My wife and I were talking about sukiyaki (which her mother had enjoyed in a NYC Japanese restaurant sometime in the 1930s-’40s) and I wondered how far back it went in English; the OED, in a 1986 entry, takes it back to 1920 (“Another name by which this dish [sc. nabe] is usually known outside of Tokyo, is suki-yaki. This is derived from suki, which means a spade, and yaki, to cook”), but I figured that could be easily antedated using Google Books, and sure enough I quickly found a hit from 1915 1912 [thanks, ktschwarz!] (something about a “sukiyaki room” in a new Japanese social club in NYC). The most entertaining find, though, was Takeo Oha’s NY Times piece from July 6, 1919 (which you can read without the OCR errors in the Herald of Asia reprint at Google Books); it starts:
Now that the Atlantic has been crossed in the short span of sixteen hours by airplanes, the world has become a very small place indeed. Already aviators are turning their eyes to the Pacific. Soon we may expect to see the United States of America and Japan drawn much closer together by quick aerial transportation and with the shrinking of the ocean may the mutual understanding and friendship of our two nations become the greater. But New Yorkers need not wait for quick aerial transportation to visit Japan. Japan has come to New York.
The part of LH interest comes a few paragraphs later:
There are two vernacular newspapers, one weekly and the other semi-weekly. Doubtless any subscriber to any other New York newspaper could dispense with these without serious danger of backwardness in news. In consequence their readers hover in the neighborhood of the unlucrative two thousands. The parlor game, commonly christened “ta-maya” among my compatriots, has practically become one of the standard features of Coney Island and other New York Summer resorts. From a mercenary point of view the business is good and forms the best Summer side line. Really you need not be an infallible shot in order to turn a cigarette package target into your coveted prize at 50 cents or win a 5-cent doll by rolling away dollars at the Japanese ball game. Business is business, the Japanese has learned.
This metropolis may boast of no less than a dozen Japanese restaurants. Your casual visit will introduce you to fresh sliced fish taken raw, seasoned bamboo shoots, and lotus root and pickled radish served on the same table with “sukiyaki,” palatable at least to the Japanese. “Sukiyaki,” a compound word still unauthorized in any standard English dictionary, is the Japanese “quick lunch,” eaten while being cooked on a small charcoal table stove. Beef, onions, cabbage, beancurd, and other vegetable additions, not forgetting Japanese soy, sugar, and a little sake, are ready to be prepared in a shallow pan á la japonaise on the fire. The rest devolves upon you and your company, ladies not honorably excluded! A great time saving it is for the proprietor, this having his guests prepare their own meals! Though a fairly comprehensive menu is obtainable, Geisha girl entertainment, the Japanese equivalent to New York’s cabarets, is still unobtainable. Rice cakes have risen to a conspicuous place lately and have usurped a position in the bill of fare of chop suey restaurants. Their taste is the same as in Tokyo, but their price is different, as any sen-beiya-san (Japan rice-cake man) in New York City can tell you.
Note the use of “the Japanese” for a single Japanese person, a phenomenon we’ve discussed somewhere, and the Orientalizing “honorably”; what interests us, however, is the mention of “sukiyaki” as not occurring in any standard English dictionary, which of course makes sense at that early date. But I’m also curious about the parlor game called here “ta-maya”; does anybody know what that might be referring to? Google has been of no help to me; I’ve only found 霊屋 tamaya ‘mausoleum; (temporary) resting place of a corpse.’
I assume this is obvious to hat, but if you swapped in “pachinko” for “ta-maya” the sentence wouldn’t seem obviously wrong or confusing to me, although the wording is vague enough that whatever it describes might resemble pachinko quite closely or almost not at all. Wiki says that pachinko-as-we-know-it emerged circa 1930 in Nagoya with some aimed-at-children precursors in the 1920’s, but there was apparently a thing in Europe in the 1700’s called (for whatever reason) “billard japonais” which is ancestral to our pinball machines. But if you can find a more detailed history-in-English of the pre-1930 antecedents of pachinko, ta-maya might pop up there?
There is a company called Tamaya (玉屋) in the pachinko business, apparently founded in August 1953.
I can’t pin down “not honorably excluded”. Are ladies excluded? Is their exclusion dishonorable? Or is failure to exclude them honorable?
Was “ladies honorably excluded” a common phrase of restriction, at some restaurants or some Japanese restaurants, so that a play on the phrase was scannable?
The singular/countable use of “Japanese” or “Chinese” is considered gauche in English-speaking countries but, as best I can tell, is fairly current in English in East Asia, among both expats and locals. I imagine the “… person” formulation starts to wear thin if you actually have to use it a lot.
Note FWIW that this singular “the Japanese” as used in the block quote above is not an identifiable individual but some sort of abstract/generic referent. It’s as if one were saying “The Frenchman is notable for his qualities of blah blah blah” without meaning “that particular Frenchman standing over there” rather than some abstracted typical Frenchman. What’s interesting is that in this particular context swapping in plural “the Japanese” with a plural verb (“the Japanese have learned”) would thus result in a sentence with essentially identical meaning.
I can’t pin down “not honorably excluded”. Are ladies excluded? Is their exclusion dishonorable? Or is failure to exclude them honorable?
You’re trying — honorably but futilely — to parse it on a level it doesn’t deserve. I’m afraid it’s just tossing in an all-purpose Orientalizer (“your honorable self,” etc.) more or less randomly, without regard for logic or grammar.
Sukiyaki is a food, therefore you should check Barry Popik’s site. He’s already combed Google Books and newspaper archives, finding sukiyaki in the Boston Cooking-School Magazine (1906), Chicago Daily Tribune (1911), and Fort Wayne (IN) News-Sentinel (1918). Interesting that it was mentioned in all these other cities so early.
Date correction: this appears to be in the April 1912 issue of The Oriental Review.
Thanks, and I’ve corrected the post accordingly.
@mollymooly:
There is a company called Tamaya (玉屋) in the pachinko business, apparently founded in August 1953.
The Japanese Tamaya company appears to have issued their own (undated) game tokens (here and here).
Yes; in English as in German, this phenomenon seems to have faded out soon after WWII.
In Germany at least, among some people, it lingered on much longer. I remember speaking to people (who were not part of my usual circle of acquaintances) in 1980 who still used “der Russe” unapologetically (and this was not only a turn of phrase, but it seemed to indicate a certain way of thinking about nations). And although they were older than me, this was not the generation of WWII veterans.
@ulr: Well, in the context of 1980 you would have maybe needed to decide whether you ought to be speaking stereotypically about der Russe or der Sowjet. The man himself or the disease he carried, to paraphrase someone or other.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OSKJ8Io42a8
“Wenn der Russe nicht wär…”
I doubt that Germans took more care than Yanks or Brits to maintain the Russian/Soviet distinction. (Compare the American indifference to the English/British distinction, so salient to Brits.)
@hat, and quite probably less, since they had due to geographical proximity probably had more dealings with the pre-Soviet Russians that they had not found entirely positive.
Indeed they didn’t.
The parlor game, commonly christened “tamaya” among my compatriots, has practically become one of the standard features of Coney Island and other New York Summer resorts.
I think this might be a game involving blowing a soap bubble and guiding it through a makeshift obstacle course by puffing and fanning it to reach a goal without bursting. Blowing soap bubbles was a traditional summer pastime, and the 玉屋 tamaya ‘soap-bubble seller’ was a fixture of Edo street culture. (For instance, in this piece here, in which the performer has a box saying たまや tamaya, and especially the witty transposition of a street scene to the underwater world here, where the fish is blowing bubbles.) 玉 tama refers to シャボン玉 shabon-dama ‘soap bubbles’, and 屋 ya is ‘shop, shopkeeper, seller’. The tamaya would hawk their wares for making soap bubbles by putting on amusing little shows with their bubbles for potential customers.
Well found! Another puzzle solved.
I doubt that Germans took more care than Yanks or Brits to maintain the Russian/Soviet distinction
and one of the stranger things that’s been happening over here is the eagerness that anti-putin liberals and conservatives share with enemy-of-my-enemy leftists* [sic] to ignore that distinction when it comes to the current russian regime.
.
* the “multipolarity” set typified by vijay prashad and his Tricontinental Institute
shabon-dama ‘soap bubbles’
< Portuguese sabão ‘soap’?
Portuguese is usually the best bet, but some suggest that it may be from Spanish because of the sh (cf. Ladino shavón).
Thanks. The j as in modern Spanish jabón often comes from an “sh” sound spelled x, so that makes sense.
anti-putin liberals and conservatives … ignore that distinction [Russian vs Soviet] when it comes to the current russian regime.
Putin learnt his trade under Communism, so I think you’re making a distinction without a difference.
There was a brief period (pre-Putin) when Russia tried to be non-Communist.
And I note Russia has continually complained about other Warsaw Pact countries removing statues of Communist leaders and their symbols.
Or do you mean the Oligarchs, gangster-state, defenestrations, starving the poor and widespread corruption are an innovation since Communism. Really??
You’re trying to rehabilitate Russian Communism as lilly-white?
well, i think this short video essay should clarify the distinctions here, even to the satisfaction of someone with the reading comprehension skills of an insomniac bircher.
ladies not honorably excluded
I don’t see what is the difficulty here. There are some activities from which it was considered honorable to exclude women. Like having cigars after dinner or obtaining a university appointment. This is not one of them.
You’re trying to rehabilitate Russian Communism as lilly-white?
Good lord, why do you say these things? You have no idea what you’re talking about. And as my comparison to English/British should have suggested, the distinction is one of ambit: “Russian” refers to Russia, which was only one of the many constituent parts of the Soviet Union.
“Russian” refers to Russia, which was only one of the many constituent parts of the Soviet Union.
Sure. I know that. Yours is the first post in this thread to use ‘Union’. As to the English/British distinction (I don’t expect an American to understand this), I prefer to describe myself as British even though I lived only in geographical England. Because _within_ Britain that’s just as much a cultural distinction: note the number of StGeorge’s Cross flags now flown there, and as a barely-covert racist symbol.
If it’s purely a geographic demarcation, then why does @rozele want to drag politics in to it? Are these liberals/conservatives/enemies/leftists even trying to make any point about (say) Russian historical territory/culture vs Georgian? I think the point they’re making is that current Russian politics is indistinguishable from Soviet-era Russian politics.
The original observation “der Russe or der Sowjet. The man himself or the disease he carried, …” used ‘Sowjet’, a political organisation, not ‘Sowjetunion’, a territory. To think the man is comparable to the disease/the territory is comparable to the political organisation is to make a category error.
I took ‘Soviet’/’Sowjet’ to not be trying to make a claim about a territory.
I note Prashad is careful to say ‘Soviet Union’ when he means that historical territory, in contradistinction to ‘Russia’ (under Putin); and avoids ‘Soviet’ unqualified. Indeed he denies Putin is trying to recapture all historical S.U. territories, but rather only Russian-speaking territory. (I’m not daft enough to swallow what he’s saying.)
I’ll go back to trying to flog myself to sleep. And I’d like to hear the moderator’s moderation on that personal remark. I think it’s @rozele’s comment that shows mis-comprehension.
Die Russen kommen! was a trope in Germany into the 1980s. And even after the break-up of the SU, many Germans were unaware that other Republics existed (maybe except for the Baltic ones); when I lived in Kazakhstan in the 90s, friends and neighbors of my parents used to ask them “Is your son still in Russia?”.
Re Putin: his propaganda is a brew of Soviet and Czarist nostalgia plus Russian ethnic chauvinism plus fake Orthodox piety plus what is called “family values” in the American culture wars. He’s mixing the elements as he needs and feels, and trying to isolate whether that’s “Soviet” or “Russian” is a mug’s game.
I didn’t understand what “ignore that distinction when it comes to the current russian regime” meant. I assumed that such understanding would require a greater knowledge of left-wing American political discourse than I possess.
Yours is the first post in this thread to use ‘Union’.
Irrelevant. The word “Soviet” is not equivalent, as you seem to think, to “Communist”; it refers to the Union as against the individual republics (like the RSFSR) that made it up. When we talk about Soviet losses in WWII, we do not mean commie losses, we mean the losses sustained by the Soviet Union. That entity no longer exists. Your “Putin learnt his trade under Communism, so I think you’re making a distinction without a difference” appears to show a profound ignorance about these matters; if it doesn’t, you might want to rethink and rewrite. And don’t accuse people of “trying to rehabilitate Russian Communism” when they are doing no such thing.
I was curious about Soviet population numbers. In 1970, the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSRs (which I believe most people in Russia and many in those republics might have conflated as being Russian) had about 170 million people, and the remaining republics just under 50 million. I do recognize that particularly in the Russian SSR, many residents were not Russian. At the same time, there were also millions of Russians in other SSRs.
I’m not arguing one way or the other about distinguishing vs. collapsing the distinction. Just pointing out the numbers that underlay or belie the synechdoche.
Sure, there are a number of reasons for the conflation, but it still has to be resisted.
“most people in Russia and many in those”
@Ryan, I don’t think so. I do argue here sometimes that it would be convenient if “Russian” meant all of us.
But:
– I first did that in the context of a Rusyn woman who called her language “kitchen Russian”. In English.
– I also frequently call the Russian I speak “Muscovite” (when I’m not confident the form in quesion is common for all Russia) and if in English the word for Russians (in the sense “not Ukrainians”) were different (Rossijans, Muscovites, Great Russians, whatever), I’d be very comfortable with that.
– I’m interested in history of these langauges. That’s why I want to use “Russian” for all of them and something else for the langauge I speak.
Russians (from Russia) normally call Ukrainians “Ukrainians” and Belarusians “Belorussians”, and moreover, the Donbass war was motivated by emphasising the distinction between “Russian speakers” in the East, unnamed others, and certain evil forces or “Nazis”. Colloquially, of course, unnamed others are Ukrainians, but the propaganda won’t name them.
Which is a strange distinction, because Ukrainians usually speak L1-Russian.
Besides, “they are Russians, like us” would be a very, very strange argument for “let’s wage a war on them!”
“but the propaganda won’t name them” – because they do see that portraying it as an inter-ethnic conflict is a bad idea. Why they don’t see that the conflict too is a bad idea is above me.
When I wrote “might have”, the tense indicated that I was speaking of the attitudes of 1970, not today. I may still be wrong but want to make sure we’re addressing the same question. Attitudes about the war in Ukraine, in the wake of two decades of independence, half of it spent in armed conflict, don’t really contradict what I wrote without at least some contemporary evidence.
That doesn’t even follow. It is clear that, for Putin, the Soviet Union was just the Second Russian Empire, and now he wants a Third. He ignores the whole communism thing and reinterprets the Soviet monuments as imperial monuments.
Speaking of empire, rozele, you want this version.
Holland for Netherlands is a perhaps-comparable such traditional synecdoche in English, but doesn’t carry over to adjectives. Obviously if Holland-as-such was currently waging war on Limburg, Anglophones might take greater care to avoid the synecdoche.
I was FWIW alluding to the Solzhenitsyn quote that one internet source gives in English as (maybe wording varies because of the vagaries of translation?) “Russia is to the Soviet Union as a man is to the disease afflicting him.” Solzh. was of course a “Russian” (for some value of that adjective) nationalist, and was more focused, perhaps parochially, on the negative effect of the Bolshevik Yoke on Russia-as-such* than on the injustice of its occupation of Uzbekistan or Latvia. So he was not particularly interested in the synecdoche angle where the USSR had a larger territorial scope than the RSFSR (which also had the S-word in its formal name).
*Which he well may have conceptualized as incorporating certain other East-Slavic-speaking-majority current nation-state entities.