cowardice, sneering ‘objectivity,’ rootlessness, dishonesty, flunkeyism, mock gestures of resistance, self-importance, inactivity, talkativeness, and readiness to eat their own words.”(Quoted in The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima, by Henry Scott Stokes)
However they stack up against their foreign competitors, the Japanese certainly have sufficient weapons in their armory to offend and discredit those they feel need lambasting.
Guide to Pronunciation
Japanese vowels are always pronounced the same:
a like the a in f a ther
e like the e in e gg
i like the e in m e
o like the o in o h
u like the first u in Z u lu
You will find macrons (lines) over some vowels. Differentiating between “long” and “short” vowels is important. Saying kuso 糞 instead of kusō 苦僧 or komon 顧問 instead of kōmon 肛門 will evince laughter, incomprehension, or embarrassment.
There are only two other sounds that may require some effort to master:
| tsu | Place the tip of your tongue behind your upper front teeth and say the girl’s name “Sue.” |
| r | This is a lightly tapped r which lies between the English r and d . |
Although there is a slight pitch in Japanese, you should utter all your Japanese words and sentences in an even tone like the tick-tock-tick-tock of a metronome. The final u う in the –masu ます form of verbs and desu です is usually silent.
CHAPTER ONE
Physical Appearance
FAT OR SKINNY
The Japanese language is rich in words to hurt others through disparaging comments about weight, shape, age, attire, odor, and hairiness. Let’s look first at several choice words of abuse that can be directed at those who are, bluntly speaking, futotte iru 太っている (fat). There is a very good (and obvious) reason that I know a god’s plenty of such colorful epithets, enough of them having been directed at my person.
I must note, however, that the Japanese may not all agree that such words are belittling. Although the younger generation wants to be “smart” (meaning fashionably slender, not intelligent), the older ones tend to regard obesity as obvious proof of success and wealth. Else, how could you afford to eat enough to put on that extra weight? Indeed, the word for paunch is jūyaku-bara 重役腹, or “a company director’s stomach.”
I shudder to recall how often a Japanese acquaintance (I disdain to use the word friend) has launched at me a brutal barb like:
Mā, Suwādo-san wa honto ni futotte iru, ne.
まあ、スワ一ドさんは本当に太っているね。
You really are fat, aren’t you, Mr. Seward.
I try to keep in mind that my acquaintance may have meant his comment as a compliment of sorts but it has taken me a long time to accustom myself to such a frank evaluation, a very long time indeed.
Other words which can be used to describe excessive weight include debu-debu でぶでぶ and buyo-buyo ぶよぶよ, as in these examples:
Buchō no debu-debu shita musume wa yobanaide okō. Kanojo no shiri ni au isu wa nai kara na.
部長のでぶでぶした娘は呼ばないでおこう。彼女の尻 に合う椅子はないからな。
Let’s not invite the section chief’s obese daughter. We don’t have a chair that would fit her hips.
O-debu no musume おでぶの娘 fatty girl
Ano buyo-buyo bāsan wa anata ni te wo futte iru.
あのぶよぶよ婆さんは、あなたに手を振っている。
That flabby old woman is waving her hand at you.
That same buyo-buyo bāsan ぶよぶよ婆さん would be expected to have pendulous breasts, the word for which is tare-jichi 垂れ乳 “hanging breasts”. Thus, if the circumstances indicate, she could also be called:
• tare-jichi no hihi-babā 垂れ乳の狒狒婆
baboonlike old woman with saggy breasts
A flat-chested woman can be described as pecha-pai ぺち ゃぱい - the pecha ぺちゃ coming from pechanko ni naru ぺちゃんこになる, “to be flattened”:
Kare wa pecha-pai to kekkon shita.
彼はぺちゃぱいと結婚した。
He married a girl who has no tits at all.
Other germane expressions:
• deppuri shita (hito) でっぷりした（人） dumpy (person)
• toshima-butori 年増太り a gain in weight that women may experience with the encroachment of middle age
• zunguri shita (hito) ずんぐりした（人） fat and short (person)
• hyakkan debu 百貫でぶ tub of lard (hyakkan 百貫 means 100 kan 貫 or 826 pounds.)
• futotcho 太っちょ blimp
In contrast to such heavyweights, we have the skinny ones. Yaseru 瘦せる is the verb meaning to lose weight, and from it derives yase-koketa 痩せこけた “to be emaciated”.
Sono yase-koketa otoko wa byōki ni chigai nai.
その痩せこけた男は病気に違いない。
That emaciated man has to be sick.
Hisashiburi ni Abe-san ni atta ga miru kage mo naku yasete ita.
久しぶりに安部さんに会ったが、 見る影もなく痩せていた。
I met Mr. Abe for the first time in a long while. He was a mere shadow of his former self (lit., so thin as not to even have a shadow).
Sō da yo. Hone to kawa bakari sa.
そうだよ。骨と皮ばかりさ。 That’s right. He’s just skin and bones (lit., bones and hide).
Wags who wish to personalize this description can construct such name as:
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