A bit of color on your comment. Japan is interesting (and this transfers to other places) in that if you went back to before Meiji, everyday Japanese would probably never even define themselves as Japanese, they were from their fiefdom. And before the unification of Japan as what we think of as a nation state (1615), that was even more the case. However, the Meiji Restoration made a goal of creating a a polity that exhibits the characteristics that wonkie mentions.
One of the things they did was make it part of education extend the notion of nationhood back thru time. In fact, every Japanese student learns the historical date of 1192 as ii kuni skuro which is a goroawase, a mnemonic peculiar to Japanese. It marks the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and means 'let's make a beautiful country', even though the idea of a nation-state is ahistoric. But it helps solidify an 'our nation' ethos that you see not only in Takaichi's philosophy, but more generally among the Japanese population. (ed to fix the italics, cause it really bugs me...)
2025-10-04 21:39:16
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
2025-10-04 13:44:55
Hartmut, holy shit...
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.
A bit of color on your comment. Japan is interesting (and this transfers to other places) in that if you went back to before Meiji, everyday Japanese would probably never even define themselves as Japanese, they were from their fiefdom. And before the unification of Japan as what we think of as a nation state (1615), that was even more the case. However, the Meiji Restoration made a goal of creating a a polity that exhibits the characteristics that wonkie mentions.
One of the things they did was make it part of education extend the notion of nationhood back thru time. In fact, every Japanese student learns the historical date of 1192 as ii kuni skuro which is a goroawase, a mnemonic peculiar to Japanese. It marks the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate and means 'let's make a beautiful country', even though the idea of a nation-state is ahistoric. But it helps solidify an 'our nation' ethos that you see not only in Takaichi's philosophy, but more generally among the Japanese population. (ed to fix the italics, cause it really bugs me...)
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
Hartmut, holy shit...
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.