If I were a true master...(2)

...I would have seized the opening.

I was very impressed with the interpreting at the Ma Laoshi seminar and am quite thankful to both of the people who helped so much in that regard. One funny thing – I would listen to Ma Laoshi’s Chinese and catch some small portion of it, then understand more when it was followed by the Japanese. Once, one of the interpreters got stuck on a word I knew, have known for a long time. He couldn’t recall it, glanced out to the audience, and someone supplied the missing word. He laughed and carried on, quite naturally.

Strange to me that that word (生活) would be one I knew, amidst the flow of words I couldn’t catch. Don’t worry; I harbor no illusions of moving into C-E translation or interpreting anytime soon. But why was it that particular word which caught him, when so many other, far more difficult words and phrases were handled with ease?

A tougher point were the 4-character phrases which Ma Laoshi sprinkled here and there. That puts me at a double handicap, since I have a hard time with them in Japanese (my stronger language) as well. Some of them are long familiar, like 气沉丹田, about sinking the qi/ chi into the dantian area below one’s navel. Some were new, but I could figure them out easily – 外顺内通, which is about an outward alignment of joints and the inner flow of both qi and blood.

But there were some I could not begin to catch. So I toddled on over to the interpreter and asked him about it during a break. He showed me his notes and I began to copy the miscreant characters into the little memo notebook I take to each practice. I was surprised and dismayed to hear someone say “even if you show him, he can’t read them”.

I have gotten used to the blanket assumption of many Japanese people that any obviously non-Asian face could not possibly comprehend Japanese characters, but this stung a bit.

Now, had I been a true master, I might have blithely suggested with a smile that I can read Japanese kanji characters better than current Prime Minister Aso, who recently became (in)famous for mis-reading several Japanese characters. (Don’t confuse him with the just-resigned Japanese Minister of Something or Other who gave a lengthy attempt at a press conference while completely drunk. Cheers to YouTube for that one). Or I might have mentioned the overwhelming degradation of the once-beautiful Japanese language, which is accelerating year by year (oh, the kids these days!).

But I am not, and I did not. I paused a moment in hesitation and missed the opening. I copied down the characters I needed and eased away, not wanting to darken my mood any further. Rather than my qi, my spirit had sunk. But my qi soon settled and my spirit rose again as soon as we began moving after the break.

All of that was in stark contrast to something that happened recently in sword class. It is customary for one of the nice, sweet sword-bearing ladies to pass out candies during the break. The other day, we each received a fortune cookie (it was actually my first one in these 13+ years in Asia), and there was a little fortune with tiny print in each snack. None of the ladies had their glasses, so one after another they came to me and asked me to read their fortunes. I was lucky and could read all the Japanese kanji characters that night, doling out large and small good lucks, the need to care for one’s health this year, and so on.

It was a very strange moment for me. For an instant, they believed in me in a way that usually never happens in Japan. This is a country where someone is standing in line in front of you, trying to buy a train ticket, but can’t figure it out. You navigate this city daily and know it better than many of its residents who never leave their small neighborhoods or who have just moved here from other cities in Japan. The person in front of you turns around to ask for help, takes a look at you (obviously non-Asian), and immediately looks about for someone else to ask.

That kind of thing can wear you down a bit. Then something happens like this at the sword class. No hesitation whatsoever – “sorry Bryan, I don’t have my glasses. Can you read this for me?” and that is that. And these are the moments that can really brighten your day.

Back to the Ma Laoshi seminar…one of the interpreters is young, finishing up his university days. He did an excellent job and I was pleased that he could make things so easy to understand (especially wading his way through a long list of names of Chinese masters, not missing a beat). It was interesting to me that sometimes his young person’s Japanese seemed to make the …. older…. crowd around me smile in polite amusement.

He also got stuck once (NOT a complaint – it is a natural part of the job), couldn’t recall the Japanese for umbilical cord. That one I knew by chance, since I became a father over here, but it is the type of word I would normally never catch in Japanese unless reading the characters. There was also a story about rice sitting in water and getting soft, not good for cooking or eating. He referred to a modern rice cooker, but I am sure the image in the older generation’s mind was one from an earlier time, when electric rice cookers were not a staple in every home.

Another good language moment came when one of Ma Laoshi’s long-time students, Mr. Xu, was showing off one of his handful of newly acquired Japanese words – “wakarimashita?” he asked, to check everyone’s understanding after he had explained something about push hands. Everyone laughed in approval and more than one Japanese lady was heard to say “jouzu”, praising his mastery of the Japanese language.

The Japanese are not alone in this tendency – it is also standard for any non-Asian looking person to be heavily praised upon stammering a loosely arranged group of poorly pronounced words in Chinese (trust me, I know about this, not yet having risen to a respectable level of spoken Chinese).

As for Mr. Xu, he is to be praised for his excellent English, which made for quite an interesting seminar. The Chinese of Ma Laoshi and his son were rendered into Japanese, while Mr. Xu addressed the Japanese people directly in English (there were only two interpreters) as he wandered about, and somehow things went quite smoothly.

A final note – I want to make it clear that I have the utmost respect for the interpreters above and that I think they did wonderful work. I couldn’t begin to do it myself. If I comment upon a missed word, it is not in glee at having found such an instance. Rather, it is in admiration for the interplay with the audience which brought out the missing word, as well as for the naturalness with which they resumed. Cheers to those who are masters of the languages and of the arts!