Today we will study the Japanese expression “an ogre getting sunsick” (鬼の霍乱), which is used to express surprise when a strong person falls ill unexpectedly. The figurative language found in this expression is somewhat unique in that it does not stray too far from what it describes.

In the Edo period, strong people were referred to as 鬼(おに), which actually has many possible translations into English: devil, ghost, demon, and ogre. In this instance I have chosen to use “ogre” because it conveys the sense of a strong creature that is not necessarily malevolent, which is closest to how one might think of a stong person. Anyways, if a poet were asked to think of words to describe a strong person, his mind would leap to images like hard steel, towering trees, and powerful waves. Ogres would be the last thing on his mind, since the two things being thusly compared would be so similar as to invite confusion. One could easily mistake which traits of the ogre are being ascribed to the man.

Let’s now take a look at 霍乱(かくらん).These two characters are an abbreviation for 揮霍撩乱(きかくりょうらん), which refers to flailing one’s hands about in struggle. This four character compound was used in the Edo period to refer to sunsickness. In our current expression,霍乱 simply refers to any type of severe illness. Once again, if a poet were asked to describe severe illness, he would not do it this way. He would choose powerful images instead of simply picking one illness to represent them all.

Though most of us are not poets, we do use figurative language from time to time. Considering the topic of this article, it bears mentioning that a great many of our idiomatic expressions in English use such language; for example, “raining cats and dogs”, “when pigs fly”, “have a bone to pick”. In most if not all of these idioms, what is said and what is meant are very far apart, yet share one common characteristic that is easy to identify (heavy things falling, impossible things happening, doing something that will take a long time). I am not aware of any English idioms that make comparisons between things as similar as ogres and strong men, or sunsickness and other types of illness.

Perhaps the willingness of the Japanese to engage in such nuanced metaphors belies a broader characteristic of their culture. It may simply be a manifestation of their much-touted (or much-feared, for some westerners) ability to appreciate nuances. On the other hand, more obvious figurative language is also present within the Japanese body of idioms, such as “even the monkey falls from the tree” and “Koubou does not choose his brush”, meaning respectively, “even the best person makes mistakes” and “people of skill don’t rely on their tools”. Mulling these over and comparing them to our frivolous appeals to pigs, cats and bones certainly leaves one with the impression that the Japanese have a more profound way of thinking. Perhaps this profundity is truly the characteristic we are searching for.