“Your bobo is ripe and full, how wonderful”

Or: What the captions say on Hokusai’s ‘Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife’

Warning: sexiness. Well, in my view totally hilarious rather than sexy. The two things can of course coexist, but in this case I’m declaring my personal preference for the hilarious interpretation. I think James Joyce’s letters to his Mrs are also lurking somewhere in that particular no (wo)man’s land. My article regarding old Jim’s fat mickey and what he’d like to do with it is still one of the most popular posts I’ve ever done here, along with the one about Japanese manga onomatopoeia, so when I was inspired to research the book that this famous print comes from it immediately became clear that I should share my findings with the perverts who visit this site. Edo sex onomatopeia! Bizarre erotic material! Japanese stuff! It hits all the blogging G spots.

The print generally known in English as The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife is in Japanese simply 蛸と海女, Tako no ama (Octopus and Shell Diver). I’m a long way from being Mr Politically Correct, but right there we’ve got what seems to be a glaring piece of casual Western imperialist sexism, since she might well be somebody’s wife but the most salient fact is that she’s actually a fisherwoman in her own right. It’s not even an accurate description because the fisherman isn’t part of this scenario. Presumably his presence would impede this young lady’s hook ups with such fine specimens of cephalopod manhood as are shown here. It’s the kind of a work-related fling that happens when your colleagues are mainly molluscs.

Katsushika Hokusai, he of the iconic The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, also worked openly and to equal acclaim, popularity and prestige on erotic prints (春画 shunga) like the one under discussion here. This particular print is from the novel Kinoe no Komatsu (Young Pines, 1814), a title which is probably as euphemistic as calling the whole thing a novel; I should imagine if it has any novelistic qualities at all it would still be the kind of novel you’d read with one hand. For those who don’t know already, the print depicts a naked woman in a consensual sexual encounter with sea creatures. If you’re on the front page, clicking READ MORE (or whatever it says above the break) will show it to you. Don’t click the link if you or your employer are not inclined towards enjoying things like that. It’s visible on the wall in the background of my current profile picture on my own website, among other places, to the outrage and disgust of absolutely nobody. You’ll probably see worse by accident when you Google something you’d previously thought was innocent (I know I have)… but whatever, those who need warning should consider yourselves warned.

Japanese onomatopoeia II: Please enjoy Nihon style pedantry update

Photograph ©2009 by Alistair Gentry.

Ongoing cogitation with regard to the Japanese language compels me to point out that my previous post on the subject of Japanese onomatopoeia was lacking some nuance. As I pointed out previously, not only does Japanese have words imitative of actions or the sounds that various entities make when engaged in those actions (such as “plop”, or a gun going BANG) but the language also has “imitative” words relating to things that can’t be heard at all, such as feelings or certain ways of visualising a situation. Most languages that I know of have the first sort of onomatopoeia to some extent, but as far as I know very few languages have words in the latter two categories.

What I didn’t mention is that the Japanese have words for these categories of words, too. English doesn’t have these words really, except via adopted Greek-  Greek being one of the world’s other great languages for specificity/pedantry. So what we call in English (via Greek) “onomatopoeia”  or a phonomime is in Japanese either 擬声語 giseigo or 擬音語 giongo depending upon whether the sound originates from a living or inanimate object. This is in line with other fine distinctions the Japanese language makes between words used for referring to or counting objects depending upon whether they are alive or not, between humans and other animals, and in some cases depending upon their shape, length or other fundamental properties. But that’s a whole other dissertation.

The go at the end of all these words is 語, a language, “speech” or “tongue”. 日本語, for example, is Nihongo: the Japanese language. That’s an interesting nuance as well, the underlying assumption that objects have a language, and these objects all have their own ways of talking to us.

Words that imitate sensory elements that can’t physically be heard are phenomimes, gitaigo (擬態語), like JIIIII ジーーーー, staring at somebody. Written sound effects created to express states of the body or mind are psychomimes, gijōgo 擬情語, like SURARI スラリ: the sound of being slender.

That will be all for now, you may now carry on with your life certain that your store of useless knowledge grew just a little bit today.