This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.
日本・日本語： 五月雨式
In the spirit of the Oscar Peterson Trio, I get requests.
Not many, but they do come in every now and then, so when I get one, I try and respond. I received one a few weeks ago from a friend back in Chicago who recently learned the word 五月雨式. This wasn’t exactly a request. My friend wanted to know if I was familiar with the word and suggested it might make a good topic to write about, which indeed it does.
First, before we do anything, we have to figure out how it’s pronounced, and to do that, we need to determine what exactly is going on with this word. Clearly 五月雨式 is a four-character compound of some sort, but it’s not the most common kind, which is two two-character compounds stacked together. For example, a word like 日常生活, which combines 日常 (nichijō, daily) with 生活 (seikatsu, life).
Instead, we have a three-character word 五月雨 with the suffix 式 (shiki), which gets used to describe a “style” or “method” when used as a suffix. Many times—as a noun on its own, in compounds, and as a suffix—式 means “ceremony,” such as 卒業式 (sotsugyōshiki, graduation ceremony), but 式 also has a 的-like quality in that it can attach to larger nouns and turn them into descriptors, such as the word タッチパネル式 (tacchipaneru-shiki, touch panel-style), which gets used to describe something with touch panel functionality. For example, digital signage or ticket sales machines.
So we’ve sorted out the end of this word. We’re left with this deceptive three-character compound 五月雨.
I say deceptive because even first-year students should recognize the kanji that make up the two words contained within: We’ve got 五月 (gogatsu, May) and 雨 (ame, rain). But sadly this word is not pronounced ごがつあめ (gogatsu-ame). Rather, it is pronounced さみだれ (samidare).
五月雨 has a very interesting 語源 (gogen, etymology). Japan used a lunisolar calendar for many years until interactions with outside countries eventually resulted in a shift to a solar calendar on December 3, Meiji 5 (1872), which became January 1, Meiji 6 (1873), resulting in an effective shift of about a month for the entire calendar. Thus, the rainy season, which used to be in May, was now in June. 五月雨, then, essentially means 梅雨 (tsuyu): the long, rainy season rains that start and stop for what feels like forever.
This solves part of the problem for understanding this word, but before we return to the usage of 五月雨式 I want to go over quickly why 五月雨 is pronounced さみだれ. In the old calendar, 五月 was pronounced さつき (satsuki). This provides the さ, and みだれ is said to come from 水垂, which is made up of 水 (mizu, water) and 垂れ (tare, drop) and I assume みずたれ became みだれ at some point? Thus, さみだれ. You see similar patterns like 五月晴れ (satsuki bare), which refers to the brief moments of sunny weather during rainy season storms, although it’s often conflated to mean the pleasant, post-spring sunny season in May before the country gets unpleasantly hot.
Going back to the meaning of the word, what do we have? “Rainy-season-rain-style”? Well, yes, essentially. The rainy season starts and stops, continues on and on, for days and days, unpredictably, and 五月雨式 now gets used for something that kind of continues unpredictably. Forbes Japan has this definition:
物事が一度で終わらずに、だらだらと続くことを意味する言葉です
Things that continue to trickle in without coming to a complete stop.
If you have a translation request that you plan to submit to a translation company, for example, and need to get started on the project but also know that the text is not yet complete and you’ll have an additional request the next week, you might say 五月雨式に申し訳ありません (Samidare-shiki ni mōshiwake arimasen, Apologies for sending these requests intermittently).
And if you’re the translation company and you don’t mind this, say you’d rather receive the material as it’s available in order to give your translators more time and ensure that they aren’t as rushed as they might be if they had to wait for the complete text to be finished, you could say 五月雨式で構いません (Samidare-shiki de kamaimasen, We don’t mind you sending requests intermittently).
Note that when used as an adverb, 五月雨式 takes に. For example, 五月雨式に提出させていただきます (Samidare-shiki ni teishutsu sasete itadakimasu, I will submit intermittently). Forbes Japan has some excellent usage examples, one of which is 完成次第、五月雨式に納品いたします (Kansei shidai, samidare-shiki ni nōhin itashimasu, I will submit the delivery intermittently as I complete the deliverable).
However, you do see it also marked with で, not only when used as a noun as above with 構いません or in a sentence like 五月雨式で問題ありません (Samidareshiki de mondai arimasen, Intermittently is not a problem), but also in sentences where it’s very clearly used as an adjective like 五月雨式でアップします (Samidareshiki de appu shimasu, I’ll upload the photos as I can), which I spotted on Twitter. に gets used more frequently, but で does happen.
This is a surprisingly useful little word with such an interesting, rich history. I’m glad I dug into it a little bit.
If there’s anything you’d like me to dig into, feel free to reach out to howtojapanese at gmail anytime!
いろいろ
On the blog this month, I finally had time to do some work on my close reading of Murakami’s Distant Drums memoir. I still have a few past chapters that I need to account for, and I put up one from the beginning of the book that I imagine would probably get cut if it ever gets translated. This is Murakami spinning his wheels, exhausted upon arrival in Europe, and just writing through that exhaustion. Not really a necessary chapter in a travel book, but interesting enough, especially since it places him at a very specific point in time: His wife turning 38 years old.
And don’t forget to check out the podcast.
I had a Bluesky post get more response than ever before…although not quite enough to say it went “viral,” ha. I posted about how Kindle has a lot of free public domain works on Amazon Japan. Just click buy and they’ll beam directly to your device. You can also opt to use an Aozora app. There are a number, some of which have in-app purchases, which I’d be careful of. I use one called i読書 that is free. You can find free content there as well if you don’t want to support Amazon. (On a side note, a newsletter reader joined my Japanese reading group for the very first time! Thanks for joining! And I hope to see more of y’all!)
I mentioned this on the podcast, but there should still be spots available for the Japanese coaching that I’m doing for USJETAA. Check their events page here. Essentially we have a Zoom session, go over some study strategies, and then let everyone discuss what issues they are facing. Hopefully we can help provide solutions!
Also as for May, “五月蝿い” May flys…「うるさい」 also 煩い
May flys that’s flying around is obnoxious (not meaning loud but still it’s a pest).
Even though I don't know a single word of Japanese, I loved this post. Such a fascinating deep dive into a single word!! I would bet this could be published anywhere where the Japanese language is examined with precision and skill!