A study of “yasumi”
How long is your summer vacation? That depends on the type of work you do, your company, and your country, right? As you know, people often point out that Japanese summer vacations are short. This is due to our national character, company rules, and also people’s personal points of view, but I think that Japanese people are satisfied with shorter vacations compared to people from other countries. Of course, we are not happy if we can’t take any vacation time at all, though.
The other day, one student told me, “There is only one word for ‘yasumi’ in Japanese. On the other hand, there are many such words in English, such as holiday, day off, leave and break.” This is certainly true.
yasumu: to pause your work or activity and relax physically and mentally (“yasumi” is its noun form)
If you break apart the kanji for “yasumi” (休),亻on the left side stands for a person and 木 on the right side represents a tree. The person is leaning against the tree to relax his or her body.
Here are the definitions of the English words.
Vacation/holiday: period of time away from everyday work, used especially for travel, recreation and rest
Leave: permission given to an employee to be absent from work for a special reason
When you look at them all side by side like this, you can see that the word “yasumi” can stand in for all of the English words. Indeed, both one-hour breaks and one-week summer holidays are, ultimately, time to relax away from work and are essentially the same to the Japanese.
Of course, it is possible to divide “yasumi” into different words in Japanese, too. For example, national holidays are “shukujitsu,” paid holidays are “yukyu kyuka,” and short breaks are called “kyukei.” However, they are all just various types of “yasumi” and can each be replaced by the word “yasumi.” Also, the phrase “oyasumi nasai,” which we always say before going to bed, tells you to finish the day’s activities and go to sleep, so sleeping is yet another example of “yasumi”.
The definition of “yasumi” is simple yet broad. A mere five-minute-break could be considered a “yasumi.” Therefore, when a “yasumi” lasts for two weeks, we might feel that it is too long and that is why Japanese people usually end up having a short summer vacation. What do you think about this conclusion?