五里霧中
go.ri.mu.chuu
Literally: five – ri – fog/mist – middle
Alternately: Completely lost. Unable to grasp the current situation, and therefore unable to foresee what may come or lay out any sort of meaningful plan.
Notes: The ri (sometimes called a “Japanese league” or “Chinese mile,” depending on which culture you’re interacting with) is a unit of distance ranging from about 600 m to about 4 km. The character can also refer to a village or small town, specifically one’s hometown (in contrast to “the city”), or to an administrative division of 50 homes, or to an equivalent area. There’s a lot of history bundled up in there, and I suggest looking into it, but for our purposes here it essentially means that the fog is extensive.
This yojijukugo apparently comes from a brief story in the Book of the Later Han, in which Zhang Kai is famed for being able to magically raise a fog-bank five ri wide.
Some people mistakenly render the latter half of this compound as 夢中 (also pronounced muchuu). The term means “engrossed,” or “in a daze / trance,” so it may seem appropriate, but this is an error that loses the reference to the five-ri fog.
It’s not Japanese culture, but I thought I’d take the chance to recommend this less-famous but quietly moving story by the creator of the Scott Pilgrim series.
