リレー連載 　Found in Translation　   2

　

　

「婚活」

“Getting Tied Up in Knots”[1]

Paul Snowden

　

「よりよい結婚をするための活動．自由恋愛の浸透や女性の社会進出などを背景に，男女ともに結婚したくても出来ない人が増加し，現代社会では就活(就職活動)のような積極的な活動を行わないと結婚が困難とされる．〔「結婚活動」の略で，2007年(平成19)，社会学者山田昌弘などが造語」〕(三省堂『スーパー大辞林 3.0』「婚活」項)

研究社の社屋からもほど近い伊勢神宮の東京支社，東京大神宮．以前，NHK の大河ドラマにも主演した女優が結婚式を挙げたことで一躍有名になり，平日でも参拝客が絶えることはありません． 　梅雨明け間もない7月某日の，日中の猛暑も冷めやらぬ黄昏時に境内を訪れたスノードン先生[2]，そこで何を思ったのでしょうか．(編集部)

　

　

　　“I'm looking for a match!”
　　“Oh, do you want to set fire to something?”
　　“No, no.  I'm looking for someone to set fire to my heart!”
　　“Ah, I see.  That kind of match!  Have you tried a matchmaker?”
　　“No, I don't like that idea.  I want it to happen naturally.”

　　It seems normal to want a match made in heaven[3], and in Tokyo there is just the right place for that: Tokyo Daijingu, or the Tokyo Grand Shrine.  It's one of those Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples that have developed their own reputation for being particularly good at answering prayers[4] for a certain area of human hope: safe childbirth, road safety, success in exams, and so on.  The speciality[5] of Tokyo Daijingu is in[6] granting success[7] to those who come to pray for a match, to pray to have their hearts set[8] on fire (if you'll pardon the pun[9] again), to pray to be able to tie the knot.

　　To determine whether that special reputation can be borne[10] out statistically, or is due to the plain historical factual record of the first modern-era Shinto-style wedding having been held here[11], would require much embarrassing research − embarrassing to those who visit frequently, and possibly embarrassing to the shrine itself.  Whatever the case[12], the visitors certainly comprise[13] very large numbers of hopeful-looking young women (and some young men), and many of the prayers written on the little wooden prayer plaques (or “votive horse tablets” according to our GG5[14] − another entry[15] that needs updating and expanding[16]) displayed in the precincts request enmusubi in general, or even name a specific prospective mate[17].

　　Rather neatly, the word “enmusubi” matches (if you'll pardon another pun) the English idiom of “tying the knot”, for a musubi is a knot tied in string, or indeed one[18] tied in heaven.  The Japanese word “en” in our dictionary[19] has ten separate entries, each with a different kanji.  The first of them is the one that is the name of the Japanese currency − and where the “y” of the English word “yen” came from is a whole other story − while the entry that concerns us here comes in at number 7[20], with such English definitions given as[21] “a turn of fate”, “a relationship”, “a bond”.  So it covers the idea, and indeed the actual materialization, of[22] a match made in heaven.

　　That should tie up the issue (if you'll pardon yet another pun), except that there are young people who may be burning to tie the knot, but never seem to find the right match[23].  No matter how often they light candles[24], inscribe votive plaques, and wait for heaven to answer them, they fail to find the en for which they yearn.  It is hard to approach any of the earnest young people at Tokyo Daijingu and ask them directly how often they have already visited the shrine, or how long they expect to keep visiting it before they can find themselves a good find, or catch themselves a good catch[25], but one gets the impression that for many of them this is neither the first nor the last of their visits: heaven seems to require a lot of candles to be lit before the match they so desperately seek[26] is made. Konkatsu − a modern colloquialism meaning “spouse-hunting”, by analogy with[27] shūkatsu for “job-hunting” − is time-consuming.  After all, it may include actual dating, too, as well as the old-fashioned omiai, or[28] meeting arranged by someone acting as matchmaker.

　　Modern life is complicated, and maybe especially so for the shrine's frequent young visitors.  They travel here from all over Japan, it seems, but there are many who look like workers from nearby offices, commuting daily on crowded trains, working long and late to avoid leaving before the boss, experiencing the frustration of having so little time left for dating, and suffering from the hirō, or exhaustion of toiling in the city.

　　In Japanese, as in English, medical science and psychology have begun to recognize conditions that used to be dismissed as simple ignorance or laziness but are now regarded as legitimate cases for study and treatment.  They are often called “syndromes” in English, which connotes, if you know Greek, not a simple condition but a complex combination of disorders.  The word in Japanese, with the same connotation, is shōkōgun.

　　Like city life and work, the search for a match may be both exhaustive and exhausting, and modern Japanese society recognizes that with the recently invented expression konkatsu-hirō-shōkōgun[29].  Can we put that into English as “dating fatigue syndrome”, or “match-hunting exhaustion syndrome” and retain the nuances of the term, with its tongue-in-cheek allusions to something typical of modern Japanese society, expressed in vocabulary also typical of modern Japanese society?

　　That is a constant problem for a lexicographer: having the en to find good matches for words.

　

　

〈著者紹介〉 Paul Snowden 杏林大学副学長，早稲田大学名誉教授．1946年イギリス生まれ．ケンブリッジ大学にて修士号を取得．1969年に来日，1977年から筑波大学，1983-2013年は早稲田大学で教鞭を執る．研究社『新編 英和活用大辞典』(1995年) で編集・執筆，同『新和英大辞典』第五版 (2003年) の編者 (執筆を兼ねる)．著書は文科省検定教科書，一般書，児童書，事典，アトラスなど多数．

　

　

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