Dear Sir,
I beg leave to inquire whether you can make use of my services as a salesman and correspondent in your firm. I have had considerable experiences as a apparatus, and can furnish references and insurance against risk.
Awaiting your reply, I am
Yours respectfully,
K—— S——.
I have often been asked whether the Japanese possess the gift of humour.
They do—though humour does not occupy a place so important in their daily life as it does in ours.
A light touch in conversation is uncommon with them, and those who have it do not generally exhibit it except to their intimates. Yet they are great punsters, and some of their puns are very clever. A case in point is the slang term narikin which they have recently adopted to describe the flashy new-rich type which has come into being since the war.
To understand the derivation of this word, and its witty connotation, you must know that in their game of chess, called shogi, a humble pawn advanced to the adversary's third row is, by a process resembling queening, converted into a powerful, free-moving piece called kin. The word nari means "to become"; hence nari-kin means literally "to become kin"—which gives us, when applied to a flamboyant profiteer, a droll picture of a poor little pawn suddenly exalted to power and magnificence. The pun, which adds greatly to the value of this term, comes with the word kin. Kin is not only a chessman; it also means "gold." Which naturally contributes further piquancy in the application to a nouveau riche.
Moreover, through a play on the word narikin there has been evolved a second slang term: narihin—hin meaning "poor"—"to become poor." And alas, this term as well as the other is useful in Japan to-day. War speculation has made some fortunes, but it has wiped out others.
My friend O——, a truly lovable fellow, once spent the better part of an afternoon explaining a lot of Japanese puns to me, and I was hardly more pleased by the jests themselves than by my friend's infectious little chuckles over them. At parting we made an engagement for the evening, but about dinner time O—— returned to say that he could not spend the evening with me.
"I have just heard that my best friend died last night," he said, "It is very unexpected. I must go to his house." So speaking he emitted what appeared to me to be precisely the same little chuckle he had uttered over the puns.
The suppression of one's feeling is a primary canon of Japanese etiquette. To show unhappiness is to make others unhappy; wherefore, when one suffers, it is good form to laugh or smile. The foreigner who comprehends this doctrine must, if he be a man of any delicacy of feeling, respect it. But if he does not grasp the underlying principle he is likely to misjudge the Japanese and consider their laughter, in some circumstances, hard-hearted, apologetic, or inane.