Tenuki Koji

Not Koji, the raccooon dog.

A topic came up in the comments section that I think would make for a nice departure from more serious topics. I must start off with a bit of rant against tech, however. Stretching back to my days with Netscape and whatever else was available in the late 90s, I have had issues with automatic correction of what I type. I am not perfect and make probably more than my fair share of typos, however, these “services” waste so much of my time that I used to turn them off. Stopped doing so as it is time consuming to go through everything and turn these off with every update of the OS or software/Apps. The topic of this post is one that correction programs written by those with incomplete knowledge keep “correcting” ; “tenuki koji”. It is not, as Google, Safari, my Notes app, etc like to believe it to be, “Tanuki Koji”. Tanuki is a Japanese “raccoon dog” and “Koji” is a Japanese given name for boys. Therefore, any other spellings given here for this topic are the results of what I typed being changed by either my Notes App in which I first type this or when importing it to Substack or when it is uploaded/published and missed during the many times I will reread this to check for errors.

So what is “tenuki koji”? Let’s go with the easy parts first. Koji here means “construction” and “te” equals “hand”. Translating nuki presents a bit of a problem. First, it keeps getting changed so I have to retype it again and again to get any online Japanese-English dictionary to look up the correct word. I know that nuki waza or nuki technique in kendo (Japanese fencing) is akin to what I will paraphrase from Karate Kid on how to deal with blows, not be where the blow is to hit. It might be described as a dodge. One of my kendo sensei excelled at nuki waza. I would deliver a perfect strike to the men (helmet) but just at the fraction of a microsecond before the attack would land, he deftly slides to the side and delivers a counter strike to either my kote (gauntlet) or my men. Same when I saw an opening to strike his kote, a slide to the side removing his kote from the path of my Shinai (bamboo practice sword) and a counter stroke to my kote at the moment my attack should have reached home. It was a marvel to see him do this with the high level sensei too. Thus I have a strong connection between “dodging”, or “not being there” and “nuki”. However, on line dictionaries translate it to “cut”. I have not been able to find out if these are even the same kanji and not just homophones. My excellent, bound kanji dictionaries are buried under 5 years of materiel thrown into a pile on, under and around my desk awaiting for the time my pre exwife vacates the den long enough for me to sort it all and put it away, so I cannot use those to solve this mystery.

A point on the language used for the term is required. Tanuki Koji is not, or at least likely not an imported concept. There are 3 writing systems in Japan; kanji, hiragana and katakana. To demonstrate how these look, I will use my pen name “Kitsune” as an example. The following is Kitsune in kanji, hiragana and katakana in that order. 狐、きつね、キツネ。 Katakana is used for foreign things such as soccer, サッカー, or Leman Shock, リーマンショック but not for baseball, which has been absorbed into Japanese culture. Katakana is often used for emphasis of to catch the eye. It is was used for given names for females at various times in history, though just yesterday I saw a political poster with a man’s name using katakana, the first instance of this I have ever heard of. However, these are not the norm, thus the use of kanji and hiragana to render tenuki koji leads me to believe the concept is domestic in origin.

All that sets up as comically, over the top case of cutting corners one could ever hope to avoid. Newlyweds, my now pre exwife and I moved in to a newly remodeled kodan apartment. Kodan apartments are public housing in Japan. The rent charged is based upon income. I am looking at these as a future home for myself when I leave the “family”. While the building was old, they had just completed a massive remodeling project. We were the first renters in this unit after the remodeling. First hint of trouble was that the phone jack did not work. When the people in charge of that came and checked it, they found that the phone line to the jack was nonexistent. The remodelers just stuck the phone jack into the wall without connecting it to anything.

Not only was the floor uncommonly bouncy, it was progressively so. When they came to check on it, they claimed that nothing was wrong, it was just that I being gaijin, was heavier and that explained the bounciness of the floor. Both he and my wife thought this was hilarious until I later fell through the floor. The team sent to check it this time were shocked at what they found. There was no subfloor beneath the flooring which was roughly 1/8 an inch think, probably less. Absent too were the floor joists that should have been under the subfloor. In their place were just scraps of wood of various sizes and shapes just scattered about, unfixed that shifted when walk upon. Once they moved far enough apart to no longer support my weight, I fell through the flooring.

The big one that took several months to learn about was the mispoured concrete in the bathroom. But this took yet another tenuki koji to disclose. I forget which now, but they either used the wrong kind of concrete or failed to seal it properly. It soaked up water and allowed it to pass through. I discovered this when the wallpaper below the door into the bathroom, this door being several inches above the floor outside the bathroom, bubbled. There was a massive bubble in the wallpaper which broke when I poked it, reveling a massive void in the concrete. They just wallpapered over the huge hole in the concrete, under the door to the bathroom. Looking into this black pit with a flashlight, I found a lake that resulted from the unsealed concrete. Back again came the contractors, this time armed with jack hammers to remove the bad concrete and pour it correctly within the correct type or sealant this time.

The tenuki koji nearly turned deadly for the a/c tech installing our air conditioner. To save costs for the renters, they installed the anchor bolts for an air conditioner should the renter wish to buy one. Luckily, I was watching as the a/c tech, on a step ladder, placed the a/c onto the bolts for they were not anchored, just pushed into the dry wall. He caught the a/c as it pulled the bolts from the wall and fell backwards off the ladder. I jumped and caught him saving him from serious injury and possibly worse.

There were many other problems which have been forgotten over the years, these being minor by comparison. A running joke amongst family and friends was to ask us what new issue we had discovered since we last met. Invariably, there was some unbelievable new problem discovered.

Kodan was hit particularly bad with tenuki koji. At another complex of kodan housing, the contractors cut holes for air conditioning through load bearing walls, necessitating demolition of the entire complex and rendering all the inhabitants there of at least temporarily homeless.

A few years back there was a massive scandal over the use of the wrong concrete and/or improperly sealing it in condos. After just a few years, the concrete exposed to the weather began to crumble. When the condo owners reported this to the building managers they were told something along the lines of, “That’s too bad but don’t expect us to repair it or pay for you to do so.” Big lawsuits over who was liable for these repairs. I do not recall how the courts decided.

There was another semi related problem involving an architect. Under pressure to lower the costs for constructing high rise apartment/condo buildings, he ignored safety regulations and designed buildings that simply were unsafe to be in. When caught, there were a large number of buildings already being lived in using his designs. Lots of people lost their condos over this scandal. He went to prison but not until after his wife threw herself to her death off the balcony of their condo.

These were among the reasons we decided upon buying an actual house. When the big one hits, those who live in the destroyed condos and apartments have nothing. If our house is destroyed, we would still have land upon which to pitch a tent until we could rebuild….unless the land was swept away in a flood, which does happen.