Avoiding the absolute - that is how I see much of Japanese language and thought. Might this be part of the desire to remain childlike and subjective, and avoid objective reality?
Emi once told me that when she learnt the meaning of the English word ‘absolutely’ she though she would never want or need to use such a word. Similarly, when a Japanese character in A circle round the sun by Peregrine Hodson starts to use words like ‘tremendous’ and ‘absolutely’ he is described as becoming English.
Once, when Emi and I went to a stylish bar, she said ‘I can see nice polished floors, I can see lovely brown walls…’ then caught herself and observed it was strange that rather than saying ‘the polished floors are very nice, those brown walls are really lovely’ as we would in English, in Japanese one makes the observation subjective, a statement of sensory impressions, in preference to anything that might be taken for an absolute, and therefore contestable, statement.
I was at first pleased when I learnt taihen and totemo, the words in Japanese that are used to translate ‘very’, because so many of the observations I wanted to make seemed to depend on intensifiers. In common English usage, we are not content to say simply that today was hot, it has to be ‘so hot’. We conventionally describe people as ‘very smart’, ‘extremely cute’, 'totally mad', rather than just smart, cute or mad, which is probably all they are. This is a form of verbal inflation, strictly speaking often untrue, and like other forms of inflation, ultimately undermining. There is something unpoetic about hyperbole, and as might be expected, it does not occur often in Japanese. So now I have been using taihen and totemo less often, like native Japanese speakers who use these words sparingly, and therefore to better effect.
