MovieChat Forums > Honogurai mizu no soko kara (2002) Discussion > Japanese Language Subtleties

Japanese Language Subtleties

posted 12 years ago by sfarlea_andrei
3 replies | jump to latest

I enjoyed Dark Water very much and my opinion is that J-horror is by far the best in the world. However, sometimes we miss some very interesting details because we can't understand Japanese. And what makes their language both fascinating and difficult to learn is that they have relatively few words which may have 8-10 meanings, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. Fortunately I watched this movie with a friend who studies J. and he revealed 2 interesting things:

1. At one point the red bag is in the "lost and found" box. The Japanese word for "and" is "shi" which also means death. That's exactly what happened to the little girl: she was lost, died and then found.
2. The ghost apartment is on the 7-th floor and the Japanese word for 7 is "shichi". As explained above, one of the meanings of "shi" is death, while "chi" stands for blood.

I'm sure there are a lot of other such hidden messages, it's just that they are inaccessible for people who don't speak Japanese.

[–] Ktw12 12 years ago

I didn't know those two things. Thanks for posting. I'm always interested in learning new things about Japan.

[–] popcalent 12 years ago

I'm sorry but nothing of what you say makes sense.

The box says "oto-shi-mono", literally "Dropped objects" and not "Lost and found". Shi is not the word for and (because it doesn't say "Lost and found"). Otosu means to drop and mono means object. When you combine these two words Otosu becomes Otoshi.

Shi means death, but the shi in otoshi is just the inflection of that word. Nothing to do with death. It's like saying that the shi in Mitsubishi means death.

Another example is Nomimono (a drink): Nomu (to drink) becomes Nomi. It's the way Japanese grammar is.

Besides, the number for death is 4 (shi) not 7 (shichi). This is a well known fact about Japanese superstition.

Here's what happened: as 90% of students of Japanese as a second language your friend can barely read a few hiragana/katakana, and can barely introduce himself in Japanese. When the otoshimono box appeared on scene with the subtitles in English saying "Lost and Found" your friend was able to read only the hiragana on otoshimono (which happens to be the shi, everything else is in kanji), so he read ###shi#####. Then someone who was there watching the movie and read the subtitles in English said: "Is that what it says in Japanese? Lost and Found?". Your friend had no idea, but he was too embarrassed to admit it, so he made up some BS and said: "Yeah, and by the way, shi which is the 'and' in 'Lost and Found' also means death".

[–] mphughes44 11 years ago

Ha! You're right on about the OP's friend the Japanese master. That's probably exactly what happened.

If anyone is curious though I think the selection of the floors was intentional. It's the same in the short story this is based on for one thing. There is an old superstition about the numbers 4 (shi) and 7 (shichi) because of the association with death. It's why they have the alternate readings yon (4) and nana (7). Just like in the West hospitals sometimes won't have rooms numbered 13 (so as not to trouble superstitious patients), hotels and other buildings sometimes won't have a fourth or (more rarely) 7th floor. The elevator buttons just go from 3 to 5. It's not ubiquitous by any means, but I have seen it.

The Japanese have lots of odd superstitions based on puns or similar sounding words (my favorite is hiding your thumbs when an ambulance passes in hopes your parents aren't inside, because oyayubi or thumb means parent finger) but ochimono definitely isn't one of them.