仕方が無い · 仕様が無い · 仕方無い shikata ga nai · shiyō ga nai · shikatanai It Cannot Be Helped · It Can't Be Helped · It Can't Be Helped
This is a philological study of the Japanese idiom 仕方が無い, 仕様が無い and 仕方無い (shikata ga nai, shiyō ga nai, shikatanai). It spans a Kyoto lecture commentary of about 1535 to Hepburn's dictionary of 1872, which files the phrase under resignation, and examines how it became, in English from the occupation on, a word for a people rather than a phrase.
Abstract
仕方が無い, 仕様が無い and 仕方無い, it cannot be helped, are three spellings of one Japanese idiom, first cited by the great dictionary in a Kyoto lecture-commentary on the Book of Odes of about 1535. Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 files the sentence under resignation, the sense the twentieth century would make a national trait of: from a Time piece of 1945 through Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar, the phrase became, in English, a word for how the Japanese bear what cannot be helped.
Overview
The sense. The first sense has not moved in five hundred years: there is no way, so accept it. The dictionary's own gloss, 不満足ではあるが、あきらめるほかない, unsatisfying, but there is nothing to do but give it up, is the whole character of the phrase, and Hepburn heard it in 1872 when he filed the sentence under resignation. What changed is who was listening. In Japanese it stayed a phrase of daily life with two further senses, hopeless of a person and unbearably of a feeling. In English, from the occupation on, it became a word for how the Japanese bear what cannot be helped, which is a reading of a people through a phrase, and the encyclopedia that records it names the books.
The words. One idiom, three shapes: 仕方が無い, 仕様が無い, and 仕方無い, the clipped form. 仕方 and 仕様 are two nouns for a way of doing: 仕 is do, and 方 and 様 are manner. が無い is there is none [1][2]. The dictionaries write ない in kana; 無い in kanji is the same word. The second form's reading is the thing to know: 大辞泉 says 現在では多く「しょうがない」と発音される, it is now mostly pronounced shō ga nai, so shiyō ga nai is the spelling and shō ga nai the speech, and a 1903 novel spells the same syllables a third way, 詮様 [2]. The dictionaries give the phrase three senses: 1 どうすることもできない。ほかによい方法がない。やむを得ない, nothing can be done; there is no better way; it is unavoidable; 2 よくない。困る, no good, a nuisance, of a person (彼は怠け者で仕方がないやつだ); 3 我慢ができない。たまらない, unbearable, of a feeling (彼女に会いたくて仕方がない, I cannot stand how much I want to see her) [1].
The proverb in English. Hepburn's no resource is the first English, and the plainest [3]. The house's It Cannot Be Helped and It Can't Be Helped are the received English of the last eighty years and exact for the first sense. What a rendering must keep is the acceptance in the phrase: not there is no solution, which is a report, but nothing to be done, which is a decision to stop looking.
The historical record
About 1535. A Kyoto lecture-commentary on the Book of Odes (毛詩抄), as the 精選版日本国語大辞典 cites it. The dictionary's first example of 仕方がない: なごりをしけれどもしかたがない程に郡国族の処へ行ぞ, sorry to part, but there is no way, so off to the provinces. The dictionary is the witness [1].
1676. A New Guide to Interpreters (捷解新語), a Japanese textbook for Korean interpreters, as the same dictionary cites it. The first example of 仕様がない: なにともしやうかなさに、たいくゎんとももいろいろにおもゑども, there being no way at all, the officials thought this and that [2].
1813 to 1846. Edo comic fiction. The dictionary's next examples: 浮世床's そんなら仕方がねへ。化物で出て呉べい, then there's no help for it; come out as a ghost [1], and 松翁道話's どうも仕様のないものぢゃ, a hopeless sort, which is the second sense, of a person [2].
1872. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (和英語林集成), second edition. Under 仕方: Way or method of doing or making; resource … Shikata ga nai, no resource. Under 仕樣: The way or manner of doing or making any thing, how to do; resource, expedient … -ga nai, no resource. Syn. SHI-KATA. And under 諦, akirame, the missionary files the whole sentence: Shikata ga nai to, finding there is no remedy, to be resigned, with the synonyms omoikiru and kwan-nen. The English is no resource, and the place he files it, resignation, is the sense the next century would make a national character of [3].
1945 and after. The phrase in English as a concept. The English encyclopedia gives the romanized phrase a career in English beginning with a Time magazine piece of 8 October 1945, then Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar (1973), which gives the idea a chapter to explain why interned Japanese Americans did not resist more; John Hersey's Hiroshima; James Clavell's Shōgun [4]. A library search for the romanized phrase returns two dozen items, the earliest being editions of Houston's book. In Houston's book the second chapter of Part 1 is titled Shikata Ga Nai, and at the family's removal it says, There is a phrase the Japanese use in such situations, when something difficult must be endured. You would hear the older heads, the Issei, telling others very quietly, "Shikata ga nai" (It cannot be helped). "Shikata ga nai" (It must be done); in the camp years the phrase again became the motto, but under altered circumstances [5]. For the Time piece, Hersey and Clavell, the witness is the encyclopedia's list.
The dictionaries today. The Japanese encyclopedia defines the idiom as what is said 理不尽な困難や悲劇に見舞われたり、避けられない事態に直面したりしたさいに、粛々とその状況を受け入れながら, when struck by unreasonable hardship or tragedy, or facing what cannot be avoided, while accepting the situation quietly; and 仕様がない redirects to it [6].
What is not a source. The English books that made the phrase a concept are its reception, not its source. The three forms are three spellings of one idiom, not three sayings.
Today. Sold as It Cannot Be Helped · It Can't Be Helped · It Can't Be Helped. The titles are the received English, exact for the first sense, and the first is Houston's gloss of 1973 in sentence case; word for word the three forms say there is no way, and a phrase on a wall is read by people who know all three senses.
A reading
Of the three forms, the first is the fuller one a textbook teaches, the second is what people say, and the third is the first clipped. The other two senses, and Hepburn's filing the phrase under resignation, are where the phrase's whole English career already sits in 1872.
References
- 「仕方が無い」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/仕方が無い-517291
- 「仕様がない」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/仕様がない-530458
- J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (和英語林集成), 2nd ed., 1872, National Diet Library pid 993689, scans 22, 249 and 257. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689/1/249
- "Shikata ga nai", Wikipedia (English). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai
- Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar, Houghton Mifflin, 1973, Part 1, ch. 2.
- 「仕方がない」, Wikipedia (Japanese). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/仕方がない