Hi Kazuya,
At 11:01 PM 9/1/2000 +0900, you wrote:
>We use "bokeh" often in many ways but it's OK to use it when you are
>having fun or joking with your closest friends. Usually it's not a
>very strongly offending word. Ernie in Sesame Street and Takeshi
>Kitano (film director/comedian) are typical bokehs. Their roll
>itself is called a bokeh in comedy terms so they should be charming
>and not always stupid and sometimes very wise.
>
>You should only be serious or sensitive when using this word for old
>people because "bokeh(ed) old person" usually means those mentally
>ill such as suffering Alzheimer's disease or something.
>
>"I've started to take pictures to keep away bokeh from me" would be
>a quite natural Japanese expression if this is used by a retired man
>who has been very busy but now he has plenty of time to enjoy life.
>
>When you make a mistake, you may also say "Rats, I've been a big
>bokeh!"
"Buffoon" might be a little better than "numbskull," or maybe "oaf". There
are lots of words for this in English, if you take my meaning. :)
This is one of the most useful posts on bokeh I have seen, since you
illustrate the many connotations of the word in its native culture. I
really appreciate it! This is something non-natives just can't get at
without this kind of help.
After quite a bit of offlist discussion with several Japanese list members,
I think the best word-for-word translation in English is "blur" or
sometimes "fuzzy."
I am sort of a skeptic about bokeh as an objective quality, however. We
just recently had someone talk about the beautiful bokeh of the 50/3.5
macro. Hitherto the consensus had seemed to be that the bokeh of this lens
is poor.
To the degree that some people associate bokeh with the number of blades in
the diaphragm, good bokeh simply means "more blades." I think it really is
an indirect reference to the sharpness of a lens, against which the unsharp
areas of the photo provide dynamic contrast.
Joel Wilcox
Iowa City, Iowa USA
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