It’s Raining Men!
Saturday, September 1st, 2007
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My friend Tom seems to provoke Mother Nature’s wrath wherever he goes. When he stayed with friends in Michigan last month, a freak windstorm made them lose power for two days. Six months earlier, he visited Titusville, Florida, and a severe tornado arrived at precisely the same time. Not long before that, a tornado accompanied him to Olney, Maryland. When Tom was just six, a tornado hit his family’s farm in Illinois. Although the family recovered and rebuilt the garage, another tornado took that one out, as well. Coincidences? I think not.
Apparently, Tornado Tom is not the only person with these powers, as the Japanese have a similar concept:
雨男 (ameotoko: man whose presence seems to cause rain)
rain + man
And then there’s a word with the opposite ingredients: man + drought:
男旱 (otokohideri) man + drought
You might think this referred to a man who brought sunny skies. But no, 男旱 means “scarcity of eligible or interested men.” In other words, it’s not raining men!
Golconde, 1953, by René Magritte.
Women around the world lament the scarcity of eligible men. The Japanese may be especially knowledgeable in this area, because they’re pros at counting men.
The Measure of a Man
What is it to be a man—or, rather, to be 男 (DAN, NAN, otoko: man, male)? People have asked this through the millennia, and the Japanese are no exception. Consider, for instance, this palindrome:
男の中の男 (otoko no naka no otoko: man among men, manly man, alpha male) man + among + men
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity | 4 Comments »
