Complete Change of Mind

心機一転 (shinki itten): the heart turns over, and one starts afresh. 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, first in print in Kōda Rohan's 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: what you say at New Year or after a bad year, 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.