Japanese Lessons: Jugemu Part I, or the Meaning of Life

A while ago, I related how the Mario enemy Lakitu's Japanese name, Jugem, is a throwback to a Japanese tongue twister and some folklore that many children know.

Let's delve into some of the Japanese behind the lyric. As with the last time we did a Japanese Lesson, there will be a lot of Japanese characters in this post, so it's best if you view it on a device that can read them properly.

If you remember the anecdote attached to the tongue twister, it was about a priest giving a young boy a name that would grant him a long, long life. So the priest gives him a name with all sorts of meanings that could suggest many years without death. (I feel like the next sentence is going to be about what the Polish guy said to the Mexican. Oh well.)

Here is the tongue-twister once again:

Jugemu jugemu
Gokou no surikire
Kaijari suigyou no
Suigyoumatsu unraimatsu fuuraimatsu
Kuu neru tokoro ni sumu tokoro
Yaburakouji no burakouji
Paipo paipo paipo no shuuringan
Shuuringan no guurindai
Guurindai no ponpokopii no ponpokonaa no
Choukyuumei no chousuke

Now, what does it mean? Well, even if you are native Japanese, some of it is a bit head-scratchy, so we'll take each line one post at a time.

Let's start with the title of the tongue twister. Jugemu jugemu (寿限無、寿限無) is combination of three kanji that means something close to "everlasting life" or "life without limits." But be careful, this doesn't actually mean immortal to a modern Japanese ear, like the word fushi (不死), literally "without death" or fujimi (不死身), or "indestructible," do. Please note the second word is closer to the impervious definition of immortal, and often is used to describe somebody with an indomitable spirit, who never gives up. Another word for immortality would be furou (不老), or somebody who never ages. You can quite often see the two terms put together, as furoufushi (不老不死).

So please don't go around using the word jugemu to mean "everlasting life," or "everlasting gobstopper." The reason it means that in this special case is because ju (寿) is a character of celebration and can also be read as kotobuki -- the whole thing kind of comes across as "cheers for a good, long life." You'll see this kanji particularly at this time of year when a new year rolls around, or at certain birthdays, to wish the person a continued happy, long life.

It is quite important to remember that you will not see this kanji a whole lot in relation to life. jumyo　（寿命) or "life span" is one word that comes up in daily parlance. You could use it to describe the life span of anything, from a planet to a tree to a person. But if you wanted to use life as in the human philosophical concept, jinsei (人生) would be better, as in "My life sucks" or ore no jinsei ha saitei da yo (俺の人生は最低だよ）. Whereas seimei (生命) describes all types of life (and is another word that is derived by repeating two kanji with the same rough meaning, as the second one, inochi (命) also means life, but in a more holistic way). If you wanted to talk about your current life you'd use a word like seikatsu (生活). This describes more of your daily habits, routines, where you live, how much you wank, those types of things. [Note that you may recognize the sei (生) character as meaning life, and it does, among other things, but so does the katsu (活) character. In fact, the verb for life commonly uses the former, but sometimes, for poetic effect, will use the latter. For instance, ikaseru (活かせる) is likely to be used to mean "make something come to life" or "make the most of something."] So if you're trying to communicate more clearly in Japanese, one thing you should definitely watch out for are the nuances in what types of things different kanji with the same basic meaning can convey. 

So let's review the meanings of life:

sei 生 - the most basic, humanistic term for life
inochi 命 - life, as in the soul or spirit that burns within an individual until it dies
katsu 活 - activity, animation, life as the expression of movement
kotobuki 寿 - life as a happy congratulation of its continuance, also a piece of the word sushi by the way

(Unfortunately, almost none of these kanji or terms are commonly used to mean "lives" as in chances to try again in a game. That's a special discussion for another day.)

Meanwhile, gemu is actually a reversal of mugen (無限), which means "unlimited." Another way to say that in Japanese is kagiri ga nai (限りがない), which is simply saying a very similar thing to "there's no limit." (If you have absolutely no imagination for language, you might think "there's no limit" and "unlimited" mean the same thing. If so, you have my pity.) These days, nai often does not have a kanji attached to it, but if it does, it is most often the one we see at the end of jugemu, in this form: 無い.

So we can parcel out the pieces of the word to mean "may there be no limit to your happy, long life."

Right then, now that you've gotten a handle on life (all thanks to my blog) tomorrow's post will be about the second line, gokou no surikire, which is far more rooted in history and philosophy, and thus much harder to explain. Be ready, be vigilant, strike while the Japanese is hot! 

Japanese Lessons: Your Entire Life on Video

In my my article on the creepy TV show episode, Your Story,  the title of the TV show presents a couple of talking points to help Japanese learners become more fluent and deepen their understanding. So let's get right into them. Remember! It's much easier to read these articles, and they won't display gooble-de-gook if you're doing so on a device that can read Japanese characters.

First of all, let's look at the title of the TV show, 世にも奇妙な物語, which reads Yo ni mo Kimyo na Monogatari. The yo (世) is commonly read this way when it is alone, though I think a lot of foreign speakers I've spoken to are used to seeing it read as se in sekai (世界). Both yo and sekai mean world, but yo has a less literal and more figurative meaning. You'll see the word used in more factual and formal circumstances such as the World Bank, sekai ginkou (世界銀行), the concept of world peace, sekai heiwa (世界平和), or the actual designation of a world. In many video games, the dark world is yami no sekai (闇の世界) and the light world, hikari no sekai (光の世界).

Yo (世）is a much older term and more poetic. It stands for society, the perceived world, the human idea of what a world is. If you want to say "That's just the way it is!" in Japanese, you'd probably say something like, "Yo no naka wa sonna mon da!" (「世の中はそんなもんだ！」). Here, yo no naka (世の中), means the everyday world we're accustomed to live in. Paintings of the floating world were known as ukiyo-e (浮世絵), a study of the opinions in a society is known as a yoronchousa (世論調査) and the expression in the title of this show yo ni mo (世にも) is a saying that emphasizes that the thing that comes after the "mo" is something so extreme it could hardly be thought to be part of this world.

One of the most famous usages of the yo ni mo expression is yo ni mo fushigi na mono (世にも不思議なもの). This means something close a thing or idea that is "out of this world mysterious."

Now that you have a better idea of what the title is saying when it uses yo ni mo (世にも), next comes kimyou (奇妙), which means bizarre, strange, unlikely, weird or peculiar.  The title uses kimyou (奇妙) instead of fushigi (不思議), perhaps because the ki (奇) in that word can take part in words that mean anything from a miracle (kiseki, 奇跡), to novel, as in new and interesting (kibatsu, 奇抜) to rare and marvelous talent (kisai 奇才).

Meanwhile, myou (妙) can often be used by itself to describe that is odd and out of place. If you got up from your desk and noticed that your cup wasn't where you left it last, you might say myou da na (妙だな), meaning, "Well, that's a little off/odd/strange."

Put them together and you have a perfect to describe the many arresting, novel stories of people beset with odd situations and strange, miraculous powers.

The last part of the title is monogatari (物語) part. You might notice the title is written na monogatari (な物語), but the oft-used expression is written na mono (なもの. Well beside the na character being there to designate a noun after an adjective, there isn't much of one. The title could be written in hiragana characters and still be the same. The mono (もの) used is the same meaning as the one used in monogatari (物語). That mono is hard to explain. Mono are things that are true about life, on a deep and irrefutable level. They are also physical things, like lamps and paper. Sometimes mono can also be living things, but in this case, it isn't. Mono are different from koto (こと/事), which is an incident. So for instance, if the name was yo ni mo kimyou na jiken (世にも奇妙な事件), which is jiken but contains the character and meaning of koto (事), then it would be about strange and peculiar instances. But because it uses mono, these are stories, in other words, by the Japanese way of reckoning, a telling of the way things are on their most basic and true levels. Katari (語り) is just that, using words to tell about something. It just loses the ri (り) character in writing and becomes gatari after mono for grammar reasons too tedious to expound upon now.

So if you put it all together, it's a novel truth about life and society told in such a way that it is too strange to be believed as part of this world.

Now you see why some people (like me) get headaches from trying to translate Japanese into English properly!

Mystery is Everywhere: Your Entire Life on Video

Mystery is everywhere. It lies behind a waterfall, inside an ornate locked box, or in the school's meat. Mystery improves games. Without it, magic isn't magical. The horizon doesn't beckon without mystery's enticing finger. Mystery lies at the heart of games, because it's always the most enticing question: what happens next?

If I were a game and I were looking for inspiration, I might look at one episode of Japanase television short story seriesYo ni Mo Kimyo na Monogatari ; perhaps a good translation might be Strange Stories for a Stranger World or There Are Pecular Stories Out There.

This tale starts with a woman browsing through a video rental store. Nothing looks enticing until she notices a series of white videos entitled Your Story (Anata no Monogatari), which is also the title of the episode.

Existential worries in the video store of life.

Mami, our main character remembers a conversation she overheard in the train between two school girls. A series of tapes in white with nothing but the words "Your Story" printed on them can sometimes be found in video stores. According to the girls, the person who watches the video will see their entire life from the day they are born to the day they die.

Intrigued, Mami rents the first video and returns home with it. After putting it in, Mami is disappointed to learn there's nothing on the video. She leaves it running and gets up to make a cuppa.

"Hello there Mami, I've been waiting for you."

While Mami is in the kitchen, she suddenly hears a baby crying. She returns to find herself being born on the television screen. Though her parents never filmed her birth (she says there were only photographs), in vivid detail, there lies her first few years after coming into this world. Intrigued, Mami rents more videos and relives her life.

The contrast in these scenes is intriguing. We, as the viewer, know that this can't lead to a good place. (This episode was filmed after the success of The Ring made electronic media devices a thing of terror and besides, anyone who has encountered stories like these know they don't usually end well.) However, Mami is thrilled. Her life is depicted as so bland and ordinary that any kind of spirit and enthusiasm has been filtered away like mediocre coffee. It's only the scenes where she encounters her old life with her 5-years-dead father that the screen shows a real and vivid vibrancy.

 

Hello, TV snow, my old friend.

Eventually, Mami runs into a tape that shows her walking around in a video store, renting the same tape she is watching and even shows footage of her watching it. It is at this point that I, and I think many others, would so creeped out we might need to excrete the excess creepiness out our butts. But Mami runs into a problem in real life. Invited out for lunch at her workplace, and bristling with curiosity, she wants to know what will happen tomorrow. So she watches the first tape to show the future.

It is at this point that I will not reveal what happens next. It's a lot more clever than you might think. Suffice to say that Mami finds out something that has us questioning the nature of how we perceive the future. No, it's not that. And no, not that either. Oh God no, heavens no, it isn't that hackneyed old thing either.

I especially like this scene:

I pissed in your tea, Mami.

Mami is watching her future self, who knows she is being watched by whatever entity films the tapes. She turns around and stares into the camera of her mysterious filmer. Future Mami stares right back at Past Mami, knowing she is watching herself, knowing what will happen next, in a look of utter hopelessness.

So why is Your Story successful at using mystery? One reason is because what Mami does isn't very mysterious. Every step of the way, from beginning to end, we know why Mami does what she does and what motivates her. The story is crystal clear here. 

It's everything that surrounds Mami that is murkier. Where did the tapes come from? Who is filming them? How does this whole mechanism work? Did she really see the tapes as they were or was she just renting regular shows and hallucinating? Was what she saw the truth or did she misunderstand something? Would her life have been better if she -- oops, can't tell you that.

The actress here is Manami Konishi, known for her work in movies and television dramas as a charming, relate-able character actor.

Consider the following three scenarios and ask yourself, "Which do I find the most mysterious?"

a. A girl is walking through the forest. She can hear the sounds of a baby crying and no matter were she goes or looks, the sound doesn't fade, become more faint or louder. Eventually, she ignores the sound, picks some berries and goes out of the woods.

b. A girl is walking through the forest because she needs to pick some berries for a medicine that will help her mother. She can't find the berries and is about give up, when suddenly she hears the sounds of a baby crying. Distressed and concerned, she searches everywhere for the source, but the sounds don't change no matter where shes goes. It still sounds as far away and as close as when she first heard it. Eventually, she runs into the berries she is searching for. Having no time left and knowing her mother is sick, she decides to ignore the baby and go home.

c. A girl is walking through the forest. Her mother is pregnant and she needs berries to cure her ailing stomach. She has heard stories that in this forest, babies are thrown away by mothers who did not want them. She is picking the berries when suddenly she hears the sound of a baby crying. In distress, she tries to find the helpless baby, but no matter where she runs the sound of the baby's cries are just as loud and far away as when she just heard them. It doesn't seem to be getting any closer or farther away. At a loss, the girl rushes home. When she enters her home, suddenly the baby's crying becomes unbearably loud and she drops the berries. After scolding the girl, her sister prepares the berries in the stewing medicine for her sick mother. Meanwhile, the girl is writhing on the floor in pain from the sound of the screaming baby. Suddenly, the screaming stops. Looking up, the girl sees the remnant of the medicine dripping from her mother's mouth like blood.

Many people, I think, would prefer the last one, C. A is probably too vague. We don't know the motivation of the character, why they're in the forest and what is going on at all. Many mysterious stories are just incoherent. They try for mystery by referring to creepy ideas, but there isn't anything else to latch onto and it feels like the authors just omitted details to make it mysterious. With B, we have some idea, but I think a lot of people prefer the creepy details of C. The suggestion that the medicine will kill the baby in the pregnant mother is suitably macabre.

However, I think the best and most mysterious would be somewhere between B and C. If you ask me, the extremely overt suggestion that the berries aren't good for the baby isn't a mystery so much as it is an answer.  

Your Story reaches this magical median between the two. What happens is not a mystery. Why it happens and what the story is suggesting is extremely mysterious. There are any number of interpretations I think could be valid and they suggest any number of things. One of the strangest things about this story is what it suggests about its own nature. Your Story subverts the traditional idea that a character can change the future positively by becoming proactive and suggests something entirely different. 

The final shot of the piece.

Your Story has a lot of other excellent virtues, such as an economy of style that does a world of good for its storytelling and a confident sense of time and place -- even though rental video stores still exist in Japan, elsewhere they are becoming a thing of the past. I watched this for the first time 8 years after it was filmed. Imagine the story 40 years from now to a young boy or girl who has never even heard of the concept of renting videos from a store, let alone VHS! The tapes in this story might be as arcane and mysterious as crystal balls or tarot cards.

Your Story understands that in order to leave an indelible impression in people's minds, the art of the careful direction cannot be underestimated.