Talk:Shinatama

More links that concern Shinatama in some way

TV Tropes mentions Shinatama as an example of the "Ridiculously Human Robot" trope, but actually counts it as a lampshade, to Oni's credit

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RidiculouslyHumanRobots

On the Edo Era puppets (karakuri)

http://web.archive.org/web/20170816043624/http://karakuriya.com/english/doll/shinatama.htm -- English

This page seems to be saying that the translation of Shinatama is "magician", but this is meant less in the sense of "one who performs magic" and more in the sense of "one who hides things with a sleight of hand".

"Shinatama" is represented by 品玉, followed by 人形 for "doll" or "puppet". The breakdown of 品玉 is complicated, but 品 primarily means "goods, article, thing" and 玉 has many meanings, mostly centered around things of value such as "jade, bead, gem, jewel". The implication is probably that this is a doll who hides/reveals treasure.

For a much more strained translation, 玉 can also mean "pretty girl", making Shinatama a "pretty girl thing", an object that resembles a girl. --Iritscen (talk) 16:09, 1 August 2021 (CEST)

http://web.archive.org/web/20090223185000/http://www.imperioanime.com/karakuri-ningyo-munecas.html -- Spanish

http://web.archive.org/web/20210324174132/https://miksike.eu/documents/main/4klass/4nuku/elutuba/Marionetid/jaapani.htm

Video (with pronunciation of name)

Japanese video demonstrating karakuri reproductions on YouTube -- a shinatama is featured at 3:00.

geyser's $0.02

Paradox's URL edit piqued my attention. I am not yet ready for a big (re)contribution to the Shinatama page itself but, since I'm the one who started this eons ago (by promoting the "trickster puppet" translation/interpretation of shinatama 品玉, and the notion of "added value" in general), perhaps I should be the one to bring in some extra information (and perhaps work towards some kind of closure, who knows?).

Sleight-of-hand

shinatama 品玉 or, more commonly, shinadama 品玉 is one of the older (Edo-era?) Japanese terms for sleight-of-hand, i.e., deceptive magic tricks involving the manipulation of small-to-medium-sized objects. (Some of those tricks require specially engineered "magician's props", but often the only ingredients are misdirection and dexterity, a.k.a. "the hand is quicker than the eye".)

Another old term for this kind of magic seems to be tezuma 手妻, whereas the more modern term for sleight-of-hand is tejina 手品 (てじな), a simple combination of 手 (hand) and 品 (items/goods/wares).

The broader term kijutsu 奇術 refers to the general art of illusion and, like its English counterpart "illusionism", is usually reserved for larger-scale magic tricks. Finally, the even broader concept of "magic" (which encompasses not just illusionism but "actual" magic with spells, conjuring and such) is designated by either majutsu 魔術 or, more trivially, majikku マジック.

See here for a review of all these magical terms.

Juggling

Apart from sleight-of-hand, "shinatama/shinadama" designates (or used to designate) the art of juggling. The modern Japanese term for juggling tends to be jaguringu ジャグリング, and the aforementioned tejina 手品 (てじな) is sometimes used to designate juggling rather than sleight-of-hand, too. "Shinadama", however, goes way back to the Edo era, when juggling was a popular form of street performance. Since tama/dama 玉 commonly means "ball", or "ball game" when used as a suffix, it is possible that the juggling connotations of "shinatama/shinadama" are the more fundamental ones (as in "doing with various objects as if they were balls"), whereas the sleight-of-hand meaning came slightly later, because of how both acts require a similar level of playful dexterity.

Trickster puppet

One of the Edo-era entertainment automata (karakuri puppets, or karakuri ningyō からくり人形) is called shinatama ningyō 品玉人形, with ningyō 人形 meaning "doll/puppet" and shinatama 品玉 designating the parlor tricks that the puppet is capable of (as opposed to the core "trick" of having an autonomously operating puppet – which is what "karakuri" itself refers to). In the case of shinatama ningyō, a typically seated puppet repeatedly lifts a large box off the ground or table, revealing different items each time.

Shina meaning "Chinese"

Although the core meaning of shina 品 is "objects/items/goods/wares", it is interesting to note that shina 支那 is also an old Japanese term for "Chinese", nowadays considered pejorative.

Of particular interest in this respect is the half-humorous, half-chauvinistic cartoon "Juggler of the Chinese ball" (Shinadama-tsukai or Shina tama-tsukai 支那玉遣ひ). A Japanese officer is simultaneously performing two acts: a balancing act with some military gear, and a juggling act with balls that are shaped as caricatural Chinese people. In line with the intended pun ("doing with the Chinese as if they were balls" – and only needing one hand, too!), the caption combines the ordinary term shinadama/shinatama 品玉, by replacing the ordinary/neutral shina 品 with the pejorative shina 支那.

Also interesting is how some descriptions of the shinatama ningyō 品玉人形 puppet specifically mention that the doll is wearing Chinese-style clothes (chūgoku kaze no fukusō 中国風の服装). There are no pejorative connotations in this case, and shina 支那 does not appear explicitly either, but possibly we are looking at a "running gag" in Japanese culture, where the shina 品 radical can act as a magnet for Chinese stereotypes, regardless of context.

Standalone meanings of 品 and 玉

As is often the case in Japanese/Chinese, single radicals/kanji can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Thus shina 品 can be seen as meaning "precious" in some contexts, or "quality/dignity", or "grace/elegance" – besides the basic meaning, that is, "item/items".

As for tama 玉, it too can go beyond the basic meaning of "ball" (or anything more or less vaguely resembling a ball, such as "gem/jewel/lens", or "testicle"). Thus it can mean "person/guy" when making a commentary on someone (compare to the English "oddball", if you will).

Last but not least, tama 玉 can mean "pretty girl" (perhaps as a combination of "person/guy" and "gem/jewel") and even "geisha" (female entertainer), which in combination with the substitutable shina 支那 can lead to such interpretations for Shinatama as "Chinese trollop" -_- ...so, as always in these matters, it's important to know when to stop.

Incomplete/metonymous form

Seeing as shinatama/shinadama 品玉 designates the Edo-era art of juggling and/or sleight-of-hand, it seems improper to use it for the performer of such an art: for robots/dolls/puppets the proper compound is shinatama ningyō 品玉人形, and for people another compound would be used, e.g., shinatama-tsukai 品玉遣ひ or tejina-ji 手品師.

In other words, it's as if Shinatama's name had been picked to be "trickery" instead of "trickster", or "juggling" instead of "juggler". This is not entirely suprising or unfamiliar, though, because a similar thing seems to have happened to Daodan (the Chinese for "troublemaker" is dǎo dàn guǐ 捣蛋鬼, whereas dǎo dàn 捣蛋 merely means "to stir up trouble"); however, Daodan is often used in compounds (Daodan spike, Daodan Chrysalis, Daodan symbiote, etc), which justifies its adjectival use, and for Shinatama there is no such thing. To some extent, Shinatama is helped by the "dual reading" of tama 玉, both as part of the "juggling"/"sleight-of-hand" combination, and as "pretty girl".

Bottom line?

"Trickster puppet" still looks like the core meaning, even though the more appropriate reading is "trickery", more specifically referring to the art of sleight-of-hand. Additionally, it turns out that "Shinatama" (or rather "Shinadama") could be a reference to the art of juggling. (In both cases the shinatama/shinadama 品玉 is an old term going back to the Edo era, whereas modern sleight-of-hand and juggling are termed differently.)

It is worth noting that the "juggling" meaning of shinadama 品玉 is perhaps lesser-known than the "sleight-of-hand" meaning, because of how the latter was perpetuated in visually arresting automaton form; and it is also in its automaton incarnation that shinadama 品玉 seems to have evolved into a definite shinatama 品玉, with a "T".

Then again, as seen in the case of the "Juggler of the Chinese ball", the two pronunciations "dama" and "tama" can be used interchangeably for the juggling act as well. So it is possible to see the name Shinatama as meaning either "trickster" or "juggler" (choosing the more intuitive "actor" naming over the literal metonymy, which would be "trickery" or "juggling"). Juggling means sense seeing as how much data Shinatama has to deal with, whereas trickery as a theme is somewhat harder to justify in-universe (though not much harder than, say, "Damocles").

Last but not least, there is always a possibility to play with the writing of a given name, for additional connotations/interpretations. For what it's worth, the Japanese version of Oni spells out the name Shinatama as katakana (シナタマ), without favoring one reading or the other.

geyser (talk) 20:39, 2 August 2021 (CEST)