Question raised by: William J. Higginson

Discussants: Rokuo Tanaka, Tim Kern,William Bodiford, Stephen Miller, Lawrence Marceau, Rein Raud, Sonja Arntzen)

This archive contains related discussion under the subject line "shin shin" and "Poetess"

Dear Colleagues,

While we're wrestling with various semantic issues, let me add one that puzzles me.

Virtually every J-E dictionary I know of makes no distinction between _arare_ [Nelson 5066] and _hyou_ [Nelson 5047], except perhaps to note that the former serves in a number of somewhat metaphorical expressions.

arare: (New Nelson 6546), hy: (New Nelson 6523)

Yet, every haikai/haiku saijiki that I pick up makes clear that these are somewhat different phenomena, over and above the fact that they occur at different times of the year (_arare_ in winter, _hyou_ in summer).

Collating the descriptions in the saijiki with North American weather guides has led me to believe that "hail" is a bad translation of _arare_, which makes much better sense as "graupel" (technical meteorological name) or "snow pellets" (common name). _Hyou_, on the other hand, does seem to pair well with "hail".

Since I have not lived in Japan year-round since the 1960s, and have no access to mainstream Japanese media, I have not been able to note current popular usage. I wonder if any list members can tell me if the distinction between _arare_ and _hyou_ found in modern haiku saijiki (both as to season and nature of phenomena) is maintained in the popular media? (I realize that these are murky waters when dealing with classical texts, as these and other words, such as _mizore_ today relegated to "sleet" or sometimes confusingly used for mixed rain and snow, for example, are often conflated in earlier times.)

Sorry to bother you with a present-day usage question, but any help will be much appreciated.

Bless All,
Bill
------------------------
William J. Higginson
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Santa Fe, NM 87504 USA
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One Yen-worth reply.

[William Higginson wrote:]
Virtually every J-E dictionary I know of makes no distinction between _arare_ [Nelson 5066] and _hyou_ [Nelson 5047], except perhaps to note that the former serves in a number of somewhat metaphorical expressions.

The five-syllable-word -arare- as metaphorical expressions are used in _Manyo^shu^- poems and royal anthologies (since Tenth Chokusenshu^, _Shoku Goesen Wakashu^_ (1251) as one of the favorite topics depicting "sound" that breaks your dream at night, or an uprush of emotion, feelings of a crescendo of heart. From the association of its sound when falling, -arare-utsu- and -arare-furi- are used as "makura kotoba" in Manyo^shu^ poems.

I have, so far, never encountered with one waka (in pre-modern anthologies) that includes -hyou-.

My assumption is that for its size, i.e., _arare_ is about a size of the tip of your small finger, whereas -hyou- is about the size of a golf ball, and consequently the volume of sound each makes is different. If you stay in under the tin roof when -hyou- falls, you will hear timpani concerto. -Hyou- makes bumps on your car, and damages green leafy vegetables and fruits in the garden. Thus, _hyou_ is, I believe, a incongruous topic for haiku or tanka.

Yet, every haikai/haiku saijiki that I pick up > makes clear that these are somewhat different phenomena, over and above the fact that they occur at different times of the year (_arare_ in winter, _hyou_ in summer).

Yes, it is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon: _arare_ in winter and _hyou_ in summer.

Collating the descriptions in the saijiki with North American weather guides has led me to believe that "hail" is a bad translation of _arare_, which makes much better sense as "graupel" (technical meteorological name) or "snow pellets" (common name). _Hyou_, on the other hand, does seem to pair well with "hail".

I would choose "snow pellets" (if I must) for _arare_ and "hail" for _hyou_

Since I have not lived in Japan year-round since the 1960s, and have no access to mainstream Japanese media, I have not been able to note current popular usage. I wonder if any list members can tell me if the distinction between
_arare_ and _hyou_ found in modern haiku saijiki (both as to season and nature of phenomena) is maintained in the popular media? [...] Sorry to bother you with a present-day usage question, but any help will be much appreciated.

Here is a down-to-earth, modern usage of the word _arare_ in Hawaii. People here consider it as an English word. It is a package of
inexpensive snack, crunchy rice-cakes diced in the size of the tip of your small finger. _Arare_, locally made and imported from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, are always available in supermarkets, Seven-11s, and any convenience stores here. Far from a usage of the poetic rhetoric, this is how the word has become commonly used here.

As a non-native, I have to rely on Kenkyu^sha or Sanseido^s J-E dictionaries. But I often feel that English translations in these
dictionaries do not convey the exact meaning of counter English words, but rather straight, 'literal' transliterations. I raised this issue once with the noted scholars/professors over internet.

With Aloha
Rokuo Tanaka

It is a little early to sharpen my ski edges but I found this very popular children's song on the net. If you want the melody please check it out.

<http://www.interq.or.jp/japan/k3j/>

[here given in romanization -->kanji]

Yuki ya konko arare ya konko
futte wa futte wa zunzun tsumoru
yama mo nohara mo watabôshi kaburi
kareki nokorazu hana ga saku

yuki ya konko arare ya konko
futte mo futte mo mada furi-yamanu
inu wa yorobobi niwa kake-mawari
neko wa kotatsu de maruku naru

[From Jinjô shôgaku shôka [Elementary School Song Book], vol. 2, Meiji 44, June
yuki ya konko = yuki yo koi koi]
--
Although Japanese doesn't have as many words for frozen H2O falling from the sky as the Inuit they do distinguish the phenomena. The problem seems that recently the Japanese aren't as acclimatized as they used to be. The song combines yuki and arare together which to a snow lover seems a bit strange in the context of the song itself. As someone already mentioned hyou or hail is usually a non-winter phenomenon and because of its destructive nature is not very poetic. When I first learned this song as a child I thought kon-ko was pronounced kon-kon like my fellow Japanese and that it was the sound of snow. But my good elementary teacher (Nakagawa sensei) told us as it says above that it is the abbreviation of koi-koi (come come/ or better fall fall). The actual onomatopoeia in the zun-zun to express the rate of snow accumulation. yuki usually takes an adjective like wata (cotton) ko (small) or oo(big). But I have problems with the definition in Kenkyusha that renders arare as hail or grauple? How can our canine friends run around the yard if so, or for that matter the mountains and meadows wear white cotton caps and hibernating trees seem to flower. The lyricist either used a different dictionary or went wild with poetic license. Anyway, if one takes the description of my friends in Nagano or some of the other heavy snow countries arare is the very small (smaller than the tip of ones pinky) pellets of snow that have a packed quality. the temperature is not as cold as when the kona yuki (powder) snow and it comes when the humidity is higher. arare will hurt if you look up into the sky but not damage things like hyou does. Has anyone come across any English words that can translate the onomatopoeia shin- shin , as in yuki ga shin shin to furu. Is it gitai or gion go? When I'm in Japanese mode I can hear shin- shin but when in Canada their really is no sound. Maybe Canadians have a hearing problem.

Timothy Kern (Associate Professor)
Office of Research Exchange
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
3-2 Oeyama-cho,Goryo,Nichikyo-ku, Kyoto 610-1192
Japan
URL <http://www.nichibun.ac.jp>

Dear Tim,

Many thanks for your report, and the delightful
song.

As I said earlier, _arare_ as "hail" doesn't work. "Graupel" is the correct phenomenon, in meteorologist-jargon, but "snow pellets" seems to be the most common vernacular term in English.

The song combines yuki and arare together which to a snow lover seems a bit strange in the context of the song itself.

This accords well with haiku saijiki information, and with North American weather manuals. From what the saijiki say, and from my experience here in Santa Fe, arare is easily compressed or smushed into sort of tiny squashed snowballs, and so no problem to skiers, I imagine, though not quite as happy-making as powder.

As someone already mentioned hyou or hail is usually a non-winter phenomenon and because of its destructive nature is not very poetic.

Yes, this was Rokuo Tanaka--in Hawai'i! Thanks to him also for his thoughts on the subject.

When I first learned this song as a child I thought kon-ko was pronounced kon-kon like my fellow Japanese and that it was the sound of snow. But my good elementary teacher (Nakagawa sensei) told us as it says above that it is the abbreviation of koi-koi (come come/ or better fall fall). The actual onomatopoeia in the zun-zun to express the rate of snow accumulation.

Many thanks for the glosses. The song is quite delightful, as you say, and I may pass it along to friends who teach Japanese here to young people. It's really very appropriate to our Santa Fe, NM, winters.

yuki usually takes an adjective like wata (cotton) ko (small) or oo(big). But I have problems with the definition in Kenkyusha that renders arare as hail or grauple?

Meteorologists refer to what the Japanese poets call arare as graupel, which is two things: (1) the "snow pellets" aforementioned, and (2) the seed element in forming hail. As (1), it falls in winter, frequently just at the beginning of a snowstorm. As (2), it goes through several down-up cycles within wet cumulonimbus clouds, gathering more water-turns-to-ice in layers to become hail--larger and more dangerous than (1) and typical of summer, not winter.

In other words, "graupel" as experienced directly in itself is what commoners (should) call "snow pellets" in English, a winter phenomenon. This is arare.

Anyway, if one takes the description of my friends in Nagano or some of the other heavy snow countries arare is the very small (smaller than the tip of ones pinky) pellets of snow that have a packed quality. the temperature is not as cold as when the kona yuki (powder) snow and it comes when the humidity is higher. arare will hurt if you look up into the sky but not damage things like hyou does.

This accords exactly with the saijiki descriptions, in every respect.

Has anyone come across any English words that can translate the onomatopoeia shin- shin , as in yuki ga shin shin to furu. Is it gitai or gion go? When I'm in Japanese mode I can hear shin- shin but when in Canada their really is no sound. Maybe Canadians have a hearing problem.

This is quite interesting. The only resource I have that seems to bear even tangentially on the problem is the Hokuseido *A Practical Guide to Japanese-English Onomatopoeia and Mimesis* (actual English title). They give for just _shin_ "to be utterly quiet, without any sound at all." And for _jin-jin_ they give "a gradual, progressive condition" where the headword _jin_ is "to feel cold, pain, emotion, etc., so strongly as to be numbing." Not much help, though it may suggest that your Canadian experience is not wrong.

Seems to me there's a similar expression to your shin-shin in Russian, "shto-shto" or some such, meaning something like "quietly, quietly"--but that may be an invented memory from 40 years ago.

I'm still kind of wondering about colloquial usage of _arare_ and _hyou_ in Tokyo, Kansai, etc.

Anyway, many thanks for the song, it's a treasure, and for the thoughts on arare in yukiguni, which is precisely where one of my saijiki says it is most common.

Best wishes,
Bill
------------------------
William J. Higginson

Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 10:44:33 -0700
From: William Bodiford
Subject: Re: "shin - shin" (WAS hyou vs.arare)

Hello.
Regarding "shin - shin," Ono Hideichi's *A Practical Guide to Japanese-English Onomatopoeia & Mimesis; Nichi-Ei gion - gitaigo katsuyo jiten (Hokuseido, 1984), p. 156, defines "jin-jin" as "a gradual, progressive condition." He gives the following example:

Hitchcock wa kyakkan o hara hara saseru *jin jin* kuru, thrill to suspense no kyoshou = "Hitchcock keeps the audience in suspense: (he is) a master of *gradually building* thrill and suspense."

............William Bodiford

******At 2001-10-12 , Tim Kern wrote:
Has anyone come across any English words that can translate the onomatopoeia
shin- shin , as in yuki ga shin shin to furu. Is it gitai or gion go? When
I'm in Japanese mode I can hear shin- shin but when in Canada their really
is no sound. Maybe Canadians have a hearing problem.

Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 11:33:32 -0700
From: Stephen D. Miller
Subject: Re: "shin - shin" (WAS hyou vs.arare)

Greetings,
In the most comprehensive giseigo/gitaigo dictionary I've seen yet--"Dictionary of Iconic Expressions" published by Mouton De Gruyter and edited by Hisao Kakehi, Ikuhiro Tamori and Lawrence Schourup [two volumes, 1431 pp.]--there is no listing for "shin shin". There is, however, "shin" which in the form "shin to" and "shin to suru" means "the state of being perfectly quiet and still". "Jin-jin" is given as "the manner in which emotions or physical sensations are strongly felt."
Stephen Miller

Greetings from the Islands of Paradise (-where no snow falls.)

I might have missed some messages from the contributors on the subject,

I have never encountered the usage of "jin-jin" for describing the scene of snow fall.

My assumption is that it comes from a Chinese compound noun "shen shen" (apply kanji for "fukai [deep]) which you can locate Chuang Tzu's article and Du Fu's poetry, describing the sense of "profound and untangible atmosphere" and "profound quietness." Contemporary usage is to express the permeating chill you feel at cold, snowy night". There is no sound of wind outside and a stir of mouse inside your house, and you only have a hand warmer (hibachi) to keep you warm. The snow falls incessantly falls.The night progresses. That is when you would have the sense of "yuki wa (or ga) shin shin to furu. "

With Aloha
Rokuo Tanaka

This isn't "shin - shin," but I found in _Nihon douyou shuu_ (Iwanami Bunko) a song, "Hanako no kuma," by Yosano Akiko, in which the first line goes, "Yuki ga shito - shito futte kita." For "shito - shito," the _Nihon kokugo daijiten_ gives, "Ame nado ga shimeyaka ni furu sama wo arawasu go."

As for "shin - shin," the same "daijiten" gives, "Ame ya yuki nado ga shikiri ni furu sama. Mata Namida ya ase nado ga shikiri ni ochiru sama." In this sense it would seem to translate as "steadily." It does not seem to be "giongo," since tears and perspiration flow silently, but rather "gitaigo."

Lawrence Marceau

"YUKI ga shito shito to furu" - No.
"Yuki ga shin shin to furu" - Yes

"AME ga shin shin to furu" - No.
"AME ga shito shito o furu" - Yes.

I am positive.

Yosano Akiko is noted for her challenge to the established, conventional poetic diction. Her verse in a children's song referred by Prof. Marceau cannot be considered, in my humble opinion,to fall into the category of the standard poetic rhetorics, even for do^yo.

Speaking of Yosano Akiko, I am off this week to the 2001 WCAAS at UM in Missoula to present my paper on a Mid-Tang poetess--Oops--Woman Poet (Why the feminism advocate makes such a pretty word obsolete, beyond my comprehension!) who is famous for her unconventional, boldly sensual poems. I will compare Akiko's equally famous poem -"Yawahada no atsuki chishio
ni.furemosede......" in the Midaregami collection- to this Tang woman poet's work. But that's another issue.

With Aloha
Rokuo Tanaka
___________________________________________________________________

Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 21:37:13 -0600
From: William Higginson
Subject: "Poetess" (was shin-shin)

Dear Rokuo,

Speaking as a male poet married to a female poet, regarding "poetess":

We don't need it, as the word "poet" has no gender in English (compare doctor, teacher, writer,
etc.). And, it is offensive to my ear. At 62, I have no particularly feminist ax to grind (I don't like true believers of whatever stripe too much), but I am particular about language. I class "poetess" and "haikuist" in the same, put-down language dustbin. (Yes, I know about the Asahi column.) And I felt that way about these words before the upsurge of feminism in the 1970s. Technically, there is nothing "wrong" with them, I suppose, but as a careful writer, conscious of their negative effects on my own ear and the ears
of other careful writers I know, I avoid them. Needlessly antagonizing part of the audience does not seem to be part of the job of a writer.

However, as a one-time Methodist, therefore aware of the business of those who are put-down adopting the pejorative term applied to them and turning its meaning around, I can't get too excited about all of this.

So, for what it's worth, I'd say the bottom line here is just that really careful writers avoid such terms.

Bless All,
Bill Higginson

On Sun, 14 Oct 2001, Lawrence Marceau wrote:

> This isn't "shin - shin," but I found in _Nihon douyou shuu_ (Iwanami Bunko) a song,
> "Hanako no kuma," by Yosano Akiko, in which the first line goes, "Yuki ga shito - shito
> futte kita." For "shito - shito," the _Nihon kokugo daijiten_ gives, "Ame nado ga shimeyaka
> ni furu sama wo arawasu go."

Il pleut doucement sur la ville - "Chimata ni wa shimeyaka ni
ame ga furu."
(Charles Rambaud)

Rambaud's one line induced Paul Verlaine his ever popular poem, especially in Japan, entitled "Il pleut dans mon coeur":

Il pleut dans mon coeur Chimata* ni ame no furu gotoku
Comme il pleut sur la ville, Waga kokoro nimo ame** zo furu
Quelle est cette langueur Kokoro no soko ni nijimi iru
Qui penetre mon coeur? Kono wabishisa wa nan naramu.

Japanese translation is by Ueda Bin from my memory. Suzuki Shintaro^ translates * miyako ni, **namida furu.

Japanese audiences, even rank and file, owe the above poem along with another poem "Chanson d'Automne" to Ueda Bin's meiyaku,his excellent translations into Japanese.

"Shimeyaka ni" cannot be replaced with "shin shin" for Rambaud's one line--Il pleut DOUCEMENT sur la ville. Don't you agree?

With Aloha
Rokuo Tanaka

Dear Professor Higginson:

You have challenged the editors--David Dilworth, J. Thomas Rimer--, and the contributors-- Richard Bowring, Darcy Murray, Edmund R. Skrzypszak, and William R. Wilson-- in _The Incident at Sakai and other stories Volume I: Of the Historical Literature of Mori O^gai_ (University Press of Hawaii, 1977) in which I remember clearly that I have come across "poetess, and told myself "Well, it has a far better sound than a 'woman poet' (for that matter a 'female poet' sounds to my ear like a biological term).

By the way, I have left four volumes of _Saijiki_ (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) at home in Japan, I cannot see myself any examples on the topic of "hyou" in haiku. So I cannot stand correction yet.

Sincerely and with Aloha
Rokuo Tanaka

Do we really have to have arguments like this on this list? I agree that words matter, but perhaps we should limit at length discussions of the "correctness" of an English term on this list only if it refers to a cultural phenomenon specific to Japan.

Rein Raud