So I'm herp derping my way through Nihongo gogengaku no hōhō 日本語語源学の方法 ("Methods of Japanese etymology") by Yoshida Kanehiko 吉田金彦 when, in a list of verbs derived from words signifying emotional or subjective conditions (情態言を語基とするもの), I come across this:

Given the kanji, 喘, I deduce that the word must be a non-voiced antecedent to the modern aegu, i.e. aheku. What I don't know is why the /he/ is being represented by that hentaigana (a cursive version of 遍) instead of the katakana ヘ or hiragana へ.

Then I realize that I don't know why Yoshida is using both hiragana and katakana in his charts in the first place. (It's not key to his argument, and I'm skimming.) So I flick back a few pages and learn that he is using hiragana for type B (乙) vowels and katana for type A (甲) vowels and vowels with no (known) A/B distinction.

Now, the /e/ in aegu was originally type B, as any fule kno. So the hentaigana represents hiragana. And when a type A /he/ appears in the charts, it is represented by what I take to be the katakana: ヘ. I can't find any other examples of type B /he/, but since Yoshida doesn't have anything in particular to say about /aheku/ in his commentary, I suppose that he is using the hentaigana because the hiragana is almost identical to the katakana and he wants the difference to be noticeable.

And Yoshida got an editor and typesetter to sign off on this in 1976, too. That strikes me as impressive — or was/is it a standard academic practice?

Today is the 98th anniversary of Tokugawa Yoshinobu 徳川慶喜's death. Yoshinobu was the last ruler of the Edo shogunate, but managed to avoid being assassinated or executed, moved to Shizuoka, and enjoyed a long and uneventful retirement.

Well, I say "Yoshinobu"... actually, the issue of his name is not so clear. Japanese Wikipedia sez:

「慶喜」は、「よしのぶ 」あるいは通称として「けいき 」（有職読み）とも読む。将軍在職中、江戸幕府の公式な文書等には「よしひさ 」と読んだとの記録が残っている。本人によるアルファベット署名や英字新聞に「Yoshihisa 」の表記も残る。 ... 出身地である水戸では「よしのぶ」と呼ばれる事が多いが、余生を送った静岡では「けいき」と呼ばれる事が多い。

生前の慶喜を知る人によると、慶喜本人は「けいき様」と呼ばれるのを好んだらしく、弟・徳川昭武に当てた電報にも自分のことを「けいき」と名乗っている。慶喜の後を継いだ七男・慶久も慶喜と同様に周囲の人々から「けいきゅう様」と呼ばれていたといわれる。「けいき様」と「けいきさん」の2つの呼び方が確認でき、現代においても少なくなりつつあると思われるが「けいきさん」の呼び方が静岡に限らず各地で確認できる。司馬遼太郎は「『けいき』と呼ぶ人は旧幕臣関係者の家系に多い」とするが、倒幕に動いた肥後藩関係者でも使用が確認できる。

"慶喜" was read both "Yoshinobu" and, alternatively [as a tsūshō 通称] "Keiki" (this being the yūsoku yomi 有職読み). Some records indicate that while 慶喜 was shōgun, his name was read "Yoshihisa" in shogunate documents. The romanization "Yoshihisa" also appears in English newspapers and in 慶喜's own signature. ... in Mito, where he was born, he is usually referred to as "Yoshinobu," but in Shizuoka where he spent his retirement, "Keiki" is more frequently used.

According to those who knew 慶喜 while he was alive, he himself preferred to be called "Keiki-sama," and in telegrams to his younger brother Tokugawa Akitake identified himself as "Keiki." Similarly, 慶喜's heir and seventh son, Yoshihisa [慶久 — different second character], is said to have been called "Keikyū-sama" by those around him. "Keiki-san" and "Keiki-sama" are both attested, and although contemporary usage is waning, "Keiki-san" is attested not only in Shizuoka but in a range of locations. [Author of carefully-researched historical fiction] Shiba Ryōtarō 司馬遼太郎 says that "Most of those who call him 'Keiki' are from families connected with the former shogunate," but the usage is also attested among those connected with the Higo Domain, who worked to topple the shogunate.

Like I said: legalistic system. You can't argue from first principles. All you can do is cite precedent and hope for the best.

Allow me to present the Two Things about Japanese orthography:

1. Learn katakana first, so you can read menus.
2. Kanji are more like law than math: there are general tendencies and basic principles, but no absolute rules, and precedent is more important than logic. Plus, every few centuries there's a reform intended to simplify the system which actually just adds another layer of complexity to it.

I'm finally reading the Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters (四十二章經), which I had not noticed in my local library before now because they inexplicably file it with the books on traditional Japanese theater.

Actually, I do have a possible explanation: they have the 1994 reprint of the 1936 Iwanami Bunko version, edited by Tokunō Fumi 得能文 (1866-1945). Note the 能 in the name; it's the same character as the one used to write "Noh," as in the theatrical tradition.

Anyway, as Wikipedia explains in uncharacteristically entertaining fashion, S42C (in theaters this summer) has in Northeast Asia at least traditionally been considered a highly significant document of early Buddhist thought, "[b]ut maybe it is only a Chinese Buddhist text, disguised as Indian and souped-up by Zen masters." Oh, those scoff-Law, hot-rodding Zen masters! It's a mostly straightforward text full of great metaphors, like this one:

佛言。財色於人。人之不捨。譬如刀刄有蜜。不足一餮之美。小児舐之。即有割舌之患。

The Buddha said, "So, sex and money. Folks will not let them go. Shit is like a knife with honey on it. It wouldn't even be a satisfying meal, but a kid will still get his tongue cut up trying to lick it off."

Some of the stuff in here is positively Borscht Belt:

佛言。人繫於妻子舎宅。甚於牢獄。牢獄有散釋之期。

The Buddha said, "Getting tied down to a wife and kids and home, it's worse than being in prison. At least when you're in prison they let you out one day."

Unfortunately, being Buddha, he good not in good conscience urge his readers to "try the veal," and announcing that he would be there all week would undermine his message of impermanence.

Speaking of which, some of those chapters are just crying out for a good, egregiously free-wheeling hypermodernization.

佛言。觀天地。念非常。觀世界。念非常。觀靈覺。即菩提。如是知識。得道疾矣。

Buddha said, "Contemplate heaven and earth. Be mindful of impermanence. Look down. Back up. You are now contemplating the world, mindful of impermanence. Now contemplate spiritual awakening. What's that in your self? Back at me, I have it — it's Bodhisattva-nature. Look again — it is now wisdom. I'm on the Way."

Anything is possible when your man has vowed to liberate all sentient beings.

Two senryū from Kikkawa Eishi 吉川英史's "Kyōhō—Tenmei-ki no Edo no ongakukai" (享保ー天明期の江戸の音楽界, "The Edo musical scene from Kyōhō to Tenmei [1716—1789]) collected in Hōgaku (ed. Yamakawa Naoharu 山川直治):

大薩摩　喧嘩に節を　付けたよう
Ōzatsuma/ kenka ni fushi o/ tsuketa yō
Ōzatsuma/ Like setting a fight/ to music

メリヤスは　女の愚痴に　節をつけ
Meriyasu wa/ onna no guchi ni/ fushi o tsuke
Meriyasu/ like a woman's complaining/ set to music

"Meriyasu" refers to shamisen music which can be stretched out or run through quickly to fit the necessities of iiia given scene. The point that Kikkawa seeks to make with these two points is that even at the time the scene-stealing Ōzatsuma was perceived as tough and manly while meriyasu, well, wasn't. (Personally I imagine all those Edo hobbyists carefully plucking through their meriyasu homework.)

In China there is an instrument called a yángqín, now written 揚琴, that is "exalted zither." It sounds like this.

The word "yángqín" was, by all accounts, originally written 洋琴: "foreign [particularly, Western] zither." This is assumed to denote its origins in the barbarian wilds. Wikipedia offers a number of possible precursors and routes of ingress, from Iranian santurs hauled up the Silk Road to Portuguese salterios shipped into China's port cities only a few hundred years ago. (And, of course, the inevitable theories of intrasinitic origin, although I see no real reason to believe these.)

Since then, the name changes that the yángqín has gone through are a bit complicated. Wikipedia claims that the characters used to write "yángqín" were only changed to 揚琴 in 1910, but offers no source for this assertion, and I happen to know that:

1. The word 楊琴 ("willow zither": same pronunciation, different first character) was used in Japan in the 1800s (and possibly earlier) to refer to a kind of Chinese zither used by certain street musicians (not the yángqín being discussed here)
2. Assuming that the original was 洋琴, 楊琴 and 揚琴 are exactly the sort of variant, sound-derived orthographies that would get confused in the days before spellcheck.

The most likely-seeming sequence of events that I can reconstruct is that the original name, 洋琴, was corrupted based on sound and folk etymology into first one and then the other of 楊琴 and 揚琴, resulting in a situation where all three coexisted (and were applied to a variety of more or less related instruments) until whatever defining event in 1910 Wikipedia is referring to.

Meanwhile, in Japan, there are still some sources and institutions in Japan who prefer 洋琴　for the yángqín — the Kōjien dictionary, for example — but in general the characters 洋琴 are deprecated for the yángqín. They have been commandeered for the piano instead, you see. (Or, more rarely, the pipe organ, although 風琴, literally "wind zither," is more common in that case.)

Most of the instances of "洋琴" on Aozora Bunko are piano or organ references:

• ある秋仏蘭西（フランス）から来た年若い洋琴家（ピアニスト）が = "One autumn, a young pianist from France..." (Kajii Motojirō 梶井基次郎, "Kigakuteki genkaku" 器楽的幻覚, "An instrumental vision")
• ああ、こんなじゃ洋琴（オルガン）も役に立たない = "Ugh, at this rate even an organ wouldn't do any good" (Izumi Kyōka 泉鏡花, "Chikai no maki" 誓之巻, "Scroll of vows")
• 円い磨硝子（すりがらす）の笠をかけた朦朧（もうろう）たるランプの火影に、十九歳のロザリンが洋琴（ピアノ）を弾きながら低唱したあのロマンス = "The romance of nineteen-year-old Rosalyn in the dim light of the lamp with its ground-glass lampshade, singing softly as she played the piano" (Nagai Kafū 永井荷風, "Kaiyō no tabi" 海洋の旅, "A voyage by sea")

(Note too that these are written 洋琴, but with instructions to pronounce them piano or orugan rather than yōkin, the Japanese version of yángqín. The good old days.)

Poor old yángqín. One century it's so Western it gets called the "Western zither"; the next century it's not even Western enough to deserve the name.

The excellent Chrontendo, episode 2, on Devil World:

Also, the crosses have another use: you can breathe fire while holding one. This turns enemies into what appear to be a fried egg — or maybe a fried eyeball — which you then eat. Yeah, I said the game was kind of odd.

I can explain this.

The inhabitants of Devil World tend to rock the one-big-eye look. You can see a couple in the bottom left and right corners of the image above. Meanwhile, in Japanese, fried eggs are called medama-yaki — "cooked eyeballs." (All right, fine: "fried eyeballs".) An eyeball-monster turning into a fried egg is not just a semi-surreal visual gag, but rather a pun that relies on the audience knowing the Japanese words for what they are seeing. Which, since the game was never released internationally, actually worked out fine.

I can also explain why Pac-Man is called Pac-Man instead of Puck-Man, even though it derives from pakupaku (mouth flapping open and closed), which, confusingly, is closer to "puck puck" than "pack pack" in standard US English: because someone at Namco had the foresight to realize that a P can easily become an F if a sufficiently creative vandal is around.

Also, while we're at it, let's get this on the record: Pac-Man has nothing at all to do with any "Japanese folk hero [named] 'Paku' who was known for his appetite," as Wikipedia claims. No such folk hero exists. The closest thing in Japanese mythology would be the "Baku," as in tapir, a dream-eating monster from the mainland. So why not just edit Wikipedia? Because they seem to have a citation for this Paku thing, I have no citation for my position (Japanese folklorists generally preferring to catalogue beliefs and practices that do exist), and I don't feel like arguing with Wikipedia editors about Pac-Man.

One more thing: The title of Clu clu land is definitely about the "spinning" meaning of kurukuru, and nothing at all to do with the brain disease Kuru.

When the Japanese delegation appears in The Difference Engine, it's not really a surprise. (Oh yeah, I'm going to assume that anyone who wants to read it already has — consider this a spoiler warning.) It's not a surprise, but it is a bit disappointing that Gibson and Sterling couldn't think of anything more interesting for them to do than "study the technologically advanced West, just like in our timeline." This is only partially made up for by the sly joke of having one of them deliver the final, killing blow in the story proper.

One thing about the Japanese delegation, though — they speak very good English. Apart from the obligatory r/l thing, their English is as regular and fluent as, say, Rorschach's. Large vocabulary, good grasp of clause structure, tense, and aspect, but a general absence of articles and tendency to pro-drop.

Mori smiled, pleased. "Odious custom of rude and savage age. This is good to be rid of, Oriphant-san. This is modern day."

Even this, though, is more disfluency than you typically see in records of Japanese English in documents and fiction from and about that time. I don't know if this is just confirmation bias, but my impression is that characters (fictional or otherwise) are assigned either over-the-top pidgin or Churchillian oratory, with very few examples in between. I suppose a lot of this is editorial assistance, at both the primary and secondary source, but still, it's a notable absence.

Anyway, this is my roundabout way of introducing this letter I found in Miyanaga Takashi 宮永孝's Bakumatsu ken'ō shisetsu dan 幕末遣欧使節団 ("The Bakumatsu Embassy to Europe"), from Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉 (for it is he) to Léon de Rosny. Sic! throughout:

20. Oct. 1862 Lissabon

Dear friend 羅尼江

How was my gladness, when we arrived at Lissabon. I have received at first the letter from my best Europesh friend M. Leon de Rosny. I am very much obliged for your kindness and I see you are not only the good friend of me but an hearty lover of Japan. I wish and can assure you will keep always the same feelings.

The interesting news from Japan stated in your letter I have read withe much thanks for your troubles, now I wish you will be so kind in the future also to translate with the English language and send them to me, because, you know, I am not able yet to read the Franch and in Japan none understands it very well, thouhg there are any pupils of the Franch language. I know it will makes you much trouble some but this trouble someness would not last so long, because I am now beginning to learn the Franch and after some times I will be able to read it myself.

We have had very bad wether during the voyage from Roc efo rtf to Lissabon where we have arrived at 16th of Oct. Now we have finished all our business and will leave here 24th or 25th of said month. Farewell my best friend! I will never forget you in all my life. I have the honour to be

   your upright friend

      Foucousawa Youkichy

         福沢諭吉

Dr Mitskuri, Matsky, etc, etc, etc, send their best compliments to you.

十八六二年十月二十日　リスボンにて

親愛なる羅尼君へ

Miyanagi observes that proper nouns "Europesh," "Franch," and "Lissabon" probably slipped in to Fukuzawa's English from Dutch. Also on the continental tip, observe that Fukuzawa uses a French romanization of his name — makes sense, given who he's writing to. (Nation-specific romanizations of names in this period, before Hepburn became so universal, are an intriguing topic all on their own.)

I was particularly struck by Fukuzawa's "there are any pupils of the French language" (non-grammatical irregularities corrected). I have met several adults in Japan who used forms like this, despite being very fluent and confident in their English. Logically, it makes sense: if the negative answer to "Are there any pupils of the French language in Japan" is "There are not any pupils...", then the positive answer should be the same minus the "not", right? "There are any pupils of the French language in Japan." It's not immediately obvious that "any" can't be used in the positive version of the statement. (Related: "I have ever been to France" as the opposite of "I have never been to France.")

Also note that Fukuzawa tends to use the perfect where he wants the simple past ("I have received at first the letter," "we have arrived at 16th of Oct"), and generally exhibits wide knowledge but shaky analysis of how certain corners of the English language work ("trouble someness", "after some times"). Seeing this sort of thing in print comforts me because, of course, I am prone to similar errors in Japanese.

Miyanaga's book also includes a letter to de Rosny from Terashima (then Matsuki) Munenori, which I won't quote in full but which does contain a memorable description of their passage to Lisbon: "we ware moved day & night like a pendulum & I saw nobody which was not seasick."