expression:

• fortune and misfortune are intertwined; fortune and misfortune come by turns; good luck and bad luck alternate (like the strands of a rope); good and bad fortune are next-door neighbours

noun:

• fish, meat, and vegetables stewed in a thick, sweet sauce of soy sauce, sugar and mirin - Food term

noun:

• go; soy beans soaked and mashed to a creamy paste (ingredient of tofu and soy milk) - ご is gikun for 豆汁 and 豆油

~たる adjective / ~と adverb:

• resourceful and quick-witted; showing a flash of brilliance; have a keen (sparkling) intellect - four character idiom

noun / adjectival noun:

• resourceful and quick-witted; showing a flash of brilliance; have a keen (sparkling) intellect - four character idiom

suffix:

• suffix indicating room size (following a number of tatami mats and a counter)

noun:

• challenging members of a dojo to a fight and demanding money upon winning

noun:

• processing trade (importing all or part of raw and auxiliary materials, parts, components, accessories, and packaging materials in bond from a foreign company, and re-exporting the finished products after processing or assembly for distribution and sale by that foreign company)

noun:

• gathering of men and women who sang courtship songs to each other and danced; dancing and singing feast of young men and women in ancient Japan - archaism

noun:

• tea whisk; bamboo whisk for making Japanese tea
• hair style where the hair is tied up in a bundle on the back of the head (resembling the shape of a tea whisk)

noun:

• bush clover; Japanese clover (any flowering plant of genus Lespedeza) - obscure term ➜ 萩
• Japanese fiber banana (Musa basjoo) ➜ 芭蕉

noun:

• Keien period (between the end of the Russo-Japanese War and the Taisho Political Crisis, approx. 1905-1912 CE)

noun:

• mekuri karuta (card game popular in the late Edo period)
• hanafuda; Japanese playing cards (12 suits of 4 cards, each suit representing a month indicated by a flower) ➜ 花札

noun:

• rakugan; dry confection of starch (e.g. rice, soy or barley flour) and sugar, mixed and pressed into a pattern - Food term
• geese alighting

noun:

• jōruri; type of dramatic recitation accompanied by a shamisen (associated with Japanese puppet theater)

noun:

• territories in the vicinity of the capital and under direct imperial rule; (in Japanese history) the five kuni in the immediate vicinity of Kyoto

noun:

• having the face of a devil and the heart of Buddha; having a stern face but a tender heart - four character idiom

noun:

• standard language (of a country); standard Japanese ➜ 共通語

expression:

• evading blame for a transgression by pinning it on a subordinate and abandoning them; a skink lizard's shedding of its tail [literal] - idiom

noun:

• history of a nation; Japanese history

noun:

• var. of mochi made from a mixture of rice flour and sweet bean paste (famous product of Kagoshima)

noun:

• hired foreigner; foreign advisor hired by the Japanese government for their specialized knowledge to assist in the modernization of Japan at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji Era

noun:

• three public corporations (Japan National Railways, Japan Monopoly Corporation, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) and five government enterprises (postal services, mintage, printing, management of state-owned forests/fields, and monopolization of alcohol)

noun:

• western edge (e.g. of city); west side

noun:

• Western Jin (dynasty of China, 265-317 CE) ➜ 晋