Japanese Slang (46 page)

By the early twentieth century, the governments of the Meiji and Taisho periods had finally relaxed some of the more stringent anti-gambling laws; the West, after all, was more likely to be shocked by publicly impaled heads than by widespread betting. But by the beginning of the Showa period, with the rise of fascism, gambling once again became a perilous habit. Just as the cliques of the thirties were ready to surface, the government, in a spirit of wartime frugality, outlawed
the manufacture of what it called
shashihin
(luxury products). Dice and flower cards were high on the list.

Today's betting scene developed from the turmoil of post-war Japan. The gambling cliques stuck together during the difficult war years, and after the war they expanded and opened their doors to thousands of new ethnic Korean and Chinese members. While the rest of Japan filled its speech with dapper American-sounding idioms, the outlawed gambling gangs followed the general underworld trend and sprinkled their language with Chinese and Korean words. By the late sixties, even the most orthodox Japanese gamblers had acquired exotic vocabularies that went well beyond mere gambling jargon. Shoes, for instance, were given Chinese slang names like
t
, chuira,
and
teito.
A male organ could be secretly referred to with the Chinese
toaten,
and a female organ with
kyari. Suicho
came to mean “dead as a doornail,”
hairyan,
a “good-looking woman,” and
ryanshan,
“torching a building.” Words like
haraboji
and
chondai,
for “old man,” came from Korean, as did
taru
(water),
tsuntsuroku
(bar),
shuni
(chicken),
chanpion
(money),
tarukichan
(housewife), and
nibutongi
(prostitute). By the seventies, gambling slang had become so exotic that even gamblers from different parts of town and with different gang affiliations had difficulty understanding each other's conversation.

•   
Ano maotsu dare?
(Who's that cat's child?)
Ee?
(What?)
Ano maotsu no mii!
(That eat's child secret!)
Ee?
(What?)
Ushi no tsume?
(Cow's nails?)
Y
, uma no tsume!
(No, horse nails!)

This might be decoded as:

    Who's that foreign girl there?
What?
That foreign pro!
What?
D'you understand?
No, I don't understand.

Ushi no tsume
(cow's nails) is standard underworld slang for “understand.” The arcane reasoning behind the idiom is that a cow's nails are slit
(wakaru),
a verb that in Japanese also means to understand. A horse, on the other hand, does not have split nails, so
uma no tsume
(horse's nails) means “I do not understand.”

Modern Parlors

The parlors the dice throwers frequent are in the shoddier parts of town, and are known as
semi
(the reversal of
mise,
“shop”). In the fifties and sixties, these gamblers invariably set up shop on the second floor of two-story shanties, a still-common practice. Should the police decide to raid the premises, an event known as
kari o k
(eating the goose), the gamblers have time to throw their dice out of the window and quickly open a book.

Today many dice-throwing groups organize small illegal clubs in the backrooms of apartments, in a move known as
ichibahajime
(starting a market). These
outfits are run along the same lines as the big Yakuza parlors, known as
j
bon
(permanent platters). These big outfits are stable and well-connected enough not to have to move around. A run-of-the-mill parlor is called
ginbari
(silver stretch), while a bustling concern that rakes in the cash is
kinbari
(golden stretch). These names, gangsters explain, were spawned by the word
yumihari
(stretched bow), an older term for betting parlor. The boss is
d
moto
(stomach base), and his assistant
sukedekata
(helping-hand person). The
dekata
(hand person) collects the money and occasionally does
gomidashi
(throwing out the garbage), an unkind gambling term for showing unruly players the door. Larger backroom places also have a
ch
ban
(middle number), who brings tea or sake and helps clean up, a
tsubofuri
(dice shaker), and a
ch
bon
(middle tray), who patrols the game.

•   
Konna ni katchimatte, kono tsubofuri wa ore ni totteoki da ze!
I just keep on winning; that dice thrower's my favorite!

•   
Ore wa anmari fukairi shitakun
kara, ch
ubon de j
bun sa.
I don't get too involved, you know, I just do the odd jobs here.