Occasionally I run across a word or phrase in Japanese that I recognize only because I know I’ve looked it up at least two or three times (if not more). Yet for some reason the meaning just won’t stick with me. This happened earlier today while reading the Asahi at work. This time I intend to do something about it, as well as provide an interesting language lesson for any of our readers who are slowly killing themselves learning Japanese.
The phrase in question today is particularly irksome because of its idiomatic nature. I know the meaning of the individual words, but haven’t an inkling what the hell the phrase as a whole means. It’s as if someone was conversing with you in English and described a situation as “unfit for the salamander.”
So now that I’ve hopefully gotten everyone’s attention, here’s the sentence with today’s mystery phrase in bold:
森氏は会議後、記者団に「はっきり言って、さじを投げた」と語った。
Literally, it means, “to throw the spoon.” So the entire sentence literally translates as:
After the meeting Mr. Mori told reporters, “Honestly speaking, [I] threw the spoon.”
So what’s it mean? It means to give up on something.
And just how did it come to mean this? Isn’t that obvious? The Japanese eat with chopsticks, don’t they? Just as the occasional foreigner who visits Japan today and manages to master the art of eating with chopsticks will be repeatedly praised by his hosts, at one time it was equally difficult for Japanese to master the art of eating with a spoon. As anyone who’s tried eating with chopsticks knows, sometimes you just want to throw them on the ground, go for a fork and just dig in. Well, apparently Japanese used to feel the same way about spoons and would often throw them down in resignation.
Okay, okay. I just made all that up. And honestly speaking, that story was about as unfit for the salamander* as one can get.
Actually, the real story as best I can tell is this. The meaning derives from a situation where a doctor diagnoses a patient’s recovery to be hopeless. At one time medicine was prepared with a spoon and once it was determined that someone was a goner, there was no further need to continue preparing medicine and the doctor could just “throw in the spoon,” so to speak.
If anyone out there can add any clarity to this little history lesson (and my money says that Roy can), I will be looking forward to any additions in the comments section.
* As of 6:41 pm on August 8, 2005, the phrase “unfit for the salamander” did not show up on a Google search. It may be a safe assumption that I am among the first, if not the first, to actually use this phrase in a sentence.
when I used to work at an eikaiwa school, my school had a promotion where they handed out little silver spoons, with a message inscribed on the back: “さじを投げないで！” It was a cheesy promotion, to be sure, but it taught me that supercool expression, which I never forgot.
But my all time favorite Japanese expression still has to be: “サルも木から落ちる”
If you’ll remember, “saji wo nageru” was a phrase included in the government’s test of Japanese skill among college students. According to the survey, if you know this word you have the Japanese skill of a second-year middle schooler!
Here’s the link: https://www.mutantfrog.com/2005/06/07/japans-vocabulary-power-19-of-private-university-students-at-middle-school-level/
Your previous post would be one of the many times I’ve looked this phrase up only to forget it later. May we both never forget it’s meaning again after this or surely the God’s of the Japanese language will cast us into hell.
Actually I like your explanation better! Reminds me of the old Spaghetti-o commercial of about 1970, where a pretty Japanese mother tells her two little doll-cute girls (both carefully tricked out in kimono) “This is new American spaghetti. You eat with spoon!” This they proceed to do–using the handles like chopsticks and scissoring up the noodles. (Each dear little miss uses two spoons.) At the end one wails, “I like the Spaghetti-os but I don’t like the spoon!” Racist? Yes. Silly? Yes? Ah, memories of a more naive time…