Original Script : 月と鼈

Phonetic (Roman) Script : Tsuki to suppon

Transliteration : A terrapin and the moon

Full Translation : Two completely opposite beings

Context : 

My informant is a high school student who was born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated elementary school in Japan but soon moved to the United States for English education. She still uses Japanese in her home and uses and knows a lot of Japanese proverbs and idioms that are still widely used in Japan. Here, she is describing a well-known Japanese proverb. She is identified as Y, and this piece was collected over a phone call. 

Y : You can think of terrapin as a small turtle. I think it’s other name is a soft-shelled turtle, but it’s basically the same thing except that terrapins are smaller than turtles and stay in the mud of rivers. The reason why they compare a terrapin and the moon is because of the fact that they are similar because they are both round like a circle, but also very different. While the moon is often described as a bright and aesthetic figure up in the sky, a terrapin stays under the dark, wet mud. This proverb is used when comparing two objects or people that are completely different beyond comparison. 

Analysis :

I thought this proverb possibly expresses the Japanese society’s affection for the moon. There are a lot of traditional stories like ‘the story of Genji’ where a character wakes up in the middle of the night and stares at the moon for a long time, admiring its beauty. It was interesting how they chose the moon over the sun, which is also a symbol that is round in shape and admired by a lot of cultures.