Talk:Daruma doll
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[edit] Article name
My denshijisho tells me that the correct romanization for だるま is dharma, based on the Sanskrit→English connection rather than the Japanese→English connection. I'm going to move the page and leave a note that daruma is also used. Dekimasu 02:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Controversial aspects
I'm confused as to why one section was removed for being uncited, leaving all the other unreferenced sections. This is not likely a high-traffic article, and to expect the request for a citation to be filled in two weeks is very ambitious. And as I said, the relevant section also appears in the Japanese Wikipedia article. Anyway, here is a citation that should be sufficient corroboration to readd the section.
From the Mainichi Shimbun, January 25, 2003:
４月の統一地方選挙を前に、視覚障害者団体の代表が２４日、当選祝いの 定番となっている「だるまの目入れ」を見直すよう与野党各党に申し入れた。 目入れの儀式が視覚障害者への差別を助長するとの理由からで、くす玉 割りなどでの代用を提案した。
申し入れたのは静岡県視覚障害者協会の萩原善次郎名誉会長ら。これまで も選挙のたびに、目入れをやめるよう呼びかけてきたが、長年続いた風習は 今も根強く残っている。萩原さんは、自民党の甘利明副幹事長らを個別に 訪ね、「目入れの風習は両目があって完全だという偏見の意識を育てることに なりかねない」などと訴えた。甘利氏は「趣旨は理解できる」と述べたという。
だるまは縁起物として選挙に欠かせない存在で、萩原さんもそれ自体を否定 しているわけではない。「目入れという痛々しい印象を与えるイベントを避けて、 くす玉割りなど、やさしく思いやりのある手段に変えていただきたい」と話して いる。
Dekimasu 08:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Further sources
Lafcadio Hearn's A Japanese Miscellany has more information on Daruma dolls than the small bit I added. It would be a wonderful resource for anyone wanting to expand this article. It's available free at Archive.org. In addition, there are several promising journal articles at Google Scholar. — BrianSmithson 08:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Okiagari-koboshi
I am confused as to why we would translate okiagari koboshi as "getting-up little priest" just to maintain the Japanese grammar structure. I really thought about this, and I replaced it with "little roly-poly monk" for several reasons. First, the "little" would always come before "getting-up" in English. Second, I'm not sure why we claim they are priests rather than monks when we have already stated that they are based on Bodhidharma. And finally, "getting-up" is a tedious adjective. The point is not that he is waking or that he is rising by himself, but that he is "rising again", which is what a roly-poly does. "Self-righting" would also be okay (i.e. "little self-righting monk"), as that would de-emphasize the personification of the toy. I don't understand why we would advocate a literal translation when that translation results in the emphasis of a foreign nature of the term. Dekimasuが... 09:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- The reason I changed back is because the translation I used was from the sources of the okiagari-koboshi article. The dolls the roly-poly Daruma dolls are based on are evidently not supposed to be monks, but priests (although there may not be much difference in this case), so of your proposed translations, my only real problem is with using monk rather than priest. The translation "getting-up little priest" is from Hearn, I believe, but like I said, the other translations are good bar monk, I think. — Brian (talk) 10:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- I think that mentioning Hearn's name for the okiagari koboshi would be interesting to include in that article, then, and can be a good source of raw information, but I don't think he is usually considered a reliable source anymore (in the real-world sense, not the Wikipedia sense). I don't have a particular problem with priest, and I agree that there isn't a real difference, but 法師 is equivalent to 坊主 (or 坊さん) and 坊主 is almost always translated as "monk". Neither priest nor monk fits very well, and both terms are used, apparently interchangeably, in the Zen article, so if you like priest, that's fine with me. Dekimasuが... 12:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
