Taboo!

~In my ongoing quest to bring American culture and language to the locals, I continually find myself playing "Taboo". No, not the card game (although I have played that in some of my classes); I'm talking about cultural taboos that shock the locals. I've actually been fortunate enough to avoid anything major thus far, but it does happen every so often.

After a long week filled with screaming, sick children coughing in my face, apathetic middle-schoolers, and parental inquiries, I found myself with a small assignment: to write the names of my students who were absent this week. Dutifully, I opened my attendance book, grabbed a piece of paper and the nearest pen, and began to write. I was about halfway though the list when a horrified coworker stopped me.

Why? I made the mistake of writing the names in red ink, which is a big no-no. Like many East Asian cultures, red ink is used only for the names of dead people (and for monetary deficits, of course). Writing the name of a living person in red is essentially cursing them to death. Happy Halloween, students!

<-- Curiously, this taboo only affects writing. It does not affect the ink stamps called "hanko" that are carried by everyone as a quick way of signing official documents. Everyone uses red ink pads for those, such as the one in my hanko case on the left.


^ Above is a closeup of my hanko. The top-to-bottom katakana reads ダ ス ト (da-su-to) , which is close enough to my surname for government work.

^ The idea of killing someone by writing their name is found in a wildly popular Japanese series called "Death Note", first written as a weekly comic, then as live-action television, and then an animated series. One of my older students was raving about it, so I watched the subtitled first episode.

The story follows a high-school student who finds a magical notebook called the "Death Note" that was dropped by the Grim Reaper ("note" means notebook in Japanese, so the title translates as "Death Notebook"). If a person's name is written in the notebook while their face is visualized, the person dies.

The student uses his new power to make what he believes is a better world by killing off criminals. But remember, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Drama aside, I think the best part is the invisible Grim Reaper that follows the student around, eating all the food and asking irritating moral questions.

^ Speaking of red, Murasaki Momoko is still doing well. It's getting cold here in Nagaoka, so I'll have to move her inside soon. ~Oyasumi!