Using Japanese Slang

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Anne Kasschau. Using Japanese Slang

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Using Japanese Slang

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Now, we'd like to introduce some terms that sound like the male names Yotarō, Santarō, Fūtarō, and Tōshirō, but actually connote further meanings. The use of names to imply something else is common in many languages. A John, in English, for example, is used to mean the toilet as well as a prostitute's customer. A cuppa joe is a cup of coffee. And a lulu is an astounding person or thing.

One term derived from a name comes from Japan's sports world. Dozaemon is a synonym for the victim of a drowning. It seems that in the Edo era there was an enormously fat sumo wrestler by the name of Dozaemon Naruse, whose swollen body and vast white expanse of stomach reminded people of a drowned person. Although most Japanese today don't know the origin of this term, they use it more frequently than the legal term dekishisha (deki is drowned, shi is death, and sha is person). There are, incidentally, four ways of talking about drowning in Japanese: dozaemon ni naru, oboreru, dekishi suru, and suishi suru.

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