＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X
Following on from last time, we’ll be introducing some interesting etymologies and origins of Japanese words. This time, we’ll be introducing some Japanese words that originate from the word “gambling.”
1. Gambling or Risk（Ichi ka bachi ka ：一か八か)
This word brings to mind Yasushi Yokoyama（横山やすし） (1944-1996), the partner of Kiyoshi Nishikawa in the “Yasukiyo Manzai” comedy duo, which was a huge hit in the Kamigata manzai world. He loved gambling, and I’ve heard stories about his son, Kazuya Kimura（木村一八）, being named after him because “life is a gamble!” or because “one and eight combine to form a turnip.”
However, according to Kazuya Kimura himself, “his father wanted him to have at least one thing in life that he could be proud of, so he named him after a kabuki specialty (ohako：歌舞伎の十八番).”
“Ichi ka bachi ka” means “to take a risk, leaving your luck to chance, even though you have no idea what the outcome will be.”
This was originally a gambling term, with 丁”ichi（一）” coming from the upper parts of the kanji characters “cho” (丁) and “bachi（八）” (han) (半) meaning “half,” and referred to games such as ding-han gambling. “Ding” means even numbers, and “han” means odd numbers, but here “ding” and “han” don’t refer to odd or even numbers, but only to the kanji characters.
Other theories include the “dice gambling” theory, which means “ichi（一） or bachi（罰）,” meaning success when the dice number is a one, or failure when it is a miss, and the “karuta gambling” theory, which goes something like “ichi ka hachi ka” (ichi ka hachi ka or shakyamuni ju ka)
2. Let It Ride（Noruka Soruka ：伸るか反るか）
There was an American comedy film released in 1990 called “Let It Ride.” It was the story of a taxi driver who loved gambling (horse racing) and his wife who hated gambling.
“Noru ka soruka” means “to leave it up to fate and go all out, even though the outcome is uncertain, whether it will succeed or fail.” It is mainly used when taking a gamble. It has the same meaning as “ichi ka bachika” (a gamble). It is incorrect to write it as “noru ka soruka.”
“Noru” means “to grow long” or “to grow straight,” while “soru” means “to bend backward.”
The etymology of the word comes from “arrow maker’s arrow making.”
When an arrow maker makes an arrow shaft, he places the bamboo in a”notamegata” (a tool to straighten the bamboo) to dry it. Arrow shafts are made from thin bamboo, but if the thickness is not uniform and straight, the arrow will not fly in the desired direction. There, the cut bamboo is fitted into a “notamegata” (form of bamboo) to straighten it and dry it.
If the bamboo is straight when it is removed from the “notamegata” it can be used to make an arrow, but if it is even slightly bent it is useless and must be discarded.
The phrase “Noruka Soruka” (will it be straight or bent) comes from the fact that the arrow makers would take out the bamboo whilst worrying about whether it would be successful.
It is also said that the word “Noruka Soruka” (to gamble) has taken on a stronger competitive connotation, as the word “noru” (to bet) refers to deciding the outcome by betting something.
3. Going with the flow（Detatoko Shobu：出たとこ勝負）
In September 2002, exactly one year after the September 11 attacks, my wife and I embarked on our first overseas trip as a couple: a trip along Europe’s Romantic Road. It was a sudden idea, we went to a travel agency, and we made the decision immediately. Looking back, I realize how great a decision we made, even though there was a real risk of another terrorist attack, hijacking, or plane crash. I’d be too scared to go now.
We both had a gut feeling that “if we didn’t go now, we’d never be able to travel abroad again,” so we went on a “going with the flow” overseas trip, without even buying or reading a guidebook. As expected, we haven’t traveled abroad since.
“Going with the flow” means “going with the flow, without planning or preparation.”
This term comes from “dice gambling.” In dice gambling, the outcome is determined by the number on the dice, but the number you get is impossible to predict unless you cheat.
4. Intuition（Yamakan ：山勘）
There used to be a TV quiz show called “Reikan Yamakan Sixth Sense（「霊感ヤマカン第六感」）.” I’ve also heard stories of classmates who got Yamakan right on exams, but I’ve never gotten it right, perhaps because I have no luck with the lottery or competitions.
“Yamakan” means “relying on intuition to achieve success; a random guess; tricking someone into a scheme, or the person who tricks them.”
“Yamakan” is a word that emerged in the early modern period, around the same time as expressions like “to bet on (amount)” and “to hit the mountain,” and it was around this time that the word “kan” (intuition) came to be used to mean “sixth sense.”
There are two interesting theories about the origin of the word “yamakan.” One is that it is an abbreviation of Yamamoto Kansuke（山本勘助） (1493-1561), the brilliant military strategist and strategist of Takeda Shingen（武田信玄） (1521-1573). The other is that it is an abbreviation of “yamashi no kan” (calculation) (山師の勘).
The Yamamoto Kansuke theory is that he was skilled at scheming, and so the term “yamakan” came to mean cheating. The speculator’s intuition theory is that the work of a speculator in mining is a bit like gambling, with many hits and misses, so the word relies on the intuition of a craftsman.
The “Yamamoto Kansuke theory” is that it is an abbreviation of his name as a nickname, but the era in which it first came into use is too far removed from the era of Yamamoto Kansuke; “yamakan” came to mean cheating later than it did when it came to meaning a random guess; and there is a gap between a brilliant strategy and a random guess.
The “speculator’s intuition” theory seems the most likely, but it appears to be incorrect. Since mountains were the object of speculation, just like in the expressions “betting on a mountain” and “attacking a mountain,” it seems reasonable to think that “yama” meant unexpected success or good fortune, and that “yamakan” came to mean the intuition aimed at that.
In addition, the word “yamashi” is also synonymous with “con man,” so it is thought that the use of “yamakan” to mean deceiving others originates from “yamashi.”