Today’s yojijukugo is gaden’insui. It means “pulling water into one’s own rice field. Because water is something that doesn’t really belong to anyone, we should share it equally. A rice farmer who tries to make more water flow into his field is selfish. In English, we don’t usually use a metaphor, we just say “selfish” or “self-centered”.

The rice farmer metaphor emphasizes that one should try to consider everything around them, not just their own rice field. Basically, it is telling us to widen our viewpoint. So, in addition to what Americans would call selfish, one could also use this term to mean subjective in cases where one ought to be more objective.

For example, consider a twenty-page brief on the state of the economy released by the U.S. Government. In the document, the average salaries of different career fields are listed on page 7. When you receive the document, you flip directly to page seven and see that your career’s earnings have doubled over the last ten years. You are content, but your friend sees this and tells you that your opinion is a little bit gaden’insui.