"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Beverly Flanigan]

I have exactly the same memory, of the robe and the pronunciation, as
Vicki!  My Midwestern mother used it, so it goes back a ways, to the '20s
or '30s, I'd guess.

At 11:46 PM 6/19/2005, you wrote:
>Doug Wilson made a good point about the use of the term 'kimono'.
>That's what we used to use for 'housecoat', pronounced something like
>(k@ mo' n@) with "long o" in the stressed syllable and the last vowel
>not really a '@', but almost an 'a' as in 'far'.  I knew the word as a
>kid in western Canada, long before I ever saw it in print.  When I
>first saw it, I was very surprised by the spelling and henceforth felt
>self-conscious about saying it.  As Doug suggests, as far as I can
>remember, we did not think of that article of clothing or the name in
>relation to the Japanese robe at all.  I think the reference was to a
>woman's/girl's robe, not a man's.
>
>Incidentally, I don't recall ever encountering the expression "open
>the kimono" before reading about it on this list.
>
>Victoria
>
>Victoria Neufeldt
>727 9th Street East
>Saskatoon, Sask.
>S7H 0M6
>Canada
>Tel: 306-955-8910
>
>
>On Saturday, June 18, 2005 8:19 PM, Doug Wilson wrote:
> >
> > It is not necessarily obvious IMHO that there was any
> > Japanese reference
> > at all in the original metaphor. The word "kimono" was used like
> > "housecoat" or "dressing-gown" a few decades ago (maybe
> > some people still
> > use it so?); I suppose people who gave the matter any
> > thought knew that
> > the word came from Japan, but a reference to a US woman
> > lounging around in
> > a kimono might not have had much (if any) reference to Japan (as an
> > inexact analogy, probably few native Anglophones think of
> > India when they
> > think of pajamas). "Open the kimono" might have had a
> > non-ethnic sense
> > like "open the bathrobe" originally, especially if it dates
> > from before WW
> > II. Still it would probably have referred to a woman, I
> > think, although
> > perhaps not entirely exclusively.
> >
> > The quotation from the fox-and-badger article is a little
> > peculiar since I
> > would expect something like "open his or her clothing"
> > rather than "open
> > the kimono" in English text. Two possibilities (among
> > others): (1) "open
> > the kimono" was already a fixed expression in English
> > meaning "expose
> > oneself" or so; [or] (2) this was translated more-or-less
> > word-for-word
> > from some Japanese conventional expression with similar
> > meaning (with
> > "the" arbitrarily added in translation) (in this case the
> > same Japanese
> > expression might have been translated again independently
> > for the modern
> > metaphor).
> >
> > -- Doug Wilson
> >
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