Iwa ni Hana

A few months ago, I was scouted by a talent agency. It was during lunchtime in the office district. I went out to buy lunch and put on my MP3 player to listen to some language learning podcast as usual. Suddenly a man who looked as though he had already followed me for some distance touched me in the shoulder (because I did not hear not him) and introduced himself as a talent manager. After apologizing profusely, he gave me his business card and asked for my number. At first I thought this might be some sort of scam but he seemed to say nothing too exceedingly flattering about me (as I would expect from a scam). I gave him my business card.

Wabi Sabi (the writer of this blog) was recently scouted by a talent agency.

He called several times afterwards to persuade me to take comp photos and sign up for a contract with his agency. After thinking about the consequences this may bring, I turned it down - mainly because of all the conflicts I can foresee with my existing career, but more importantly I think I have never been blessed with what the Chinese call tao hua yun [桃花運] to be successful in the entertainment industry.

Tao hua means “peach blossom” and yun means “luck”. On a mild scale, people with tao hua yun are well-liked wherever they go, especially by the opposite sex. This is quite irrespective of how good or bad they are or how they treat others. On the extreme end, people with tao hua yun are like sex magnets. A man who is well-endowed tao hua yun would inspire women to want to have his babies or something from the first moment they see him. Chinese astrologers traditionally see tao hua yun as a negative quality because of all the irrational impulses it might bring to disturb society’s order, but in modern times they seem to have come to regard this as a positive quality for popstars, musicians and the like to have, because tao hua yun may be a contributing factor to gaining adoring fans. On a tangential note, tao hua jie [桃花劫] describes the sort of love that leaves you ruined, typically in being fleeced of your life’s savings or being left with mountain of debts. I believe the English word “lovefraud” which I saw coined here would be a close equivalent.

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I have always thought that the word 苦笑 [kushou] means (by dictionary definition and popular usage):

To smile at something that is bitter to you and look bitter while you smile.

But after watching a dozen films by Ozu Yasujiro (not all in one go but stretched over the space of several years), I am beginning to think that there is another level of kushou. A more subtle kind perhaps. It is namely:

To smile at something that is bitter to you and not look bitter while you smile.

For some reason, I have only spotted that smile in Japanese films so far. You will know that smile instinctively once you have watched enough of them (whether they are directed by Ozu or not, for his influence is lasting and widespread). It is the Kodak smile that you usually only see in advertisements of toothpaste, shampoo, cosmetics or the like. If a shot of the smile were taken out of the context of the film, you might even be fooled into thinking that the smile was induced by joy. But that smile always appears in some tragic context.

The first time I saw it was in Tokyo Monogatari (1953). It was a scene where an old couple visits their daughter-in-law, Noriko. Their son had died some eight years ago and Noriko, by her own choice, never remarried. She keeps to her own way in a rather depressing flat and has a clerical job to support herself. Her in-laws say to her, “The world is full of not very nice things, is it not?” And she smiles and nods. That is the Kodak smile that I speak of. It struck me that although they are talking about how the world is not a very nice place, her smile seems to say otherwise, as though the world is not just a not very nice place after all and there is more to the world than just being not a very nice place, and what that “something more” may be is unspoken and can only be guessed at from her smile.

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There is a word that I always encourage people who are studying Chinese and Japanese to ask every native speaker they come across for a definition in his or her own words, and that word is 縁. 縁 is pronounced as yuan in Chinese and en or enishi in Japanese (for the purpose of this post I will refer to it as en since I will be mostly making references to Japanese works). Chances are, you will find that the individual you ask will often turn out to have his or her own definition ready at hand that go beyond the usual definitions found in dictionaries.

The short version of my own definition would be “meaningful chance,” whereas the long version would be:

Meaningful chance that tracks you down with military precision like a missile, across vast expanse of time and infinite space, in order to throw you into the ambit of a specific person or a thing, whom or which you may be either meeting for the first time, or meeting again against all odds, in order to facilitate a result that may or may not come about.

En is different from “fate” - which is known as 命運 [ming yun] in Chinese and 運命[unmei] in Japanese. Fate happens for a certainty. En is less decisive - it is only a precondition (or a set of preconditions) that has the potential to facilitate a certain result.

Note also that I say meaningful chance - it is not random chance for no discernible purpose. When people talk about en, it is always implied that there is some deeper purpose or meaning. What comes to you by virtue of en is always something that leaves a footprint in your life.

Perhaps I should illustrate this with more examples:

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Spatial and Temporal Space

In English, the phrase ‘time and space’ goes together. In Japanese, one word encompasses both the meaning of spatial space (ie. the distance between point A and B) and temporal space (ie. the duration between two points in time). That word is 間 [ma].

But ma also has secondary meaning, and it is ‘luck’. If you want to say that so-and-so is a lucky person, you can either use 運がいい [un ga ii] or 間がいい [ma ga ii]. (運 [Un] is the more frequently used word for ‘luck’.) Likewise, if you want to say that so-and-so is an unlucky person, you can use either 運が悪い [un ga warui] or 間が悪い [ma ga warui].

In other words, you may think of the relationship between un and ma as this: Luck is really about having the right amount of time and space in between.

When I first observed this relationship between un and ma many years ago when I was just beginning to learn Japanese, I was reminded of how the Chinese astrological concepts of 旺 [wang] and 煞 [sha] essentially echo the same idea:

A Chinese astrologer may tell you that a certain person/object ‘wang’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you good luck in your life. But I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object is in the right slot in your life, then he/she/it will attract the other right pieces to fill in the remaining slots. In other words, your life will be enriched because all the pieces make room for each other and together they all fit.

A Chinese astrologer may also tell you that a certain person/object ’sha’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you misfortune in your life. Similarly, I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object occupies a place in your life, then you can be sure that i) all the other pieces in your other slots will have be pushed out just to accommodate this person/object, or ii) that person/object repels the other pieces in your life from coming to you at all, or iii) the other pieces in your life will fall apart even if they do come to you. Chinese astrology sees this as a misfortune, because your life becomes poorer than what it could have been.

This approach is somewhat in reverse to the western astrology (or at least what I have seen of it), which sees a person’s life as separate domains of love, career, family etc that do not overflow to each other; Chinese astrology sees a human being’s life as one integrated whole. Read the rest of this entry »