Ningen shikaku

(More or less)

四角四面
shi.kaku.shi.men

Literally: four – corner – four – face

Alternately: Square. Four (equal) angles and four (equal) sides, just like it says. By extension, a “square” personality: extremely, perhaps even overly, serious. Meticulous; stiff; formal; lacking a proper amount of flexibility and vagueness.

Notes: This really does seem to be setting up a certain “vagueness” as a virtue; several of my sources cite a surfeit of はっきり (“clearly,” “distinctly,” definitively”) as one of the problems of squareness.

OBEY THE CUBE; FEAR THE HYPERCUBE

What could be more serious and formal than a squared square?

About Confanity

I love the written word more than anything else I've had the chance to work with. I'm back in the States from Japan for grad school, but still studying Japanese with the hope of becoming a translator -- or writer, or even teacher -- as long as it's something language-related.
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1 Response to Ningen shikaku

  1. Pingback: For I am the ruler of all that I spoon | landofnudotcom

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