心機一転 shinkiitten Complete Change of Mind

心機 is the working of the mind, its spring, and 一転 is one complete turn; the dictionaries keep two things, an occasion and a whole change of feeling. The word has no ancient source. It is a Meiji coinage, in print by 1888 and taken up by Kōda Rohan in a novel of 1891, at the instant a father who has leapt from a rock into the whirlpool to die, his small son in his arms, comes up alive and turns back to life; the Meiji essayists made it the Japanese for a conversion, the change of heart that turns a life.

A century of use wore it to everyday size: a fresh start, turning over a new leaf. In Chinese the same two characters mean scheming; the Japanese word turned that into the mind's spring released.

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