Let us turn our eerie multifaceted gaze to matters of the lexicon, good friends. Exhibit 0: the January 2008 issue of Very.

As far as I can ascertain, Very is a magazine for ex-flight attendants now married to staggeringly wealthy salarymen who mostly just throw sacks of yen in through the front door while their wives raise the kids and work part-time from home in creative fields.

(Further, more serious discussion in ISHIZAKI Yūko (石崎裕子)'s paper, 『女性雑誌「VERY」にみる幸福な専業主婦像』 (Google cache), Images of the happy homemaker in the women's magazine "Very". Abstract: What I said in the paragraph above, plus the unsurprising data point that many people find the idea of not working full-time quite attractive.)

Very's top headline this month is:

妻、母、嫁、女。“役者„な私の最強着まわし服

Wife, mother, yome, woman. Maximally versatile clothing for "actor me".

The gist is clear, but what's with that one word I left untranslated? That's the interesting part.*

The most common English translations of yome are "wife" and "bride". But it doesn't seem to mean that here. "Wife" is already listed, and it seems very unlikely that even the most ingenious winter coat could double as bridal wear. Clearly, we have to think laterally.

Give up? Try "daughter-in-law". And indeed, inside the magazine we find instructions on how to dress when visiting your husband's parents for new year's. (Summary: Conservatively.)

"Daughter-in-law" isn't a great translation of yome either. When little girls brainwashed by teh patriarchy draw a picture of themselves wearing a gigantic white gown and say they want to be an o-yome-san when they grow up, they ain't longing for a mother-in-law. (They mostly just want the dress.)

It would bring us cloesr to the truth to say that both words mean "wife", but tsuma (妻, the word I translated as "wife" above) means "wife as half of a married couple" while yome means "wife as entrant to a family", thus covering both the "daughter-in-law" and "bride at the ceremony" angles.

(Two asides for specificity:

1. At one point yome did mean, specifically and apparently exclusively, "daughter wife of one's son", but usage has broadened in the centuries since then. While we're at it, let's note that tsuma used to be non-gender-specific, i.e. it meant "spouse".
2. These evolving usage patterns ensure that you should be able to find exceptions to the general definitions above without too much difficulty and no warranty express or implied etc.)

I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and his comment was: "I'm more curious about who gets to see the 'woman' side, if not the same man who sees the 'wife'." Yah, good point. The official Very answer is "female friends". Very only grudgingly recognizes the existence of husbands, let alone other men. This is not an oddity of Very's, I think, as much as it is a reflection of the tendency towards (self-)segregation by gender which is still an important influence on social behavior in Japan.

Note also, by the way, that "daughter" is not a role that the women of Very play. Tactful acknowledgment of the fact that when Japanese women go visit their own parents they generally change into an old tracksuit and let it all hang out, or reinforcement of the old tradition in which women are no longer considered members of their birth family if they join a different one through marriage?

And on that note, merry Christmas and happy holidays.