"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Victoria Neufeldt]

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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