Sedition

乱暴狼藉
ran.bou.rou.zeki

Literally: disorder – violence – wolf – spread

Alternately: To engage in violent and unlawful behavior; to ignore reason and act wildly and destructively. Rioting; committing outrages.

Notes: It is an error to replace 藉 with homophone 籍, “register” (note the 艹 “crown” in one and the ⺮ in the other). So is reading 暴 as baku, although that can be a valid pronunciation in other contexts.

This is a doubled-for-emphasis type of yojijukugo; both 乱暴 and 狼藉 refer to “violence.” Supposedly the latter invokes the image of a patch of disturbed grass where a wolf has lain down to sleep. The compound may be made into a verb phrase by following it with ~を働く (~wo hataraku).

Read it yourself; I'm tired right now: https://www.daitakuji.jp/2014/03/13/%E5%BD%93%E3%81%9F%E3%82%8A%E5%89%8D%E3%81%AE%E4%B9%B1%E5%8F%96%E3%82%8A-%E4%B9%B1%E6%9A%B4-%E7%8B%BC%E8%97%89%E3%81%AE%E7%84%A1%E6%B3%95%E5%9C%B0%E5%B8%AF

Scenes of violence from a historical text at Daitakuji (大澤寺), a Buddhist temple in Shizuoka that is – and I am not making this up – just a couple minutes walk from a goldfish shop called White House. Topical!

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 Sedition

  1. Pingback: Wolves among the flowers | landofnudotcom

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