"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 18, 2005, at 10:19 PM, douglas at NB.NET wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       douglas at NB.NET
> Subject:      Re: "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
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> Some voices on the Web claim that "open the kimono" in its modern
> metaphoric sense was already familiar in the 1960's. (I've never been
> familiar with it myself BTW.)
>
> 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?);

>  An excellent point, Doug. I don't know whether anyone still uses the
> term with the "housecoat," etc. meanings. But, now that you've jogged
> my memory, I am, sadly, old enough to remember when "kimono" was
> almost a standard term, used by everyone and anyone, with the
> pronunciation, among blacks, at least, [kI mon@].

-Wilson Gray

> 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
>