Quote:
Originally Posted by YuriTokoro
Hi.
Could someone correct my English?
"Binbohgami - The God of Poverty"
Binboh means poverty and kami(gami is from kami) means god. It is considered that people who are possessed by binbohgami fall into poverty. There used to be some events held for the god, but most of them are fading away.
When I was a kid, I was told that sharpening both sides of a pencil attracts binbohgami.
Nowadays, if a company which you just joined went bankrupt suddenly, and this situation was repeated on several occasions, you would be called binbohgami as a joke.
There is a twin god of binbohgami which is called fukunokami. This god is considered to bring good luck.
And there is another god called yakubyohgami. This god brings plague.
Frankly speaking, I don’t understand why monotheistic religion can have only one god because Japan has many gods here. The Japanese word kami is usually translated as god, but kami might be somehow different in concept from your god.
Thank you.
Binbōgami - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - まんが日本昔ばなし：貧乏神と福の神 |
Informative as always, Yuri. I had thought sharpening both ends of a pencil was odd as well as impractical to use afterwards. Now I know of another meaning for it!
Bolded sections are the revisions I made:
1) Changed "about" to "held" to show that the events were done involving the god of poverty. This may be my bias, as I believe religious events for a god were done as if the god was taking an active part in the proceedings.
2) Changed "join" to the past tense form "joined" as the action described happened in the past. Also changed "became" to "went" to show the act if becoming bankrupt was a result of actions taken (in this case, unluckily joining the company before the bankruptcy happened).
3) Added "on" to "repeated several occasions" to make the prepositional phrase "on several occasions" which modifies the verb phrase "was repeated". This reads smoother and gives the reader context to the action being described in the sentence.
As for monotheistic religions versus kami, I think it's more comforting to have only one god that can be praised or cursed depending on a person's life situations. Makes for less confusion maybe?