実と術 (じつとじゅつ)
The word jitsu stands for reality and truth, often as part of the word shinjitsu (objective truth, an intangible thing). The word jutsu stands mostly for technique, in the sense of an art, a method, or even a spell. The words majutsu (for magic) and ninjutsu (for ninja arts/ techniques) are two examples.
I was glancing at a fan-translated chapter of Naruto (which I once read a decent amount to find out what I was missing, and then stopped for a while) and noticed “ninjitsu” being used. This isn’t a proper romanization. I realize a lot of people don’t really care; pronunciation has long gone the route of “ninjitsu”, even if it’s technically wrong. Make no bones about it: it is technically wrong. You wouldn’t know that if not for other words using the term jutsu, though.
Majutsu is a catch-all term for black magic. Houjutsu is, outside an RPG context (where the same pronunciation applies to white magic/ priest magic), a word for gunnery, as in, the huge cannons on battleships. Ijutsu is the practice of medicine/ healing arts. Renkinjutsu is alchemy, like in Fullmetal Alchemist. Kyuujutsu is Japanese archery (the Art of the Bow). Kenjutsu is Japanese fencing (the Art of the Sword). Finally, the broad term gijutsu means “technology”, a combination of “skill” and “art”. To a lot of people, there’s more than a little incomprehensible “magic” that rests in technology, too.
If you’re just reading ninja stories, it probably won’t matter much. It’s only if you want to get into other cool Japanese things that you want to have some consistency and understand a little of the why re: why stuff’s called such-and-such. – J
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I decided to use something out of Naruto manga for educational purposes. I mean, why not? It may not be high literature, but it can be used to show little pieces of the Japanese language.
Audio Version
[audio:https://jp.learnoutlive.com/media/Naruto%20Yudan%20Taiteki.mp3]download mp3
油断大敵
While not my usual fare, I’m trying to catch up on Naruto manga because erm… way too many kids are into this stuff on both sides of the Pacific, so it’s hard connecting to such people about Japanese without knowing something about this.
So, in the course of this, I learned that the title of chapter 5 of the manga (yes, very early) is “Yudan Taiteki,” shown as the kanji above. In kana, ゆだんたいてき.
It is important to note that yuudan would be a different word, while yudan uses a short, but strong “u.” I’m recording this lesson partly so that people can hear it from me.
Anyway, yudan is very easy to define: it’s carelessness, or perhaps better said as negligence, unpreparedness and thoughtlessness.
The kanji combine “oil” with “judgment,” so this is, in a rather literal way, letting your judgment slip.
The “taiteki” part, while usually translated as greatest enemy, actually means great enemy. So, the original statement has a bit of understatement, but only slight:
Negligence is a great foe.
But, this can be localized (i.e. further Americanized) to mean carelessness is one’s greatest enemy. Or something like that. Either way, the meaning is preserved.
The manga chapter in question deals with this subject. Taking one’s foe for granted, being distracted by taunting, and so forth, leads to defeat.
]]>Games covered: The next fighting games in the Naruto and DBZ franchises, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3, Ridge Racer 7 3D license ver., God Eater Burst.
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