The Wide Garden of Words

舟を編む

The first novel I read this year was The Great Passage, by Shion Miura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Spanning fifteen years, the novel follows a quirky cast of characters who work at a large publishing house and are working to update a large Japanese language dictionary. For the publishers, it is a losing proposition, financially speaking. But it is still one they still feel compelled to perform.

The Japanese title is 舟を編む Fune o Amu, Weaving a Ship. I love the title because, when I started blogging more than fifteen years ago, a friend said all my posts could be woven together to become a boat upon which I could sail off…. I loved that idea and still feel it captures so perfectly what books can do in a person’s life.

One more thing to love about Japan: it is a land of great and glorious dictionaries.

In the English translation of the novel, I loved the translator’s decision to put the names of Japan’s famous dictionaries into direct/literal English, highlighting what is wondrous about the dictionary-compiling process.... so that the famous Kojien 広辞苑becomes the Wide Garden of Words (took me time to even figure that out in English) and Daijirin 大辞林 becomes the Great Forest of Words.

I have already written about my own favorite Japanese dictionary, by Shizuka Shirakawa. Famous for his research into the origins of Chinese characters, he was a force of nature. There is even a font named after him for rendering ancient scripts such as oracle bone and Chinese bronze on computers.

Because Shirakawa’s dictionary is a character compendium focused on ancient etymology, it is “locked.” No updates would be required. Plus the great man has passed away. The same can not be said about the Kōjien 広辞苑 which remains the mist authoritative dictionary in Japan.

Being a modern dictionary it is updated with each new edition. The last time this happened (I think?) was in 2017. The Japan Times reported that 10,000 new words were added, including “hanii torappu” (honey trap), “biggu mausu” (big mouth) and “karēshū” (an old person’s distinctive smell), the publisher said.

I had never heard of karēshū 加齢臭 かれいしゅう which literally means 'the smell of gaining years', or the smell of aging. Okay….

Other new entries include “apuri” (app), “burakku kigyō” (exploitative firms with bad working conditions), “Isuramu-koku” (Islamic State), “LGBT,” “konkatsu” (marriage hunting), “jidori” (selfie) and “diipu rāningu” (deep learning).

This reminded me of a book I like a lot called Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane, which celebrates some of the words cut from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2007. Words lost included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow.

And taking their places were words such as attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.

I don’t remember the last time I bought an English dictionary—but I did but Lost Words—and so should you!!

Here are two other dictionaries I wanted to recommend: Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive is a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came into use during the British rule in India.

And

This wonderful new book: Words for the Heart: A Treasury of Emotions from Classical India, by Maria Heim