I tried to find a picture of kabuki, but unfortunately I don't have it. This is the closest thing to kabuki that I ever took picture of, therefore I use this instead...
Picture upload by Picasa
Last week there was a thesis defense for doctor candidates in my department and, as usual, it was followed by party in the evening. I won’t tell how it all began (since it’ll claim too much space here), but after some chat, Carmela, UNESCO fellow who currently stay in our lab, said to Saito (Saito belongs to another lab) that she was lucky to had landed in a lab with handsome members like ours (ahem... :-) ). This reminded me to one of my earliest question for Japanese (and I almost always forget to ask about it): Why there’s no native word for handsome in Japanese (they use ハンサム, hansamu, which was adapted from English word handsome), while there’s a native word for beautiful (綺麗, kirei). And as you might well guess it, I wasted no time to ask about it.
To my surprise, all Japanese that surrounded me that night said that there’s indeed a native word for handsome. The problem is that just I never heard about it before. The word with the closest meaning to handsome that I often hear is 格好いい(kakkou ii), which more or less means cool (I hear this word a lot because a lot of people say that I’m kakkou ii :-). And before you send me any objection mail, there’re indeed some people who say that I’m kakkou ii, and most of them are kids :-). Anyway, you know that kids are still pure and won’t tell a lie... :-). Well, to this point I think I have made most of you throw up so I better carry on with the story...). Back to the main topic, the word that they meant was nimaime (二枚目). I rushed for my dictionary after I hear the word, since I get an impression that my ears played trick on me. Nimaime literally means ‘the second sheet’, and even with my absurdly entangled way of thinking I couldn’t see any connection between handsomeness and sheet. Konishi and Makii was about to tell me why, when Kim-san came and they let him explained.
Well, the word originated from practice in kabuki (歌舞伎: Japanese traditional theatrical drama). In the poster for the show, the first picture of the players would display the face of the leading role. For the second picture - I think it was in order to attract some visitors who would come for pretty faces - the picture of the most handsome player in the group will be displayed (here where the term nimaime come from). And if we go to the next picture, we’ll find the most entertaining player in the group.
Just to make sure, we (we?), search the dictionary for the first sheet (一枚目, ichimaime) and the third sheet (三枚目, sanmaime) terms. There was no word for ichimaime, but the entry for sanmaime tells that it stand for the word comedian or clown in English, which fits with the explanation of the word origin above.
By the way, quiz time: if you happen to be in the kabuki group, would you prefer to have your face in the first, second, or third sheet?
Post Comment
Post a Comment