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... Students who are approaching idioms for the first time may want to know exactly what an idiom is. The third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defines the word as "a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on." This simply means that students of the English language may know the individual meanings of keep, tab, and on, but still not understand what the phrase keep tabs on means.
The same applies to the Japanese language. For example, students may know the individual words in the phrase xxxx kata o motsu (kata = shoulder, o = particle indicating a direct object, motsu = hold), but still not understand what the phrase as a whole means ("to side with or support someone"). To learn the meaning, there is no choice but to look the phrase up in a dictionary and commit it to memory. If idioms like this cropped up only occasionally in writing or conversation, they would not represent a problem worth fretting about, but the fact is that idioms are just as widely used in Japanese as they are in English. This is because they are often the most concise, efficient, and pointed way of expressing what one wants to say.
Thus students must first learn idioms in order to understand everyday conversation and written material. This can be called a passive use of idioms -- to understand them us they are presented by an outside source, so that you can at least grasp the intent of what is being conveyed.
The second reason students must study idioms is proactive, since it is only through idioms that students can hope to express their thoughts effectively and avoid awkward paraphrasing. Better to learn them than to be continually stopped in the midst of a paraphrase by your Japanese conversant with a sudden "Oh, you mean kata o motsu," or whatever, providing exactly the right phrase for what you wanted to say.
There are many other reasons why idioms must, or should, be learned, not the least of which is the fact that idioms often serve as pivotal points for jokes. For instance, you could play on the Biblical admonition that "you should not cast pearls before swine" xxxx buta ni shinj, meaning, of course, that you shouldn't give something important to a person who cannot understand its value. If a certain Tanaka-san is just that obtuse person, you could say, "Don't cast pearls before Tanaka-san" xxxxxxx Tanaka-san ni shinj. Or let us say that in your place of work there is a British person who is known for his crafty political maneuvering. Let us further say that a Japanese, making use of a common expression, refers to him as an "wily old raccoon" xx furu-danuki. You could play on this idiom and respond by saying that "the only thing worse than a wily old raccoon is a wily old Brit" xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx furu-danuki yori furu-Igirisu-jin ga osoroshii.
The idioms appearing in this book are basically of two types: idiomatic words and phrases (such as those cited above) and expressions composed of four Chinese characters (commonly called xxxx yoji-jukugo "four-character compounds"). These compounds are generally not thought of as idioms but either simply as compound nouns or as adages and proverbs. Among the compound nouns might be counted xxxx nenko-joretsu ("seniority") and xxxx ishiki-fumei ("unconscious"), which, though they are fairly straightforward, need some interpretation to be understood and therefore can be considered within the idiom bailiwick. The adage or proverb type definitely need explanation to be understood. Examples are xxxx goetsu-doshu ("the Go and the Etsu in the same boat") and xxxx junin-toiro ("ten people, ten colors"). This type can be considered idiomatic in the sense that their exact meaning is not clear from the surface meaning of the individual words.
In conclusion, it might be noted that a good number of the idioms involve the character x ki. These words and phrases are extremely important in expressing moods and feelings, and without at least minimal knowledge of them it is nearly impossible to carry on a normal conversation. Starting with xx genki (original ki), as in xxxxxx Ogenki desu ka "How are you?" and going on to heavy, light, long, short, warped, and crazed ki, and ending perhaps with xxxxxxxxxx so iu ki ga shimashita "That's the way I felt about it," innumerable ways are provided for expressing feelings and thoughts.
All in all, idioms are not only useful -- in fact, indispensable -- to speaking and understanding Japanese, but they can also be a great deal of fun to learn, to explore, and, yes, to play with.
Editorial Department Kodansha International
