While global travel bans have me stuck in my home and away from my factories, and while my passport country self incinerates under multiple bonfires of absurdity, I am studying Japanese to stave off madness.
I’ve been a fulltime resident of Japan for 18 months and I’m still a hopeless gaijin relying on my wife to buy my underwear. As a Chinese speaker living most of his life within Greater China, I’m not used to experiencing this—and I don’t like it at all. I have therefore made an oath to pass the JPLT Level 3 test by this summer, and hopefully Level 2 by the end of 2021. That should allow me to carpe diem my own underwear purchases in future.
To keep myself accountable and engaged, I am writing a periodic mini-blog of the process, which may be interesting to two or three of you fellow Asia nerds. These will not be about learning Japanese per se, but about the cool cultural stuff I come across along the way that I want to share. Most of you will find this tedious, so feel free to scroll on down to the subliminal advertising below whenever these blog posts appear. Here goes Japan-o-file 1…
The days of the week in Japanese, starting with Sunday, are: 日曜日 (Nichi-you-bi)、月曜日 (Getsu-you-bi)、火曜日 (Ka-you-bi)、水曜日 (Sui-you-bi)、木曜日 (Moku-you-bi)、金曜日 (Kin-you-bi)、and 土曜日 (Do-you-bi)。For those of you who read Chinese characters, that’s Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Wood, Gold/Metal, and Earth followed by “you-bi” which looks like something quite archaic to a modern Chinese reader.
At first glance, I thought the days of the week in Japanese were named after the Five Elements (五行) of Chinese Taoism, knowing that Chinese philosophy/religion was largely transplanted here in Japan. But of course, after some research, I remembered the Five Elements on earth are in turn related to the five visible planets of the solar system, from which the earthly elements get their form. I should have remembered that from Chinese Folk Religion 101. After the sun (日) and moon (月), the most visible bodies in the sky are Mars (火), Mercury (水), Jupiter (木), Venus (金), and Saturn (土). Therefore, the days of the week in Japanese literally mean: Sun’s Day, Moon’s Day, Mar’s Day, Mercury’s Day, Jupiter’s Day, Venus’s Day, and Saturn’s Day.
This should sound very familiar if you know the days of the week in Latin, or in most Romance languages, which name their days after these same celestial bodies, and in the exact same order. Monday, Moon’s Day, Dies Lunae (Latin), Lunes (Spanish), Lundi (French).
Turns out this Japanese system is not Taoist after all, but ancient Greek, Ptolemaic to be exact, originating from about 200 BCE, which created each day of the week after one of the visible celestial bodies in the sky. Seven celestial bodies impacting our lives, therefore seven days of the week. It was popularized by the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, made its way across Persia and arrived in China first in the 4th century AD, and finally fully adapted by the Tang Dynasty between 600-800 AD—which then shifted from a 10-day week to the Ptolemaic 7-day week.
It also turns out this system of naming the days was used in China all the way up to the end of the Qing Dynasty, including the use of the characters 曜日 (yao-ri in Chinese) to mean ‘star day’…which is, of course, exactly how it is used in Japan today. In China this was called the Seven Luminaries System (七曜), and was imported into Japan around 1000 AD by the monk Kobo Daishi.
While the system has not changed at all in Japan, in China it was simplified at the founding of the Republic of China (1911) to become 星期一， 星期二，星期三, etc. (xing-qi-#). Interestingly, the planetary connection is still maintained with the term xing-qi (星期), which literally means ‘star phase’. So, the days of the week in modern Chinese reads: Star Phase 1, Star Phase 2, Star Phase 3, etc… ending with Star Phase Sun, or Star Phase Heaven, for Sunday.
In English, while we can still hear Sun Day, Moon Day, and Saturn Day (Saturday), why can’t we hear the rest of those celestial bodies clearly in the names of other days of the week? This would be because as the Ptolemaic system made its way through the Germanic and Nordic pre-Christian worlds, the Greek planets (which were associated with Greco-Roman gods) were replaced with Germanic/Norse gods instead. Therefore, we get:
Tiw’s Day (Tiw, a somewhat unknown Anglo Saxon god)
Wodin’s Day (Wodin/Odin, Top god in the Germanic pantheon.)
Thor’s Day (Thor, God of Thunder)
Freya’s Day (Freya, Goddess of love, beauty and fertility).
Anyway, very interesting stuff.
Oh, and just a reminder, Biden’s inauguration occurs in two days on Wodin’s Day: a god that looks a lot like that QAnon Shaman guy. Some names of Wodin found in old Nordic sources… Lord of the Frenzy, Leader of the Possessed, Delirious Raging One….
Nothing to worry about here at all.
Fortunately, that day in Japanese is 水曜日, or Mercury’s Day. Mercury is related to water in the Five Elements, and so it is also Water’s Day. I’m loosely translating that as “Water Canon Day.”
Here’s hoping that the celestial balance will be maintained one way or another.
Sayonara. And good luck out there.