Sayonara and Samurai Virtue
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- さようなら literally means "if that's so", "if that is the case", but at some point in history, this word started being used to say "goodbye". But why such a phrase, "if that's so", became a word of farewell. There's one interesting example in an old samurai story from The Tale of Heike, a collection of stories that was compiled more than 700 years ago. This story tells about the battle between Taira clan and Minamoto clan, and there this phrase "if that's so" was used when a samurai lord had to part from his loyal subordinate. I introduce this story by reading the original text, written in old form of Japanese. You can take a look at how this phrase was used in the context, and also take a glimpse of the samurai view of the world and their virtue.
00:00 Sayonara
02:16 Tale of Heike
05:03 Death of Kiso
07:38 Samurai Virtue
Transcript:
源氏物語 The Take of Heike, the battle between Taira clan and Minamoto clan
源義仲 Yoshinaka Minamoto or 木曽義仲 Yoshinaka Kiso
源頼朝 Yoritomo Minamoto, the first shogun of Kamakura shogunate (he found the shogunate)
後白河法皇 Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa
今井兼平 Kanehira Imai
さらば (old form of さようなら)
今井の四郎、木曾殿、主従二騎になつて、のたまひけるは、「日来はなにともおぼえぬ鎧が、けうはおもうなつたるぞや」。
Kanehira and his master, Yoshinaka were alone. Kiso said, "This armor of mine, I never thought about it, but it feels heavy today."
今井四郎申しけるは、「御身もいまだつかれさせたまはず。御馬もよはり候はず。
Kanehira said, "You are not that tired and your horse is not yet winded.
なにによつて一両の御きせながをおもうはおぼしめし候べき。
Why should mere armor weigh heavily on you?
それは御方に御勢が候はねば、臆病でこそさはおぼしめし候へ。
That is because you lost your men and you became a coward.
兼平一人候とも、余の武者千騎とおぼしめせ。矢七八候へば、しばらくふせき矢仕らん。
There is only me here, but think of me as an army of a thousand. I still have seven or eight arrows left. I can still cover you for a while.
あれに見え候、粟津の松原と申。あの松の中で御自害候へ」とて、
Look, there is the forest of pinewood, called Awazu. Please go in there and end your life."
うつてゆく程に、又あら手の武者五十騎ばかり出できたり。
They headed toward the forest, but then a band of fifty soldiers appeared in front of them.
「君はあの松原へいらせ給へ。兼平は此敵ふせき候はん」と申ければ、
Kanehira said "Please go into the pine tree forest, my lord. I will keep the enemy off."
木曽殿のたまひけるは、「義仲宮こにていかにもなるべかりつるが、これまでのがれくるは、汝と一所で死なんと思う為也。
Yoshinaka said, "I could have done that in the capital. But I fled all the way here, because I wanted to die with you.
ところどころで討たれんよりも、一ところでこそ打死をもせめ」とて、
"I'd rather die with you, than die apart."
馬の鼻を並べてかけむとしたまへば、今井四郎馬よりとびおり、主の馬の口にとりついて申けるは、
Yoshinaka brought his horse beside Imai and prepare to charge. Then Imai dismounted and took his lord's bridle. He said,
弓矢とりは、年頃、日頃いかなる高名候へども、最後の時不覚しつれば、ながき疵にて候也。
A samurai, no matter how great his fame is, if he made a mistake at the end, it will tarnish him forever.
御身はつかれさせ給ひて候。つづく勢は候はず。
You are exhausted and you don't have your men.
敵にをしへだてられ、言うかひなき人、郎等にくみ落されさせ給て討たれさせ給なば、
If the enemy divides us apart and a man who bears no name managed to drag you down and kill you.
「さばかり日本国に聞えさせ給ひつる木曽殿をば、それがしが郎等の討ちたてまつたる」なんど申さん事こそ口惜う候へ。
People would say "Oh, such a famous lord, Kiso, whose name known in all of Japan, but some nobody got him". This, I cannot tolerate it.
ただあの松原へいらせ給へ」と申ければ、
"So please just go into that pinewood forest".
木曽、「さらば」とて、粟津の松原へぞかけたまふ。
"If that's so" said Yoshinaka, he galloped into the forest.
執着 obsession
潔さ quality of a person who doesn't obsess with things, who can forgo something without hesitation.
散る leaves or petals to fall from a tree
Seems like you wrote 源氏物語 (Tale of Genji) when you meant 平家物語 (Tale of Heike)
At least one of the native speakers at my University Japanese course said さようならまた
This is priceless. Thank you!
That last "sayōnara" was just a special way of ending the video right? You're not going anywhere are you, kaname? 😢
I felt the sadness
He just posted another video!
@@HunniRoze よかった
Huh, I've never noticed the literal meaning of さようなら. It's like learning "goodbye" came from "god be with you".
I've known English for almost over 2/3 of my life but never knew this :o
Huh… you learn something new everyday. Yes, I did fact check you.
Intriguing!
@@mudkip_btw wait until you find out the origin of Spanish/Portuguese, "Adeus"
@@flavvsdasilver6442spanish: adios, portuguese: adeus ... (just adding correction to it) :3
It really sucks that this video got so little views, it's actually a very interesting etymology and hearing archaic Japanese was fascinating too. Thanks, Kaname.
Shakespeare ain't for everyone
I never had it presented to me until today, and I'm subscribed with all notifications. But I saw his newest one today within 4 hours. I feel like YT did something fishy here.
I had to wait until I had some free time to dedicate to just watching the video with no distractions. I usually watch Kaname's videos when I'm cooking or doing the dishes. I'm glad I finally got around to it!
I suspect the UA-cam algorithm might not like references to an honourable death? Even though this video isn’t advocating the audience to undertake anything similar, and the events transpired many centuries ago… 😮😅 Anyway, this video was absolutely brilliant, so insightful. And such a coincidence it was published right as I was in the middle of reading a book on the history of the samurai, and had just read a chapter mentioning the very same people.
that was a beautiful story. With the circumstances around it, the "saraba" that Yoshinaka said really stabbed deep
RIP KANAME
Lol
Great video! Common words in japanese have so much history behind them.
I'm not an expert on this topic but it makes me think about Arigatou. Looking at the kanji it is written like "有難う" which vaguely can be translated to something like "Difficult to get / Difficult to exist" which to my understanding insinuates "What you did is a rare thing and difficult to get, therefore I'm thankful for it"
In Chinese 有難 would literally translate to, "has difficulty". The more I learn Japanese, the more I feel like I have a window into understanding classical Chinese.
I read the book in translation quite a time ago, but this scene was so powerful, I immediately remembered this moment. It is interesting not even as a historical piece, but simply as a piece of literature as well.
Let's dive into this etymology.
(My reference, unless otherwise stated, is Shogakukan's 国語大辞典. I've got a dead-tree copy, and there's also a decent online version available for free via Kotobank. Note that Kotobank's layout is a bit confusing for terms spelled with kanji that have multiple readings.)
Sense development
さようなら
Listed here as first appearing in texts from around 1742. Derived as a shortening of さようならば.
さようならば
Listed here as first appearing in texts from around the late 1500s, early 1600s, as a conjunction. The meaning was as expected from its parts: さようlike that, that way + ならばif it be. The "goodbye" sense appears later, cited to a text from 1791.
→ We can surmise that the "goodbye" sense for either form probably showed up in the early 1700s.
Derivation of the parts
さよう
First cited in the 伊勢いせ物語ものがたり (The Tales of Ise) of the early 900s.
This is a compound of さ ("that", medial distal marker, cognate with modern そ) + よう ("way, manner, appearance").
さ
First appears in the Nara period (710-794) with the form さて. The shorter さ then appears from the Heian period (794-1185). Modern そう was formerly さう, and this さ may be the first component of that.
Commonly spelled 然 in references. While cognate with the そ in words like そこ・それ・そなた etc., the そ version was used for physical and concrete things, while さ was used for abstract and psychological things.
Note that the character 然 is borrowed from Chinese, but the reading sa is purely Japanese. 然 in Middle Chinese was read as something like /ȵiᴇn/ instead, resulting in the modern Japanese on'yomi of zen.
よう
Commonly spelled 様 in references. This is the only component of this phrase that derives from Chinese, specifically from earlier glyph form 樣 ("appearance; form; look").
In Middle Chinese when this was first borrowed into Japanese, the pronunciation was probably something like /jɨɐŋ/ (the "j" here represents a sound like "y" in English; reconstructed based on linguistic research into sound changes and sound correspondences). The historical kana spelling in Japanese is やう, representing how it was probably first pronounced in Japanese: /jau/. (We see the same /au/ → /oː/ shift here as we saw above with さう.)
ならば
The term さよう is a 形容動詞けいようどうし or "-na adjective". The -na modifier particle in modern Japanese comes from older attributive (noun-modifying) なる, which comes from a contraction of even older に + ある. This なる developed some time in the Heian period when 形容動詞けいようどうし were first used.
The ならば in さようならば, the oldest form of this term, is this older なる for -na adjectives, conjugated into the conditional or hypothetical form.
In modern Japanese, the conditional / hypoethetical is created by adding a ば onto the conditional / hypothetical verb stem, which ends in -e (sometimes with an extra -r- in the middle). Consider 行いく → 行けば, or 食たべる → 食たべれば. This -e stem evolved from the ancient / classical 已然形いぜんけい or "realis conjugation" which expressed something that is or could be real, used in subjunctive or suppositional constructions.
In ancient Japanese, the conditional / hypothetical could be formed using the -e stem, or also by using the -a stem -- also called the 未然形みぜんけい or "irrealis conjugation" which expressed something that isn't real. This is the same as the modern -a verb stem used for negatives.
(There seems to have been some subtlety of meaning differentiating the -eba usage from the -aba usage, but I haven't yet read a fuller exploration of that topic.)
Update: I've learned a bit more about classical Japanese since I wrote the strikethrough portion above. 😄
In classical usage, the -eba ending was a conditional, a bit like English "because". This uses the classical 已然形いぜんけい or "realis conjugation", talking about something that has happened or is assumed will happen.
「XXXすれ●ば●、YYY...」 means "because you're doing XXX, then YYY".
「XXXへ行け●ば●、YYY...」 means "because you're going to XXX, then YYY".
Meanwhile, the -aba ending was a hypothetical, a bit like English "if". This uses the classical 未然形みぜんけい or "irrealis conjugation", talking about something that hasn't happened (maybe not yet, maybe never will).
「XXXせ●ば●、YYY」 means "if you do XXX, then YYY".
「XXXへ行か●ば●、YYY」 means "if you go to XXX, then YYY".
Conclusion
The only piece with any Chinese derivation is 様よう. The best interpretation of the etymology given in A Word A Day is that it was somewhat scrambled, and the "ultimately from Chinese" portion wound up in the wrong place in the sentence.
Addendum
Part of my family background is from Minnesota. When I was first learning Japanese and was taught the background meaning of さようなら, I realized it basically parses out to "well, if that's the way it's going to be" -- which somehow seems like a really Minnesotan way of saying "goodbye".
Source:
edited Sep 21 at 23:29
answered Jun 3, 2020 at 21:44

Eiríkr Útlendi
The final battle scene with the falling flower pedals in the Last of the Samurai movie finally makes sense.
I learned such a beautiful thing today. The history of words and phrases is often interesting, but in this case, I found it moving.
Really helpful video! I wonder if it could be compared to ‘farewell’ in English - it’s formal, not used in daily conversation, and sounds a bit more ‘serious’/like someone is leaving and not coming back!
さらば[saraba] would be comparable to farewell, whereas さようなら is definitely closer to goodbye. You wouldn't say "farewell" to your teacher at the end of class
I feel like something along the line of 'I wish thee fare well' would be a more apt translation of さらば, really pushing the super formal/archaic feeling, whereas さようから could be 'goodbye' or 'farewell' depending on context (and if you think about it, both of the English words act the same.)
Wow, I'm simply struck speechless. I knew it was a word that shouldn't be used lightly but now that I know the history behind it, it seems that much more meaningful and special. The writing of the tale mentally transported me right to the scene, it felt like magic. I plan on enrolling in Japanese studies in university next year and if this is what awaits me I'm going to be absorbing everything like a sponge. Thank you so much for making this video
I really appreciated this video. Not only did you teach language, you taught some interesting history to further explain the language used!
What a beautiful story. Bravo, Kaname, this combines my obsession with etymology with the love for a tale with a beautiful but ironic ending.
It was super interesting! 💛
I love this! I would love to hear about other terms of phrase derived from classical literature!
Yes please!
ありがとう is derived from ありがたし
ありがたし is writen as 有り難し
有る + 難しい means hardly ever, rare, precious and more
NO! DON'T GO!!
NOOOOOOOOOO!!! Kanameeeeeeee!!! DON'T LEAVE US PLEASE 😭😭😭
These cultural videos are a really great supplement to your language lessons! Please make more!
日本人の精神性を理解するのに役立つお話ですね。とても良い回でした。
I spent quite a long time in Japan before I ever heard anyone say 'sayonara'.
I was expecting to hear it all the time, but I'd got so used to NOT hearing it, it was weird when I DID hear it!
I never knew this! Kiso Yoshinaka's death is one of the most tragic and most poignant in the whole of Heike monogatari. I have my students in my Buddhism class read parts of it.
Awesome story and beautifully told, thank you!
ありがとうございます。
These videos are extremely informative and helpful. Thank you for providing us great content and insight into your language.
Kaname san ❤ i swear everytime i see you uploading new video, my mood lighten up ❤
I appreciated you reading from The Tale of the Heike! I'd be happy if there was more storytime on this channel in future videos.
dope vid! I really like the culture aspect of this one, thanks a ton :)
I love the way that you deliver explanations in your videos. It offers a fresh perspective on the Japanese language even though I've been studying for a while! These nuances in meaning are very important to me, as one day I would like to be able to speak in Japanese with the same "essence", so to speak, with which I speak in English ^^
I love this!! Very interesting! I'll share this with so many people, hahah!
Thank you for your wonderful videos, always! ^_^
Greetings from Brazil! :D
Thanks so much for the explanation, this is so valuable and insightful! I hope there is going to be more videos like this one where Kaname explains the hidden meanings behind words. Japanese history and classic literature is so awesome
Really interesting video ! I looked up the kanji (左様なら) and it got me to think of 左遷 and that somehow made sense to me from the "if so/if i have to give something up". The Sayounara at the end really shook me, I can only hope it's just to be in line with the video, not a good bye. Thank you so much for the insights.
I lived as a resident in Japan for more than five years. In all those years, I’ve only heard a local use SAYANORA once and that was from a high school lad who ran into his mum’s friend on the train. When it was time to get off, the boy slightly bowed his head and said sayonara in an insanely deep voice. Although I don't recall her responding, I do remember the mum’s friend waving him out with a huge smile. That interaction’s forever etched in my brain!
This was incredible. I suppose, さようなら means 'I am reluctant to leave you,' perhaps. I really enjoyed hearing the language of the 平家物語!
I feel quite happy that I can read the kanji for the title Heike Monogatari. But sorry I am not humble enough. I believe I've seen very old film of some of this work many years ago. It's wonderful to get a new perspective on it with you.
先生さようなら言ってないでください！！！
Excellent video, Kaname-san!
Great item. I recently found your channel and I don't know if you already do, but make more of these poetic items please!
Nice video! I'd love to see more videos that talk about symbolism! With having never been to Japan there are a lot of symbolic things I see in Japanese media I watch that I don't understand and don't notice because I'm not exposed to the culture, and resources that talk about these things are rare to find.
Really interesting vid!
I hope this video gets a million views!
There’s such elegance to Kaname-san’s work. It’s art.
さようなら。また会う日まで❤
"...goodbye, my friend..." annihilated me lmao
Thank you for sharing this explanation and story with us, 要さん. Knowing that there are wonderful stories like the Tale of Heike on the other side of the language learning journey just makes the effort feel all the more worth it.
For your さようなら, I can only respond, またよろしくね.
(I hope that sounds right anyway XD)
Very very good video.
This story was realy heart touching 🥹
The explanation with the sakura leafs reminded me about that one scene in Last Samurai.
Interesting, we also use the verb "to fall" in english for a similar situation, e.g. "he fell in battle"
I never really realized that sayonara had this deeper meaning. But if you really listen to the phrase, it becomes painfully obvious how archaic it sounds.
I came here to learn, not to cry.
Thank you for your video! I was just wondering, did you read this story without the use of furigana? Would you say most native Japanese people can read these kind of old stories?
I really liked this one. I never knew that about 'sayonara'
さよならば、これにてごめん．
Interesting
この動画を何回も見て聞かなければありませんそして、面白くて良いです先生。
私はインドの出身です。❤🎉
I understood the lingering melancholy of the last 「左様なら」 :') Well played, it was the perfect punch line to this video!
After that intense and deep explanation, you say Sayonara? I’m on the edge of my seat just hoping things are ok for you.
あ、待て、なぜ終わりで「さようなら」と言いましたか？
行かないで、かなめさん！日本語のレッスンまだ好きだよ！！/(T＿Ｔ)7
I really felt the sadness at the last sayonara there
Wake up babe, new video just dropped
Kaname is very handsome and charming. ✨
So, I'll go homeのI'll go homeが略されてるみたいなニュアンスに近いんじゃないですかね。知らんけど。
あと、「さようなら」はfarewellみたいな言葉ではないですよ。侍(samurai)の言葉が由来だというので古くて堅苦しい言葉だと思ったかもしれませんが、決してfarewellほど古風な言い方・固い言葉ではありません。farewellのように必ず長い別れを暗示する訳でもありません。まあ友達には「じゃあね」「バイバイ」「またね」が普通ですが、場合によっては「さようなら」も使いますよ。Goodbyeと同じだと思います。言い方の問題です。
他の言葉として「ごきげんよう」という言葉はアニメなどによく出てきますが、これも格調高い言い方(「山の手言葉」と呼ばれる)なだけでfarewellとは違うと思います。farewellにあたる日本語をあえて挙げるなら「さらば」ですね。
授業で木曽の最期は習ったけど巴御前の豪腕と今井四郎の自害の様の衝撃が強くて「さらば」に注目したことはなかったなあ
Old Japanese (Classic Japanese?) is almost a different language o.o I can understand a little Japanese from the Sengoku Era (Medieval Japanese, I think), but this is way too distinct :o But it sounds very cool! n_n
It's similar to when one would say "Farewell" in English. It's more formal than "Goodbye" so it has a more serious connotation.
Any way to have some private lessons from Kaname San?
さらばスバルよの歌詞を恋した。
Historical Japanese names (before Meiji), such as Minamoto Yoshinaka, *_are never flipped,_* always written in the original Japanese order. Of course, I don't think that Japanese names should ever be flipped, and that there neither is, nor ever has been, any valid, or in any way sensible, reason to ever flip (any) names, and, since 2019, the Japanese government agrees ...but regardless of that, historical names are not flipped.
saraba reminds me of that japanese high school graduation song
After ending the video with that さようなら, you should've faded to a black screen, broken only by the sound of a lone gunshot lmfao
I've imagined the English figurative equivalent to be "Until we meet again."
kaname swag!!!!!
it's a difference in meaning between names "Kiso" and "Kisho"?
Make me think of the op of 宇宙戦艦ヤマト, "さらば 地球よ". And also the movie version, さらば宇宙戦艦ヤマト 愛の戦士たち.
😢 oh, non ! Ok ok. If you had to go , then we 've to accept gracefully. Hoping all is going well for you. And please, come back soon.
❤😊😊
I love the 平家物語
It's so old that google translate doesn't make sense. Also old chinese also likes to end sentences in 也
So it can be used sarcastically too?
Japanese DONT do or get sarcasm.
@@UsernamesHandle
@@colinjames2469 Kaname-sense uses it at the end of the video
くーるなれっすん！
So can we use ”さらば” as goodbye?
probably but I'd imagine it would sound a lot like saying "Fare thee well" or "God be with ye"
It’s used in lyrics of many songs but no one says it in real life
@@vonneumann6161 huh I can't recall ever hearing it, I'll need to keep an ear out for it...
@@no.7893 I’ve been trying to paste links to the songs on UA-cam but UA-cam keeps deleting my comments so I’ll just tell you that ピースサイン(peace sign) by yonezu kenshi says さらば in the lyrics.
「さらば掲げろピースサイン」
@@vonneumann6161 oh yeah I think url blocking is pretty common. I'll be sure to check it out, I'm always looking for more japanese music to compensate for how little I do listening immersion haha
しばし！🥷
啊啊啊啊啊啊，刚发现内藤君在微博是大V😅
When i Know almost 400 kanji but don't know katakana yet
When I lie
That doesn't sound plausible, given that katakana are derived from radicals in kanji. If you know 400 kanji you should have definitely noticed that
work on it ryuzaki! u can do it if you almost took down kira :D
@@dogoku I noticed that katakana is derived from kanji , I will work on my katakana although I know most important characters
You're not alone. I just bit the bullet and learned it.
Why is it that when you say this here: 8:01, you pronounce the word "ii-sa-gi-yo-sa", but the hiragana reads as just "ii-sa-gi-yo"? What is the "sa" here and why was it left out of the hiragana?
there is a さ right next to the kanji. furigana covers only the reading of the kanji, not the whole word. it's purpose is to show the reading of a kanji in case you don't know how to pronounce it
That and that the さ indicates this is a noun that came from an adjective.
First comment!
さようならお前
Japanese culture and Japanese language are the same thing.
One time my student said sayounara to me, neither of us are Japanese, and I was like "Ee!? Are you quiting the school!?" He was not.
Ah, so that's the word for "farewell" I should have uttered to that Japanese girl going to the forest! I used the Quenya "namarië", but I'm just an autistic Ukrainian boy who never watched anime, haha. (The girl is still alive btw.) - Adûnâi
Al final ....siempre han sido y serán racistas y xenófobos con los extranjeros...
Los hafu...
Y los americanos ...
Pero usan autos europeos en Japón para diferenciarse entre ustedes por qué son clasistas y arrogantes...
Salvi la gente en nishinari..😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
El único comentario en español que veo en este video, y está diciendo puras estulteces.
If we still want to see someone oneday (but don't know when). Better use : また合いますよ
Better with また会いましょう
Note the different kanji as well.