body slicing mound (Dotanba)” that I had in my pocket a receipt from the Hooters bar, the one on the “Pin-pusher (Menuki)” street in the Ginza. I was actually there on business, entertaining a client, but a small company like ours cannot get “a sword strike in (Tachiuchi Dekinai)” against our competitors, in terms of expenses, so we end up “slitting our own bellies (Jibara wo Kiru)” for such wining and dining.
The handful of fiercely competing Japanese automakers “locked into a cross-guard match (Tsuba Zeriai)” only hire from top universities. So entrance exams are already scenes of endless “sword blade ridge grinding (Shinogi wo Kezuru Ba)”. These exams cover such a wide range of subjects that cramming in “improvised blade tempering (Tsuke Yakiba)” style won’t get you very far. But if you do “get stuck in place at the Seppa (Seppa Tsumaru)” at a multiple choice answer question, rolling the dice to choose a default answer as a “Quick blade fix (Kyuba Shinogi)”, is better than leaving the question unanswered.
As you see, there are so many sword-related idioms in daily Japanese conversation that should make them sound like kindred spirits to American sword collectors. That also means that sword collectors are already in possession of vocabulary that can easily give them a similar range of idiomatic expressions by just building around words they already know.
All the sword idioms I used in the example text above are explained below, together with some other useful choices to give you a total of 25 expressions that make Japanese a really lethal language, when you truly know what you are saying.
1. “Don’t get along too well” in Japanese can be expressed as “Sori ga Awanai 反りが合わない”, meaning un-matching curvature, referring to a sword that is a bad match for the scabbard, because of unmatched Sori. And if you do get along, you can say “Sori ga Au” for a good match.
2. “To kiss and make up after an altercation” in the same vein as above, can be expressed as “Moto no Saya ni Osamaru もとの鞘に納まる”, which means to “to return to the Saya it got drawn from”
3. “To pick a fight” or “Provocation” can be expressed in Japanese as “Saya-ate 鞘当て”, literally meaning to let the Saya of your sword hit against the Saya of another. Similar to the English, “Saber Rattling”. For the Samurai, touching another’s sword was like a challenge to a duel.
4. “To put yourself in a tight spot” is expressed as “Seppa Tsumaru 切羽つまる” .Tsumaru is a verb meaning to “get tightly packed”, so you are literally feeling like a blade tightly wedged into position by the Seppa.
5. And when in an unexpected tight spot like ending up with a badly chipped blade you need an “improvised quick or stop-gap fix”, that is expressed as a “Kyu-ba Shinogi 急刃しのぎ”. “Kyu” meaning “short notice/quick” and “Ba” meaning blade and “Shinogi” meaning “improvisation”. Altogether a “quick fix blade improvisation”. Note that “Shinogi” here is not a sword term, but the noun form of the verb “Shinogu”, meaning to “overcome, make do”.
6. Similar in nuance to the above, a “quickly improvised acquisition of a skill or knowledge” is “Tsuke Yakiba 付け焼き刃” or “improvised heat tempering of the blade”. Used in context like “I luckily passed the exam through some “Tsuke Yakiba” cramming last night”.
7. “To whip someone into shape” is expressed as “Yaki wo Ireru 焼きを入れる”, meaning to temper with heat.
8. “Getting straight to the point without mincing words” is expressed as “Tantoh-Chokunyu ni Iu 単刀直入に言う”. “Tan” means “single and “toh” is sword. Chokunyu means to “enter directly”. Altogether it means to make a “single-sword, direct charge at the enemy” without beating around the bush with decoy maneuvers, etc.
9. A “Close match” in sports or elections can be described as a “Tsuba-Zeriai 鍔ぜりあい” or “Tsuba against Tsuba competition” like locked horns. Used like “The election became a Tsuba-Zeriai between Trump and Biden”.
10. Similar to the above in the sense of “Going head to head”, is the idiom “Shinogi wo Kezuru 鎬を削る”, meaning an extremely tough fight in which both parties literally end up grinding down the Shinogi ridge of each other’s sword blade.
11. “A main road through a town (thoroughfare)” in Japanese is called a “Menuki Douri 目貫通り” coming from the very prominently positioned Menuki of a sword in the center of the grip. Very few Japanese youngsters of today would know that the Japanese version of “Broadway” actually is sword lingo.
12. “The real McCoy or certifiable/certified” in Japanese can be expressed as “Origami-Tsuki 折り紙つき”, “tsuki” meaning “with”, and the “Origami”, literally meaning “Folded Paper” is referring to the authenticity certificate that used to be issued by the famed Honnami family of renowned sword appraisers. Used like “Origami-Tsuki no Baka” (certifiable idiot).
13. “Show one’s true colors” is expressed as “Jigane ga Deru 地金が出る”. “Jigane” refers to the core steel of a sword blade, and “Deru” means to “go/come out”. It describes a sword that had been re-polished so many times that the core metal is now exposed.
14. “A last resort measure” is expressed as “Denka no Houtoh 伝家の宝刀”, “Denka” meaning passed down within the family and “Houtoh” meaning “Treasure Sword”. It refers to a desperate situation in which one is finally forced to draw the forbidden magic sword passed down within the family. So you can say, “The A-bomb was USA’s Denka no Houtoh in WW2”.
15. Related to the above, “A right hand man”, (someone or something you rely on in a crunch) is called a “Futokoro Gatana 懐刀”. Futokoro refers to the chest area of one’s Kimono, which served like a pocket. However, though in English, “Deep pocket” refers to the size of one’s wallet, “Futokoro ga Fukai” (to have a deep Futokoro) means “Big-hearted (Magnanimous). Going back on track, “Gatana” is “Katana” (K morphs into G when an adjective precedes it). So it means a dagger you keep close to your chest. You can use it like “Pompeo serves as Trump’s Futokoro Gatana against China”.
16. A “Surprise Inspection/ test” can be expressed as “Nuki-Uchi-Kensa/Shiken 抜き打ち検査/テスト”. “Nuki-Uchi” is how you draw the sword and strike in one fluid, lightning quick motion, similar to “quick-drawing of a gun”.
17. “To respond with sympathetic, understanding nods while listening to someone’s explanation” is expressed as “Aizuchi wo Utsu 相槌を打つ”, meaning “to respond with a blow of the hammer”. This is more swordsmith talk rather than sword talk, as it describes how a swordsmith’s apprentice faces his master in a hammering session, as the two take turns pounding the red-hot steel slab. The Japanese have the habit of constantly bobbing their heads, as they listen to someone in a conversation, and this gesture is likened to an apprentice following his master blow for blow.
18. “The state of not making much sense” is described as “Tonchinkan 頓珍漢”, which is an onomatopoeia for successive hammer strikes by the master and apprentice, not meeting the steel in the right spot and not sounding right as a result. Supposedly it should go “Tontenkan” when struck right.
19. “Pay out of one’s own pocket” instead of expensing it, is “Jibara wo kiru 自腹を切る” or simply “Jibara”, which means “own belly” and “kiru” is to slit. It is used like “Speeding tickets during a business trip is naturally by Jibara”
20. "A helping hand” is often described as a “Suke-Dachi 助太刀”, which is literally a “helping sword”.
21. “To be outmatched” is “Tachi-Uchi-Dekinai 太刀打ちできない”, literally “Cannot strike with a sword”, because the opponent has no weak spots to get your sword into.
22. “A situation of irreversible fate/jeopardy” is “Dotanba 土壇場”, which was a mound of earth, where headless bodies of the executed were placed for test-cutting of swords. It is used like “Flash Gordon episodes always ended in a crisis like his spaceship exploding. But the next episode always showed him escaping at the Dotanba”. A related slang is “Dotakyan” meaning “cancellation in the 11th hour used like “Their wedding was a Dotakyan, leaving just one week to go.”
23. “To be in a sticky situation” is expressed as “Nuki-Sashi Naranai 抜き差しならない”, literally meaning a situation where you could neither draw nor sheath your sword, a moment of great suspense. It can also refer to an irreversibly intimate relationship between a man and a woman.
24. “To barge in on someone else’s conversation" is expressed as “Yokoyari wo Ireru 横槍を入れる” literally “Putting in a thrust with a lance from the side”. An unwelcome intrusion like a third person joining a duel between two Samurai by poking them with a spear from the side.
25. “To play hardball” is “Shinken Shoubu 真剣勝負” (match with real swords). Often used to distinguish between practice/rehearsals vs a real win or lose situation. For students hoping to go to university, February is the month for their fateful Shinken Shoubu, when entrance exams are held throughout Japan. Shinken (real sword) is really an everyday word in Japanese, because it stands for being “earnest”. “to study like hell” is “Shinken ni Benkyou-suru”. When someone says something out of character or something that may be just a joke, you can simply ask “Shinken-desuka?” (Do you really mean that?). Literally you are asking "Is that a real sword?".
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by Bruce Pennington
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