Here's something I discovered while Wikipeding my way out from Rosh Hashanah: the Japanese word for "Sabbath", 安息日, has not one, not two, but three pronunciations.

1. ansokubi
2. ansokujitsu
3. ansokunichi

You can see that they all pronounce 安息, the first two characters, ansoku: this means "rest" and is an independent word of its own. The difference lies in the pronunciation of the final character 日, "day". Wikipedia sez:

キリスト教関係者の間でも読み方が分かれているが、NHKでは「あんそくび」と読んでいる。

「文語訳聖書」、「口語訳聖書」、「新改訳聖書」では「あんそくにち」、「フランシスコ会訳聖書」では「あんそくじつ」、「新共同訳聖書」では「あんそくび」と振り仮名が振られている。

Even the Christian community is divided on the issue of pronunciation, but NHK pronounce it ansokubi.

In the Bungo yaku seisho 文語訳聖書 ["Literary-Tranlation Bible"], the Kōgo yaku seisho 口語訳聖書 ["Colloquial-Translation Bible"], and the Shinkai yaku seisho 新改訳聖書 ["Revised-Translation Bible"], it has the furigana ansokunichi; in the Furanshisuko-kai yaku seisho フランシスコ会訳聖書 ["Franciscan-Translation Bible"] it is ansokujitsu; and in the Shin kyōdō yaku seisho 新共同訳聖書 ["New Interconfessional Translation Bible"] it is ansokubi.

No doubt there is a lot of history going on there, but NHK have explained the reasoning behind their choice:

日本語では漢字2字のことばに「日」がつく名詞は、［～ビ］と発音することが多いので、一般向けの放送では［アンソクビ］と読んでいます。

＜例＞記念日　給料日　参観日　誕生日　定休日　旅行日　休刊日

In Japanese, when "日" comes after a two-kanji word it is usually pronounced -bi, and so we use ansokubi in broadcasts.

Examples: 記念日 kinenbi [anniversary], 給料日 kyūryōbi [payday], 参観日 sankanbi [visitation day, e.g. day when parents can go and watch their children's classes at school], tanjōbi [birthday] teikyūbi [regular holiday, e.g. of a store closed every Sunday], 旅行日 ryokōbi [day of travel], 休刊日 kyūkanbi [day of suspended publication, e.g. a planned day off for a newspaper]

Makes sense! There are exceptions that use nichi or jitsu instead, like jokeinichi 除刑日 ("day of suspended punishment", day during the Edo period when no punishments were carried out due to holidays or other calendrical events) and taisaijitsu 大祭日 (the year's biggest festival day at a given shrine) — but most of them are either directly related to the (continental) lunar calendar or Buddhism. I think it's fair to say that (a) commonly used and (b) culturally post-Meiji terms tend to end in -bi instead.

Incidentally, back during Christianity's first pass at Japan, the word for "Sabbath" was domingo (from the Portuguese for "Sunday"), and I believe that 主の日 ("Lord's day") has seen some use too.

Another musical joke from Zokudan kotoshi-banashi:

「三味線は猫の皮だから、膝の上にのるは聞へたが、鼓は何の皮だナ」
「アリャ猿の皮だから肩に乗のサ」
「ムウそんなら大鼓は」
「あれか、ア丶待てよ、あれは脇の下へはさむナ、鯛の皮だろう」

"I heard that shamisen are covered in cat skin, and that's why it sits on your knee, but what kind of skin do they use on tsuzumi?"
"Monkey skin. That's why it sits on your shoulder."
"Hmm... so what about the ōtsuzumi?"
"The ōtsuzumi? Wait, that goes under your arm, right? Must be sea-bream skin."

Since the Okinawan sanshin (ancestor of the shamisen) was covered in snakeskin, I suppose the traditional way of holding it was to stand on one leg, up on a chair, and throw the instrument as far away from you as possible while screaming.

Note that the above contains another non-translation trick: literal translation + hyperlink. The punchline is completely opaque unless you are familiar with the Seven Gods of Fortune and/or pay unusually close attention to beer cans, and rather than elucidate or adapt it I am simply providing the tools for you to research the details yourself. In this form, it's not so much a joke as a joke kit.

A joke from Zokudan kotoshi-banashi 俗談今歳花時 ("A bouquet of tales fresh from the streets", maybe):

「折角おまねき申ても、あんまり何にも御あいそもなひ事、しかし一ッの御馳走は、私女房が曲屁を少々ひりますから」
客「コレハ一段の御馳走忝、然ば一曲」
女房「スッ、ポン」
客「コレハ何でござりまするな」
女房「あれは後藤目貫の鉄砲の段」
客「ハ丶アコレハとんだ当り/\」
女房「次は忠臣蔵の九段目」
尺八の音
「ブウブウ」
客、あまりくさく
「御無用」

"We're so glad you could come, but we don't have much to offer — just one thing; my wife plays wind a little."
GUEST "Well, what a treat! May I request an air?"
WIFE: (Sup-pon)
GUEST: "My, and what was that?"
WIFE: "That was Gotō Matabei firing the cannon in Ōmi Genji."
GUEST: "Ha, ha! A very palpable hit!"
WIFE: "Now here's the ninth act of the Chūshingura, where Kakogawa Honzō appears disguised as a komusō."
SOUND OF SHAKUHACHI
(Poot-poot)
GUEST, UNABLE TO ENDURE SMELL: "I gave at the office!"

The punchline doesn't work very well in translation, so let me explain it (because that always helps). Komusō were shakuhachi-playing monks who lived on alms. Their usual begging technique was to stand at the front gate of a likely-looking residence and play until someone came out and coughed up. Go-muyō 御無用 was the set phrase for declining to give the komusō anything. It means, more or less, "You don't have to be so kind as to play that shakuhachi for us." (Regular beggars just got tōrasshai, "Move along, please.")

So the joke here is that the guest is responding to the wife's odorous person-impersonating-a-komusō impression by using the phrase you would normally employ to get a komusō to go away. My problem as a translator here was finding a natural way to render this concept in English. "Not today, thanks" or similar seemed too general: you need something specifically directed at beggars, or at least buskers.

Ultimately, I failed to think of something good before my allotted blogging time ran out, and so I played it for anachronistic laughs instead — the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Courtesy of Mulboyne, a story at Asahi.com entitled ""Samu!", "Sugo!" spread rapidly in recent years: Japanese usage opinion poll (「寒っ」「すごっ」数年で急速に広がる　国語世論調査). (Similar article at Mainichi.) Seems that the 2010 Agency for Cultural Affairs opinion poll on Japanese usage found rapidly increasing acceptance of adjectives used in stem-only form (or rather, stem + /Q/, like samu! rather than samui, mijika! rather than mijikai.

The interesting thing is that different words are accepted at different rates. 85% of people either use samu! or are not bothered when others do, and this is what you'd expect since it's been appearing in books for more than a century; sugo! and urusa! and so on have lower acceptance rates, and I suppose the implication is that this is because they didn't appear in Edo literature (or didn't appear as often, or whatever). The logical conclusion is that stemifying adjectives is currently a relatively limited process but is gradually becoming productive for more and more people. (I am one of the relatively youthful offenders who sees nothing wrong with this pattern at all.)

Also uncovered in the survey:

• About half of Japanese people were not aware that endangered languages/dialects could be found in Japan (which is kind of baffling); having been made aware of this fact, 49.6% of those surveyed agreed that measures should be taken to prevent their disappearance, 17.8% thought it couldn't be helped and nothing should be done, while 29.5% declined to decide either way.
• 31.9% of respondents think that official government documents should use the Japanese-style comma "、" even in horizontally written text, while 30.0% are OK with using the "," (which is the current official style).
• 23.3% of respondents do not think it a good thing that English is a global lingua franca, but don't see what is to be done about it.
• When speaking to recently arrived non-Japanese folk, 61.2% of respondents try to speak slowly; 57.8% choose easy words; and 48.8% use gestures and diagrams. 6.8% mix in words from their interlocutor's native language. Only 3.1% speak exactly as they usually would.
• Fully three quarters of respondents feel that romanization should represent the difference between long and short vowels (so that, for example, 大野 and 小野 don't both end up as "Ono"). This is up from 70.8% ten years ago. Similarly, 56.9% are in favor of writing "Kōbe" and 53.0% in favor of "Ōsaka", up from 40.1% and 38.0% ten years ago. Long-vowel consciousness is rising in Japan. Interestingly, 10.8% of people are in favor of "Kobe" while 19.6% are in favor of "Osaka"; the reason for this difference appears to be because 11.6% are in favor of "Koube" (which is not an option for Osaka because its long vowel is two おs, while Kobe's is おう). Only 1.5% are in favor of Koobe, while 6.7% are in favor of Oosaka. This is actually a really fascinating topic that I would like to read more research about.
• Ranuki is proceeding apace, with the younger generation leading the way. Interestingly, though, kangaerenai is 80% rejected even by the yoof, which makes it much rarer than taberenai, korenai, etc. (which have clear majorities of the under-30 segment). Perhaps ranuki is somehow blocked if the last mora in the stem has no consonant? (This had never occurred to me before, even though I too would say taberenai and korenai but never kangaerenai.)

Thanks Mulboyne!

Noticed in bookshop yesterday: Mai no michi: Hanayagi Yoshijirō Jiden 舞の道—花柳芳次郎自伝 ("The Way of the Dance [mai 舞]: The Autobigraphy of Hanayagi Yoshijirō [V]").

Alternate title in English: "My Way".

I am a vocal critic of the whole "pay ludicrous fees to access academic journal articles" model. I think that it is straight-up immoral to erect artificial barriers around and charge for access to this material — or at least the vast, vast majority which was given to the journals by the authors for free in the understanding that the journals would then disseminate it as widely as possible. As per, you know, the foundational ideals of academia.

But! I am not one to publish people for doing a less bad thing than they were before. So I was very, very happily surprised by JSTOR doing the right thing and opening up their pre-1923 archives to the public. They're like a bakery that still has monopoly power and caters only to the rich, but now puts unsalable goods out back for the poor instead of throwing them away. It's a step in the right direction and they have my thanks.

I guess for sciency types this old stuff is more or less worthless, but for us liberal artsoes, it's still good! You want to read an 1899 article about Hawaiian games? I got you covered.

50. Pu-kau-la.—A trick of twisting a cord around the fingers or tying it around the arm or leg in such manner that, while seemingly secure, it comes off with a slight pull. The name is from pu, and kau-la, a rope. Pu or puu among other meanings is explained by Andrews as "to cast or draw lots (a Hawaiian custom formerly in practice) by using a knotted string." This is a common amusement in Japan, but my Japanese acquaintances have no particular name for it. Dr Bolton tells me that in Austria-Hungary a similar trick is played by Bauern Fänger and is called Kettelziehen.

Simpler times.

Here's an interesting couple of sentences from early in Imai Hitoshi 今井仁's Fuke shū shakuhachi-kyoku no onritsu (普化宗尺八曲の音律, "Temperament of fukeshu shakuhachi music"):

西洋音楽における一つの音は量子化された素材にすぎない。この素材の配列により音楽が構成される。翻って一つの音で森羅万象を表現しようとする、禅宗の一派である、普化宗尺八曲の微細な音程変化を五線譜で表現することは難しい。

A single note in Western music is quantized raw material, nothing more. Music is composed by arranging this material. Conversely, in the shakuhachi music of the Fuke shū, a school of Zen Buddhism, the player seeks to express the entire world in each note. Representing the subtleties of these altered intervals on the five-line staff is difficult.

To an extent this is a sort of cultural triumphalism: there is obviously more to Western music than what's on the staff as well, or else the development of synthesizers with precise timing and pitch would have been the End of Musical History. But it is true that the kind of music most people think of when they think "Western art music" (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven) is about structure and pattern to a much greater degree than most Japanese art music (and especially shakuhachi music). One obvious difference is harmony: obviously a huge deal in the West, in most Japanese traditional music it's either absent or very simple.

But there's more to it than that. Part of the reason that, say, Japanese koto compositions all tend to sound the same to the untrained ear is that in terms of structure they are all very similar. In particular the all-important opening section tends to be a series of isolated statements: "nuclear note, nuclear note, unstable passing tone, nuclear note..." Strictly speaking, this is a melody, but it's not supposed to be interpreted as one. More like, as I said, a series of isolated statements, most very short, many single notes. If you're listening for the standard post-1600 European pattern of "line that implies interesting harmony! (pause) second, similar line that implies slightly tenser version of harmony! (pause) line that resolves part of the way! (pause) line that finishes resolving!" &mdash well, you're gonna be bored. (And yes, I noticed that my explanation there summons up harmony again. It's all interrelated.)

Incidentally, Imai concludes that in the music of the Fuke shū, performers keep the pitches of nuclear notes relatively stable (although they may vary between performers), but other notes, less so. This he also interprets as evidence for Koizumi Fumio 小泉文夫's argument that the gagaku scale (律音階) and the "miyako-bushi" scale of urban Edo-period art music (都節) are in some sense varied expressions of the same phenomenon (not having read Koizumi properly, I'm not in a position to comment). He also proposes that Fuke shū music be represented in a continuous graph-like form making explicit the variations in pitch, rather than the discrete (and inherently diatonocentric) five-line staff. (I'm not sure why that's necessary, though, since he makes a convincing case that nuclear tones are fixed — even if the five-line staff is a round peg for the square hole of shakuhachi music, we can surely invent something similar that allows for acceptable simplification for ease of analysis.)

In completely unrelated news, at the end of May the Diet library opened a publicly accessible archive of "historic recordings" (歴史的音源) whose copyright periods are all complete. Here's their intro page. So far most (all?) of the recordings seem to be old '45s rather than, you know, tape reels from field anthropologists or anything (I think that 音源 might be a term of art in this regard), but who's complaining?

Here's a Miyagi Michio 宮城道雄 setting of a Shimamura Tōson 島崎藤村 poem called "Enishi" (ゑにし, "Affinity") a.k.a. "Aki ni kakurete" (秋に隠れて, "By the autumn hid")1. Miyagi himself is on Koto, Yoshida Seifū 吉田晴風 is playing the shakuhachi, and the vocals are by Satō Chiyoko 佐藤千夜子.

わが手に植ゑし白菊の
おのづからなる時くれば
一もと花の暮陰に
秋に隠れて窓にさくなり

I planted white chrysanthemums by hand,
But let them bring their own selves up to bloom;
A single blossom, by the autumn hid,
Stands at my window in this evening gloom.

This is a fine example of Miyagi's modernizing/Westernizing tendencies, by the way, and not at all of the "note by note" thing I was talking about up there. Even the singing is straight-up Euro-Art. Probably the most "Japanese" part of this, apart from the instrumentation, is the occasional diversion into miyako-bushi-esque scales, e.g. around "暮陰に".