How to Treat People Badly: Part 1
Friday, June 26th, 2009
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If someone planned to serve you the following, how would you respond?
粗煮 (arani: dish consisting of bony fish parts boiled in soy sauce)
coarse + to boil
Blech! Not one part of that sounds good to me. Bony fish parts and hot soy sauce do the opposite of whetting my appetite.
I would have guessed that you’d make this dish only if the fridge were barren, save for a few bottled sauces and a moldy onion growing new parts. But it’s entirely possible that 粗煮 is a delicacy! As it turns out, the answer isn’t so clear-cut; see the link for more on that.
Native Takes on the Situation …
From the following definitions of the first kanji, you can certainly see how this could be food of the last resort:
1. leftovers (after filleting a fish)
2. rice chaff (i.e., worthless husks of grains)
3. flaw (especially of a person)
4. a prefix meaning “rough; roughly”
5. crude; raw; natural; wild
You get all that just when the yomi is ara. And there are two more yomi. Here’s the full story on this kanji:
粗 (SO, ara(i), ara: coarse, rough, rugged)
Ring a bell? As I mentioned last week, 粗 and 荒 (KŌ, ara(i), ara-, a(reru), a(rasu), -a(rashi): rough, crude, natural, wild) are close and sometimes interchangeable, but not always. Whereas the primary definition of 荒 is “wild,” 粗 has more of a sense of “low quality,” “coarse,” and “unfinished.”
The differences go back to the etymology. Remember how 荒 initially had to do with grasses growing rampant? Well, 粗 originally had to do with spilled, neglected rice. See the link below for more.
Giving people shoddy food is one thing. But it’s a Japanese tendency to act as though that’s what one is doing, even when serving food fit for a king. Hence the following expression:
粗酒粗肴 (soshusokō: self-deprecating way to offer meal to guest)
crude + alcoholic drink + crude + food accompanying drinksThe fourth kanji isn’t Jōyō.
This expression literally means “cheap wines and unpalatable dishes.” See how 粗 shows up twice to emphasize the poor quality of both? The idea is not to put the guest down but rather to express humility about one’s cooking ability and the low budget and effort involved in preparing the meal.
After the meal, the host follows up with more self-deprecation about the food:
お粗末様でした (o-somatsusama deshita: host’s expression of humility after a meal)
inferior + insignificant + suffix for forming polite phrases
Saying “I just served you inferior food” is simply a way of saying “It was nothing at all” or even (as Halpern has it) “The pleasure was all mine.”
As I wrote in “Hyperbolic Humility” on page 127 of Crazy for Kanji, “The Japanese make others feel good by diminishing themselves.” Because this self-deprecation is such a vital part of the social structure, Japanese guests know not to hear comments about a shabby meal as a slight about their own worth.
Here are more ways in which 粗 helps to make an offering modest:
粗茶 (socha: coarse tea) coarse + tea
This could simply refer to tea that hasn’t yet been processed. But it’s almost always a humble expression used when offering someone tea.
粗品 (soshina or sohin: low-grade goods; little gift)
humble + articleIn a business situation, but not a social one, you can work your way into your customer’s good graces with a gift, as long as you verbally diminish its value:
粗品ですがお受け取りください。
Soshina desu ga o-uketori kudasai.
This is just a small gift, but please accept it.受け取る (uketoru: to receive)
to receive + to takeUketori is the adverbial form of this verb.
The gift may be easy to accept, but the mentality behind the wording is a little harder for the Western mind to grasp. One can’t imagine saying something like, “I found this torn shirt in a dumpster behind the homeless shelter. Please accept it as a token of my esteem.”
To explore this further, let’s return to the phrase we saw earlier:
お粗末様でした (o-somatsusama deshita: host’s expression of humility after a meal)
inferior + insignificant + suffix for forming polite phrases
This phrase has the following word at its core:
粗末 (somatsu: crude; rough; plain; humble, inferior)
coarse + insignificantYou likely know this 末 from 週末 (shūmatsu: weekend, week + end). But in that context, 末 means “end” or “last part.” In the case of 粗末, the 末 means “insignificant” or “last in importance.”
Thus far, we’ve seen expressions in which the poor quality and the claims to shabby treatment have only been smokescreens. But 粗末 is the real deal; the item in question is truly inferior or lacking, as the sample sentences show.
Adding verbs to 粗末 enables you to mistreat things. In other words, you make them 粗末:
粗末にする (somatsu ni suru: to waste, treat shabbily, treat frivolously, handle roughly, treat without respect)
This expression mainly applies to disposable things such as food.
粗末に扱う (somatsu ni atsukau: to handle (a thing) roughly)
coarse + insignificant + to handleThis expression mainly applies to things that gradually wear out but are not directly consumed—for instance, tools. (At least I hope you haven’t been swallowing hammers!)
Hey, here’s something unexpected. Check out this sample sentence for 粗末:
道具を粗末に使うな。
Dōgu o somatsu ni tsukauna.
Don’t handle these tools roughly.道具 (dōgu: tool) the way + tool
It would be just as easy to say the following:
道具を粗末に扱うな。
Dōgu o somatsu ni atsukauna.
Don’t handle these tools roughly.
These sentences differ by only the letter a. Normally, 使う (tsukau: to use) and 扱う (atsukau: to handle, deal with, treat) would be pretty far apart. But in this context, they take on the same meaning. That’s rather reassuring on a day when apparent meaning and actual meaning have done nothing but diverge.
Time for your Verbal Logic Quiz, where you’ll most likely see more divergence!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
June 26th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
A few announcements:
1. I’m off to Spain today (!), and I’ll be there all week. If you leave comments (please do!), I might be a bit slow in responding.
2. I had a small article yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle about a Japanese woodblock print exhibit, and an accompanying printmaking workshop, in Oakland, Calif. There’s not much to the article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/25/NS851898AN.DTL), but I thought you might enjoy seeing the actual prints and reading about them at this link: http://www.mills.edu/campus_life/art_museum/museum_studies/spring09/Kanto_home.html
3. I have 3 book-signing events in San Francisco when I return: July 6, July 8, and July 11. If you live in the area (and I don’t think any JPod readers do!), it would be great to see you (through the haze of my jet lag). Here’s the info: http://www.evekushner.com/writing/index.php?p=276
June 27th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Thanks Eve for your announcements and hope you have a safe journey to Spain.
I was very keen to learn about 粗煮. In Spain we also boil the fish bones and head (without soy souce) so as to obtain the essence of the sea flavours while preparing “spoon fish dishes” and in fact, if you attempt to buy a fish in a fish shop, they may ask you if you want the head, tail or other parts left after cleaning the fish (and they will prepare them separately). Some people enjoy eating these parts after boiling, but we normally disregard them for the current dish and we can keep them in order to prepare other dishes.
June 28th, 2009 at 4:52 am
I really like this series. Thank you for these! Kanji is endlessly fascinating because it is so closely tied to the culture. I do business in Japan and encounter this self-depricating behaviour, even in business. It is difficult to emulate when in-country; I often forget to bow, don’t bowing low enough, bow clumsily. I get back to the states and have to remember not to bow!
July 4th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Hello John B,
Your name reminded me of the folk song “Sloop John B” and I wanted to hear the song again after some forty years. Yes, I could find the song played by a few performers on the Internet. I suspected you are British because of the spelling “behaviour”, but you talk about getting back to the states.
Self-deprication is everywhere in Japanese culture. The most typical examples may be 愚妻 and 愚息, which mean “stupid wife” and “stupid son” respectively, when you refer to your own wife and son.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Sorry to be so incredibly slow in responding this time around. Thanks for all the comments.
Alberto: I admire the full use of the body parts, in terms of avoiding wastefulness. But I still feel squeamish about the whole thing!
John: はじめまして！Thanks so much for the nice comment. Your comments on bowing made me laugh. I wonder how long one has to practice bowing before it becomes natural. Another reader of this blog, a Japanese man, told me about a device used in Japan to measure the angle of the bow. He said it’s like a protractor and it tells you (or perhaps others) whether you’re at 30, 45, or 90 degrees! Another Jp friend just told me last week that when she worked at a hotel and some VIPs came, the staff had to hold a bow for 2 mins. and could only see everyone’s shoes, not any faces!!!
Hiroshi-san: Canadians also use British spelling, so that’s another possibility… It’s a good thing you translated those words, because Breen only says that 愚妻 【ぐさい】 is a humble term meaning “wife.” Good to know exactly what’s involved in all that “humbleness”!