Latest / It's All Japanese to Me / Ep. 7 — Shibui: from a bitter taste to a quiet beauty

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Ep. 7 — Shibui: from a bitter taste to a quiet beauty · It's All Japanese to Me

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Rikuto.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So today's word is shibui.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is an adjective and it is a very everyday word in Japanese.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It has several meanings and that is what makes it a little tricky.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: The digital daijisen lists five meanings.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is a taste.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is the rough,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: cookering taste you get when you bite into a shibugaki,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: an astringent kind of parsimmon.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: In English, it means astringent.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: The second is the one people outside Japan might know.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not plushy, calm, and plain, but with depth.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: The dictionary's examples are in shibui voice,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: a shibui tai, and a shibui point of view, for example.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then there are three more meanings.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: A sour or unhappy face,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: as in making a shiburi face,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: being stingy with money,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: and something that doesn't move smoothly,
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: like a sliding door that sticks when it is humid.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the same word can describe a nice necktie and a stingy customer.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten gives the oldest examples it has for each meaning.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: For the taste, the oldest example is from around the year 830.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And for the calm, deep kind of beauty, the oldest example it gives is from 1833, much later.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That 1833 example is a senryu, a short, humorous poem.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It says something like, people, too, once the frost comes, tan shibui.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I read the frost.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: As getting older, but that is my own reading.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I say something is shibui,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am probably mixing a few of these meanings without thinking about it consciously.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That is just my sense of it though.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so this is it for today's episode about shibui.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for listening and see you next time.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 3:08
  [music]