Whim of Fate

運命の悪戯 (unmei no itazura): a trick of fate, a whim of fate. 運命 unmei is fate, destiny; の makes it the possessor; 悪戯 itazura is mischief, a prank, a child's meddling, and the dictionary defines the whole phrase as a strange turn of events that feels as though something beyond human knowing were toying with you. It is everyday Japanese, in more than three hundred books before 1946 and the title of television dramas since, with its own headword in the dictionary. Its oldest page is a translation: Ueda Bin's 1901 rendering of a Spanish castaway's monologue, gone, ah, gone; what a cruel trick of fate, as the rescue ship rounds the cape without seeing him. A phrase that came into Japanese with the West's literature and made itself at home; the mischief in it is benign as often as cruel.