DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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JAPANESE
​UNTRANSLATABLE WORDS


​AGE-OTORI - the bad feeling one gets after a terrible haircut.

ARIGATA-MEIWAKU - an act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favour, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude.

AWARE - the bittersweetness of a brief and fading moment of transcendent beauty.

BAKKU-SHAN - a beautiful girl— as long as she’s being looked at from behind.

​BOKETTO - means gazing vacantly and without thought into the distance.

HI FUN KOU GAI - righteous, miserable anger, frustration and despair over a situation that seems terrible but cannot be changed. For example, corruption in a government.

IKIGAI - a reason for being; the thing that gets you up in the morning.

JO-HA-KYU - is a concept of modulation and movement applied in a wide variety of traditional Japanese arts. Roughly translated to "beginning, break, rapid", it essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly.

KINTSUKUROI - to repair with gold. Understanding that a piece is more beautiful for having broken.

KOI NO YOKAN –the sudden knowledge upon meeting someone that the two of you are destined to fall in love.

KOMOREBI - refers to the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees.

KUIDARE - to eat yourself into bankruptcy.

KWAAKAARI - the glow of the river at dusk

KYOIKUMAMA - a mother who pushes her kids into academic achievements

MONO NO AWARE - this phrase describes a particular sadness or sensitivity regarding the passage of time and the transience of life. In experiencing this sadness people are affected by the fleeting nature of specific things (love or experiences) and become wistful and reflective about the fact that everything must end.

MOTTAINAI - conveys a sense of regret over waste; the exclamation "Mottainai!" can translate as "What a waste!" Japanese environmentalists have used the term to encourage people to "reduce, reuse and recycle", and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai used the term at the United Nations as a slogan to promote environmental protection.

MUSHIN - a Zen expression meaning the mind without mind, and is also referred to as the state of “no-mindness”. That is, a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion and thus open to everything.

NATSUKASHII - identifies the feeling of evocative longing for something past: a nostalgia that's so deep that it reminds you that what you are missing will never come again.

NEKAMA – man who pretends to be a woman on the internet.

NINTENDO - “leave luck to heaven” or to leave one's fortune in the hands of fate.

NITO-ONNA - a woman so dedicated to her career that she has no time to iron blouses, so she dresses only in knitted tops.

SEIJAKU - quiet (sei) tranquillity (jaku); silence, calm, serenity (especially in the midst of activity or chaos).

SHINRIN-YOKU – the relaxation gained from bathing in the forest, figuratively or literally.

SHOUGANAI – a Japanese philosophy that states that if something is meant to be and cannot be controlled, then why worry about it? The idea is that worrying won’t prevent the bad things from happening; it will only deprive you of the joy of enjoying the good things in life. Translated literally, shouganai means ‘it can’t be helped’.

TACHIYOMI - to stand in a bookstore and read a book without buying it.

TATMAE & HONNE - the contrast between a person's feelings and desires (honne) versus the behavior and opinions one displays in public (tatemae)

TSUNDOKU – the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books.

UKIYO - the floating world - living in the moment, detached from the bothers of life

WABI – A flawed detail that creates an elegant whole.

WABI-SABI - a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (sanbōin), specifically impermanence (mujō), suffering (ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (kū).

YOKO MESHI – literally a meal eaten sideways, refers to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language.

YUGEN -profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious, elusive, but real, beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility.

ZANSHIN - a state of relaxed mental alertness (especially in the face of danger or stress).

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