Prosaic

Prosaic (pronounced proh-zey-ik)

(1) Of writing or speaking, straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.

(2) Something commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact or unimaginative; overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring.

(3) Of or having the character or form of prose, the ordinary form of spoken or written language, rather than of poetry (now of technical use only).

1650-1660: From the fifteenth century Middle French prosaïque and directly from the sixteenth century Medieval Latin prōsaicus (in prose), from the Classical Latin prōsa (prose), from prorsus (straightforward, in prose), from the Old Latin provorus (straight ahead), the construct being pro- (forward) + vorsus (turned), from vertō (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, to bend).  The original meaning was technical, distinguishing text as prose rather than poetry and in this sense was usually written as prosaicus (in prose).  The first hints of literary hierarchy were first noted in French in 1746 when used to contrast the “character” of prose in contrast to the “feeling” of poetry.  The sense of describing something ordinary or mundane first seen in French in 1813, a meaning soon adopted in English.  Prosaic & prosaical are adjectives, prosify is a verb, prosified & prosifying are verbs & adjectives, prosaicness is a noun and prosaically is an adverb.

Figurative use of poetic & prosaic:  Jaguar E-Type (XK-E, 1961-1974) (left) & Jaguar XJ-S (1975-1996) (right).  "Poetry in motion" is a cliché but when the E-Type first was seen, that was the phrase some journalists chose.

Whether Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) ever called the E-Type "the most beautiful car in the world" remains uncertain (though he certainly never issued a denial) but over the decades plenty have echoed the sentiment, sometimes using the phrase "poetry in motion".  By 1975, the world had changed and there were now rules with which to comply and although the XJ-S (later XJS) wasn't really a replacement for the E-Type, because of the timing, that was the basis on may of the early reports based at least some of their critique.  Dynamically, on about any objective measure, it was a better car than the E-Type but nobody is known to have claimed it was better looking and in some contemporary reviews, the styling was described as "prosaic".  It might have been more accurate to use the word "pragmatic" and the lines perhaps aged better than many at the time anticipated, the car in (almost) continuous production for over twenty years and the platform endured until 2006, providing the underpinnings for the first generation of Jaguar's XK8 (1996-2005) and the Aston Martin DB7 (1997-2004), both of which looked better than the XJ-S although neither matched the timeless E-Type.  Upon release, there was much comment about the styling lacking the appeal of the E-Type but the XJ-S was less a replacement than an entry into a new market segment, the anyway declining sports car segment abandoned.  Regarding its capabilities, the press were fair, one publication noting it was smooth, quiet and luxurious yet "capable of speeds that would have won a grand prix not 15 years ago".  That comparison was admittedly with Formula One's voiturette (1.5 litre, naturally aspirated) era but it was an indication that even in the troubled 1970s, there had been progress.   

1983 Jaguar XJ-S Lynx Eventer shooting brake.

What many regard as the best-looking XJS version were the "shooting brakes" (a kind of station wagon) made by specialist coach-builders, the best-known of which was the Lynx Eventer, 67 of which were made.  Critics at the time noted the rear treatment rendered a better balanced shape and much the same observation was made of the convertible (1988-1996) version (less so the SC "cabriolet" (1983-1988)).  Although the pre-war shooting brakes often were built for the HFS (hunting, fishing & shooting) set who needed space for shotguns, fishing rods, hunting hounds and such, in the 1980s they emerged in the niche of the "horsey" set although there was obviously appeal for those who liked the image even if they never sat in a saddle.  In naming the Eventer, Lynx may have had in mind the sport of "eventing", an equestrian sport in which a single horse & rider compete against others across the three disciplines of dressage, cross-country, and show jumping, the roots in the drills European armies conducted to ensure officers seeking a commission in the cavalry possessed the requisite skills.  Eventing has a reasonably impressive death toll of both riders and beasts but it continues to exert a pull with women especially drawn; that's not surprising because some girls fall in love with horses at pony club and never quite recover.

1986 "Daimler S Design Study".

The shooting brake coachwork eliminated the buttresses that were the design's most distinctive feature and interestingly, they were sacrificed also when the factory in 1986 undertook a “design-study” for a proposed "luxury version", to be sold as the “Daimler S”.  The shape was judged most pleasing, unlike the “Coupé” version of the Jensen Interceptor (1966-1976), a reputed 60 of which were built in 1975-1976.  Without the dramatically expansive rear window (nicknamed "the fishbowl"), the design didn't please many and it was later revealed that, struggling to recover from the mid-1970s recession and collapse in demand for big, thirsty cars (both a consequence of the first oil shock), the company had exhausted their supply of closed body shells so "cobbled together" a top to be attached to some of remaining convertible (1974-1976) bodies awaiting completion.  That's may account for why it looked like something of a design college project that may (generously) have been graded a "C-" but, approaching bankruptcy, Jensen was in its death throes.

The original Jensen Interceptor (1966-1976, left) "saloon" and the hastily improvised Coupé (1975-1976, right).  The vinyl glued to the roof didn't help and it was a difficult time for the dying company but Jaguar's execution of the same concept (add a roof to a convertible) on the one-off Daimler S was more accomplished.  Verging on the brutish, nobody ever called the Interceptor's lines "poetic" but the appeal has endured and even today there are companies offering "refurbishment packages" including modern power-trains and electronics.

One thing the Daimler S had in common with the unfortunate Interceptor Coupé was the project being relatively cheap to execute because much of the engineering work had already been done in creating open versions (a full convertible by Jensen; the “SC” version of the XJS with a Triumph Stag-like fixture atop).  Sales of the XJ-S SC were sufficiently encouraging for a team to be formed to produce a conventional convertible, one aspect of the project a removable hard-top (always a factory option for the smaller E-Type).  Because of the sheer size (and consequently weight) of such a structure, that proved unviable but, the styling done, the idea of a “notchback coupé” was explored, the “Daimler” brand available to enable the thing to be sold at a higher price.  The prototype Daimler S required more than welding on the aborted hard-top but not much more, the main differences the different rear-side windows and fluted fittings on the grill & trunk (boot) lid trim.  The planned interior fit-out (a more lavish use of timber veneers, carpet & leather) was never fitted to the prototype and wilder thoughts in the engineering office included AWD (all-wheel drive) but none of the speculation ever even reached the drawing boards.  The one-off Daimler S did get as far as US focus groups for "market reaction" to be assessed but it had the misfortune of being displayed with a prototype XJ-S convertible and while the response to the coupé was polite, the convertible was received with an enthusiasm matched by the US dealer network, none of whom needed a focus group to tell them where demand lay.  While the lines of neither the Lynx Eventer or Daimler S would be likely to attract the epithet "poetic", both shapes improved on the original.  

Prosaic is an example of the figurative adoption of a word with a precise technical meaning assuming such popularity that the original sense became relegated to specialists.  Once, any text not poetic was “prosaic” (ie “written in prose”), and this description denoted nothing negative; it was just a way of distinguishing between written forms, reflecting prosaic’s origins in the Latin prosa (prose).  However, by the seventeen century, poetry had come to be regarded as a most superior form of expression, considered more beautiful, imaginative, and emotional, prose relegated to the status of the mundane and procedural.  The figurative use evolved from this and prosaic came to be used to refer to anything thought ordinary or unimaginative including music, ideas, architecture, Jaguars etc.  The adjective thus transformed into a synonym for "colorless, drab, lifeless, lacklustre, humdrum, dull, pedestrian, unimaginative" etc and this resulted in phrases which once would have been thought bizarre or tautological: “prosaic poetry” & “prosaic prose”.  In its original technical sense (distinguishing the style of writing used for poetry from other literature), the word is now rarely used other than by those somewhere in the "literature business" and, even there, use can be challenging because of the implications of the modern sense(s).  Still, for those who wish to emphasise certain bad texts are worse even than others, the comparative is "more prosaic" and the superlative, "most prosaic".

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953, left) and his wife Caitlin Thomas (née Macnamara; 1913-1994, right) in the bar of Brown’s Hotel, Laugharne, Wales, 1938.

As the origin in the Latin prosa or pronersa oratio (straightforward discourse) suggests, “prose” is the language in its direct, unadorned form, flowing in the way of style(s) written or spoken in everyday life.  It differs from poetry or verse in not being restricted in rhythm, measure or rhyme although, in literary theory, there exists also “poetic prose” and the “prose poem”.  Literary theory however has, in the last sixty years-odd, constructed a large and sometimes bewildering array of technical terms and categories and the possible number of distinct prose forms may be close to limitless.  Poetic prose is prose which approximates to verse in the use of rhythm (perhaps even a kind of meter) in the elaborate and ornate use of language, and especially in the use of figurative devices like onomatopoeia, assonance and metaphor.  Except in experimental form, poetic prose usually is deployed only as a literary device, appearing in short works or in brief passages in longer pieces in order to achieve a (not always entirely clear) specific effect although the common element seems to be something like “an elevation of the emotional temperature”.  Authors interpolating passages of poetic prose have included Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)), Herman Melville (1819–1891), Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), James Joyce (1882–1941, whose use of poetic prose wasn’t always immediately accessible), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and William Faulkner (1897–1962).  Classic examples of the “hybrid form” are sectionsof the narrator’s narrative in the radio play Under Milk Wood (1952) by Dylan Thomas (1914–1953).

The Collected Prose of T.S. Eliot (2024), in four volumes, edited by Archie Burnett.

A prose poem is a composition printed as prose but distinguished by elements common in poetry, such as often elaborately contrived rhythms, figures of speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance, consonance and startling imagery.  In academic use, it’s the tragic and only posthumously recognized French proto-symbolist Aloysius Bertrand (pen name of Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, 1807-1841) who is acknowledged as having introduced prose poetry to French writing and, more that others, it was him who (retrospectively) made it a fashionable sub-genre among the avant-garde, the seminal work being Gaspard de la Nuit-Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot (Gaspard of the Night-Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot, 1842), a collection of fantasies in the manner of the Dutch painter Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) and Jacques Callot (circa 1592–1635, a printmaker in the baroque style, born in the then independent Duchy of Lorraine).  Although it was the intricacy of the ornate and rhythmical language that contributed to the recognition of the prose poem as a literary form, upon publication, it made little impact and only later became influential though for more than a century it remained neglected in English.  When French critics finally took notice, the initial spread of the work owed much to the dazzling images, a number of which were, by the standards of the age, monumentally grotesque.  The influence on the French poet, essayist, translator and art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was obvious in his Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen, 1869 and better known by its subsequent title Petits Poèmes en prose (Little Poems in Prose)), a collection of 50 short prose poems and one of the building blocks of literary modernism.  The symbolist poets and surrealists also acknowledged a debt, as did T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) although his fork of modernism was so striking it seems almost unfair much to dwell on the precursors.

Lindsay Lohan, a poem by Amber Tambling, from the collection Dark Sparkler (2015).

Actress and author Amber Tamblyn (b 1983) solved the writer's dilemma about whether to handle the subject of Lindsay Lohan in prose or poetry by using no text at all.  The publisher HarperCollins described her third collection Dark Sparkler (2015) as a “…hybrid of poetry and art exploring the lives and deaths of actresses who began their careers as child stars.”  The book, which included original artwork by a number of artists, was well received, critically and commercially.  The title was well-chosen because Dark Sparkler was a catalogue of murder and suicide but what attracted much comment was the inclusion of one living soul: Lindsay Lohan, her entry (on page 47) blank but for her name as the title.  An author’s relationship ultimately is with their readers but first it’s with their critics and the response to that one proved it’s possible to deconstruct text even when it doesn’t appear.  As the postmodernists explained, even a blank page is "text" to be deconstructed to find meaning and should the conclusion be there is "no meaning", that too is "a meaning".  Whether fashionable or not, postmodernism made a contribution to literary criticism and remains available for readers to take from it what they will.  Some of the critical reaction to Ms Tambling's Lindsay Lohan was something in vein of those who approached John Cage’s (1912–1992) 4:33 (1952) in that, without much with which to work, the only obvious question seemed to be “What did you mean?”  Ms Tamblyn did say she found it “upsetting” when, after reading several of the poems dedicated to starlets who died young, she spoke the words “Lindsay Lohan” and the audience laughed; perhaps, in the age of the TikTokers she’d not now be surprised.  The poet claimed the inclusion of the piece in its unusual form was not to say “you’re next” but explicitly to avoid writing anything about a life in progress, the idea being Ms Lohan’s life was her own story to write.  Like any work of prose or poetry, page 47 was there for people to take from it what they found but presumably, the interpretative range might be wider than for those reading something like John Keats’ (1795-1821) ode To Autumn (1820).

The Tay Bridge Disaster

William Topaz McGonagall (circa 1825–1902) was a Scottish poet of Irish ancestry, now acknowledged as perhaps the worst poet ever to have been published in English, a fair achievement given the wealth of modern competition.  His best known work remains The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), lamenting the disaster of 28 December, 1879 when, during a severe gale, the central section of Dundee's Tay Rail Bridge collapsed, sending to their deaths in the freezing water the 80-odd souls aboard the Wormit-Dundee train passing at the time.  Regarded during its brief existence as a triumph of Victorian (1837-1901) engineering, the Tay Rail Bridge was nearly two miles (3.2 km) long and then the longest in the world but it had been built with an insufficient allowance for lateral wind-load, the structure that night succumbing to the gale-force winds estimated at 80 mph (130 km/h, 70 knots).  An enquiry was conducted and the designer, Sir Thomas Bouch (1822-1880) (dubbed a Knight Bachelor at Windsor Castle on 26 June, 1879 by Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) in recognition of the quick and economic construction of the bridge) was found for primarily responsible for the disaster.  His health suffered as a consequence of the event and within a year of the collapse, he was dead.

The Tay Bridge after the collapse (National Library of Scotland image).

Whether the The Tay Bridge Disaster can be said to be prosaic is debatable because there are probably better adjectives but critics have long been united that it's a very bad piece of poetry and it's doubtful a re-rendering in prose would be much of an improvement, one writing of it that McGonagall was “deaf to poetic metaphor, employing inappropriate rhythms that resulted in unintentionally amusing poetry.”  Said to be wholly oblivious to the invective almost universally directed to his oeuvre of over two-hundred pieces of verse, his sheer awfulness and tenacity caused him to be remembered to this day for at least something while countless poets who were merely earnest and competent are long forgotten.  Whether The Tay Bridge Disaster is the "worst ever" poem is up to readers but the problem with poetry is that its appreciation is a specific skill-set and not all possess the skill.  Were the critics to have praised the piece as a work or rare genius and pronounced it a masterpiece, many of us would have taken their word for it.

The Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”
 
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”
 
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.
 
So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Agastopia

Agastopia (pronounced agg-uh-stow-pee-ah)

Deriving visual enjoyment from the appearance of a specific body part or parts (some suggesting the attraction must be fetishistic to cross the threshold from admiration to syndrome).

2011: A coining of etymologists Peter Novobatzky & Ammon Shea who included it in their 1999 book Depraved English (sub-titled: "The most disgusting and hilarious word book ever", a title debatably hyperbolic but that adequately captured the intention).  While not exhaustive, there was an entry for maschalephidrosis (runaway armpit perspiration), the construct being the Ancient Greek μασχάλη (maskhálē) (armpit) + hidrosis, from the New Latin hidrōsis, from the Ancient Greek ἱδρώς (hidrṓs) (sweat) + -sis (the suffix in medicine used to form nouns of condition) so there were certainly highlights.  The construct of agastopia was the Ancient Greek ἀγα- (aga(s)-) (very) + -topia (a back-formation extracted from utopia (and other words) ultimately deriving from the Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos) (place).  Utopia was from the New Latin Ūtopia, the name of a fictional island possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system in the 1516 book Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) + τόπος (tópos) (place, region) + -ία (-ía) (the New Latin suffix, from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) which formed abstract nouns of feminine gender.  More’s irony in calling a world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony being best translated as “not a real place” is often lost in modern use and the word probably has genuinely undergone a meaning-shift.  Agastopic is a noun & adjective, agastopia is a noun and agastopically is an adverb; the noun plural is agastopias.

Agastopic: Studies of the soles of Lindsay Lohan's feet in three aspects.

Although in non-clinical use there had not previously been a generic descriptor of part-focused voyeuristic fetishism, there’s no suggestion Novobatzky & Shea thought their coining a "serious" contribution to the taxonomy of mental health but some commentators have adopted it, fleshing out the definitional range.  It’s been suggested the condition manifests as (1) a love or admiration of one’s own body part, compelling either a fondness of performing a particular task with it or a preference to cover and shield it with a protective layer or (2) the more familiar admiration of another’s body part(s).  Some sources, without citation, note it’s “…believed to be a rare condition” and (presumably tongue in cheek), one for which there’s “… no cure.”  Despite these helpful nudges, when the fifth edition of the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published in 2013 (DSM-5), there was no specific mention of agastopia and this was maintained when the revised version (DSM-5-TR) was released in 2022.  Still, for clinicians who find it convenient quasi-medical jargon, presumably a patient found to be "fond of certain body part" without "fetishising" it (or them) would be found to be "agastopish"; fetishes also intrinsically spectrum conditions, the comparative would be "more agastopic" and the superlative "most agastopic".

In an agastopic moment: The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments (circa 1778), drawing in red chalk with brown wash by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825)).

The notion agastopia is “believed to be a rare condition” might be based on some obscure statistics but certainly is a reflection on (1) the profession no longer regarding (most) such things as diagnosable conditions unless certain criteria are fulfilled and (2) the general consensus most instances of agastopia (being untroubling) are never reported to a clinician.  In other words, "believed to be a rare condition" probably is better expressed a "known to be a rarely reported condition".  Impressionistically, the likely real-world experience is that the prevalence of agastopia in a subset of the population doesn't justify funding the research and agastopia should not wholly be conflated with the various fetishistic interests now listed in the DSM as "particularisms" although overlap obviously must exist.  Nor is agastopia something exclusively either a male preserve or sexually focused, some women known to enjoy (in both senses) an agostopic relationship with their hair or fingernails.  In the days when two of the most significant vectors for the distribution of pornography were magazines (that although with glossy covers should not be confused with "the glossies") and various digital media (tapes and optical discs), both forms provided content devoted to or thematically inclinded towards one body part or another, something carried over to the internet when websites became the default mode.  Among the pornography aggregation sites, it’s not unusual for body parts or attributes (and not just the old "usual suspects") to be listed as categories for consumers with a particular agastopic or fetishistic focus.

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996, seen here plantar flexing), whose feet seem never to command the attention they deserve.

So, thus compartmentalized, agastopia is a thing existing at a commercially critical mass.  ‘Twas perhaps ever thus but what has in recent decades changed is the attitude of the mental health community.  Before the release of DSM-III-R (1987), fetishism tended to be described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously, feet) and body secretions.  With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category.  Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior.  There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in the DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one of the implications of which was it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of fetishism.

Fetish was from the the French fétiche, from the Portuguese feitico, from facere (to make) which begat factitious (created; artificial).  A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated".  In English, use of "fetish" to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents) and it was in the late nineteenth century the lexicon of modern psychiatry began to be assembled.  However, in the literary record, surviving from the seventh century AD are dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths.  That there are those in whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral presumably has from the start been part of the human condition.

Poster for Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, (1930).  Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) understood (and exploited) herself as a “fetishized object” but her construct was as knowingly artificial as was Blue Angel of most of Weimar Berlin.

One obvious linguistic virtue of “agastopia” is it can be used as an alternative to “fetishism”, the latter a word with the power to mislead or distort meaning because of the associations vested by popular use although some estimable writers have found “fetish” indispensable while maintaining clarity.  In The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (2000), a study of the politics on that troubled decade in Europe and the US, English historian Piers Brendon (b 1940) used “fetish” in the way most familiar when writing of a certain aspect of Berlin during the last days of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933): “Sleazy clubs offered anything from cocaine to fetishism and perversions abounded: one coven of coprophagists gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.  There were so many homosexual bars, transvestite dance halls and nude cabarets that an enterprising publisher issued a ‘Guide to Vicious Berlin’.  Outside the palace at the bottom of Unter den Linden [literally “under the linden trees", a boulevard in the central Mitte district running between the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Palace, the name gained from the linden (non citrus lime) trees lining the thoroughfare] were two stone lions, one of which was said to roar whenever a virgin walked by.”  If some of what was in the Christopher Isherwood’s (1904–1986) Goodbye to Berlin (1939) was an indication, the lion would not often have had to stir but literature can be highly selective, lives of most of the burghers in Weimar-era Berlin likely as stolid and respectable as stereotypes of Germans suggest.  While Isherwood and Marlene Dietrich painted captivating pictures of a decadent city, generally life was more prosaic.

Brendon however also applied “fetish” to attitudes expressed toward objects, institutions and concepts decidedly non-sexualized including “the Maginot Line” (a French border fortification that proved illusory), “rural conservation”, “the League of Nations” (1920-1945) and “liberalism”.  Of the last, perhaps gleefully, he documented L’Osservatore Romano’s (the daily newspaper of Vatican City) lauding of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) as a man of the same mind as Pius XI (1857–1939; pope 1922-1939) and a “man whom Providence has sent Us (sic)... [who did not believe in the] “villainous fetishes of liberalism.”  The Holy See’s mouthpiece concluded by saying it was “…thanks to the Duce” that “Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy.”  The extent of God’s gratitude can of course only be guessed but as the fate of Italian fascism (with the fall of Mussolini in 1943 it “burst like a bubble” in the unguarded phrase of German Generaloberst (Colonel General) Alfred Jodl (1890–1946, chief of the OKW operations staff 1939-1945)) suggested, the movement never became in Italy quite the fetish the Duce had hoped.

Of Foot Particularism: The DSM-5 Criteria

Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.

Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.

Criterion 3: The fetishistic object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.

Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (such as feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).

WikiFeet is a wiki which curates users’ submissions of women's feet with a predictable emphasis on celebrities. The Lindsay Lohan page contains 3639 images with the WikiFeet community rating her feet at 4.7 stars (out of 5) and that means she's in the category: "beautiful feet".  The site includes sections for “feet of the day” and “feet of the week” although the criteria for "making the cut" for these honors are not disclosed.  An illustrative sample from WikiFeet's rating table includes:

Billie Eilish, 97 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Anna Kournikova, 362 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Selena Gomez, 1963 images, rated 4.7, (beautiful feet)

Nicki Minaj, 1135 images, rated 3.4 (OK feet)

Mila Kunis, 1131 images, rated 4.6, (beautiful feet)

Janelle Monáe, 486 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Nancy Pelosi, 14 images, rated 2.9 (OK feet)

Rihanna, 5663 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Emily Ratajkowski, 2571 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Paris Hilton, 997 images, rated 3.2 (OK feet)

Emma Watson, 1047 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Megan Fox, 1866 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Emma Raducanu 80 images, rated 4.6 (beautiful feet)

Charli XCX, 960 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013, left) and Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025, right).

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s feet must convey something of her crooked crookedness because Wikifeet's connoisseurs rate them only at 2.5 stars (OK feet) but politics in the US being so polarized, there may be an element of strategic voting involved and the sample size is anyway small, crooked Hillary's page having only 24 images.  Following in the footsteps of the original, there exists a companion WikiFeet page for men’s feet although, predictably, it’s a mere shadow of the feminine version and that must be emblematic of many things in sociology, sexual politics and fetishism.  On the male site there is a solitary entry on Donald Trump’s page and while it’s not the only known photograph of his bare feet, it is the one with the best angle; with only a single image on which to base an assessment, the rating of 1.3 stars (bad feet) may reflect political bias rather than objective judgment.  That may also have influenced voting on the 32 images on Kamala Harris’s (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025) page though the fact she rated a solid 4.0 (nice feet) clearly wasn’t enough to help her win the 2024 presidential election, feet clearly just not an issue.

Shine envy: Field Marshal el-Sisi (left) and President Trump (right), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 2017.  Military men usually have shiny shoes, the more senior ranks allocated a batman to do the polishing and some branding of consumer shoe polishes reflect (get it?) the tradition, "Parade Gloss", "Military Tan" and "Rollcall Black" all having been sold "in the tin".

There was nothing in the recent testimony of Stormy Daniels (stage name of Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) to suggest Donald Trump has a particular thing for feet but he certainly notices shoes.  When meeting Field Marshal Fattah el-Sisi (b 1954; president of Egypt since 2014) in Riyadh, Mr Trump couldn’t help but be impressed how much shinier were the field marshal’s shoes, his seemingly close to identical pumps dull by comparison.  As they left the room, Mr Trump remarked to him: “Love your shoes.  Boy, those shoes. Man …” but knew he’d lost face and doubtless the White House shoe-shine operative loudly was told: "You're fired!"  The Democratic Party seems never to have drawn attention to Joe Biden's (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) shoes, presumably because they feared Fox News might have demanded proof he could still tie his own laces.

Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” that would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer attached to a living being) but such an interest would be seriously weird (the "lucky" rabbit foot from another tradition) and a more disturbing condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary.  It's a nuanced aspect of "body parts as this and that" because some are, in many religious traditions, venerated as holy relics or icons.  The critics noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear, but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus should be regarded as a partialism: Foot partialism.  While there are those who greatly admire elegant creations such as a stiletto heeled slingback, the interest in these as pieces of design is separate from those who focus on their "associative connections": Thigh-length, laced leather boots with a five inch (125 mm) heel are likely to be "enjoyed" not as stand-alone objects but because of the thighs, calves, ankles and feet of those stereotypically assumed most often to pull them on (and, of course, take them off). 

OnlyFans, a place for agastopics.

A genuine phenomenon, OF (OnlyFans) is a niche player in the gig economy but the niche is big and if not quite the oldest in the world, it's been around a while.  Something of an early-adopter of techniques embracing the implications of AI (artificial intelligence), while "feet" is just one of many genres serviced, OF is able to engage in "category proliferation" at little more than marginal cost because the site works on a "bolt-on" principle.  The business model works because the platform's content exclusively is user-generated with revenue streams provided by PPV (pay-per-view) customers and monthly subscriptions with creators collecting the bulk of the payments, OF essentially "clipping the ticket" on the way through their gateway.  OF was one of the "plague winners" in the disruptions wrought by the lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic but the earnings profile of the content creators is a highly exaggerated curve, a relative handful finding it most lucrative while for most it's at best a hobby or side-hustle; for OF that's OK, they still clip the ticket.  Although best known for creators posting sexually explicit content, in 2021 (in response to political pressure) it was announced things would be "sanitized" with NSFW (not suitable for work) material purged site-wide.  Such was the outcry from creators & customers the plan survived not even a week, cynical analysts concluding the original announcement had been made to provoke the revolt, OF's management well-aware nothing quietens tiresome politicians as quickly as mass public discontent.  The OF content creators are an imaginative lot and some are said to make "feet" NSFW so those wanting a purely (in the sense of "knee & lower only") anatomical experience are recommended to search with caution.

Foot Finder

When OF attained critical mass it encouraged the growth of an ecosystem of sites acting as "third party intermediaries" servicing those who for whatever reason preferred their transactions to be handled with a guarantee of anonymity (if curated with care, one’s own feet on an OF page should be similarly anonymous).  Content providers are known as “sole traders” while in the jargon the third party operators run “parasitic sites” which may sound harsh but that does mirror the analogous use in biology.  Amusingly, although the internet doomed many other platforms with business models dependent on revenue from advertisers (notably the print media, in the West, many magazines and all but a handful of newspapers driven extinct or taking "an unconscionable time a-dying"), FootFinder (above, left) clearly sees value still in physical, three-dimensional mobile advertising and a large fibreglass foot (above, right) atop a Kei car (diminutive, small displacement Japanese vehicles sold mostly in the JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) certainly must draw the eye.  As long ago as the 1950s, there were those predicting there would one day be a world-wide system (at least one encompassing the Western world) of real-time interconnectivity (ie the concept of the internet) but most seemed to envisage it as people having portals (with acid-green screens) through which to look-up stuff in databases or receive text-based content such as news reports or educational instruction.  In short, a world of "few uploaders and many downloaders".  It's doubtful many imagined "mass-upload" models such as YouTube and definitely not OF; while many would have assumed users would become interactive, Foot Finder would not have occurred to many as a template.  How, 50 years from now we'll all (or at least some of use) be indulging our agastopia(s) may be just as unpredictable.

The feet of Ana de Armas, OnlyFans "Feet of the Year, 2023", plantar flexing.

It need not be an expensive hobby, provided one focuses on one's favorite feet.  English singer Lily Allen (b 1985) has an OF page (Lily Allen FTSE500) for her (US size 6) feet and subscriptions are offered at US$10 per month, her hook on an Instragram post titled “La dolce feeta” including a snap of her toes next to Rome’s Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain) in which Anita Ekberg's (1931-2005) feet splashed, all those years ago.  While to those not part of the fetish it can be hard to tell one foot from another, the cognoscenti have eyes as well-trained as a sommelier's palate; in 2023 OF's "Feet of the Year" title was awarded to Cuban-born Spanish actress Ana de Armas (b 1988).  It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat agastopia and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required.  Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest agastopics will soon again be labeled as deviants.

The washing of feet

Not everything foot-centric is agastopic.  In the New Testament there are three texts describing Christ washing feet, the best known of which is John 13:1-17 (Jesus Washing the Disciples' Feet).  The ritual is explained usually as Jesus demonstrating his humility and mission to serve mankind but it's clear he wished also to set a good example to the not infrequently fractious dozen:

"So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."  John 13:12-15 (King James Version; KJV, 1611)

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a female inmate of Rome's Rebibbia prison, 28 March 2024: Symbolic or a "performative photo-opportunity" depending on one's view. 

One of the set-piece motifs of Christianity, the foot-washing ritual takes place on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) and seeks to imitate Christ’s washing of the Disciples’ feet the night before he was crucified at Golgotha.  It was on that evening he said to his Disciples: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” (John 13:21).  The sight of a pope washing feet is familiar but when Francis (1936-2025; pope 2013-2025) performed the ritual at Rome’s Rebibbia prison on Holy Thursday 2024, it was apparently the first time in the institution’s two-thousand year odd existence a pontiff has washed the feet only of women.  Historians concede records from earlier centuries obviously are incomplete but so remarkable was the event deemed, most seemed to conclude a precedent had been set.  In the past Francis had washed the feet of women, Muslims, refugees and other minorities but never women exclusively.  He certainly cast a wider net than his more conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) who sponged the feet only of men and, in the final years of his pontificate, only those of ordained priests.  It’s believed feet proffered to popes, scrupulously are pre-sanitized.

Japan

Japan (pronounced juh-pan)

(1) A constitutional monarchy (the sovereign still styled as an emperor although the empire was dissolved in 1945) on an archipelago of islands off the east coast of Asia.  It's known also as Nihon or Nippon (initial upper case)

(2) As Sea of Japan, the part of the Pacific Ocean between Japan and mainland Asia (initial upper case).

(3) Any of various hard, durable, black varnishes, originally from Japan and used for coating wood, metal, or other surfaces; work varnished and figured in the Japanese manner; the liquid used for this purpose and within the class lacquerware.

(4) As Japans, a variety of decorative motifs or patterns derived from Asian sources, used on English porcelain of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (initial upper case).

(5) Of or relating to Japan, Japans or japanning.

1570s: From the Portuguese Japão, acquired in Malacca from Malay (Austronesian) Japang & Jepang, from Chinese jih pun (literally "sunrise" and equivalent to the Japanese Nippon), the construct being jih (sun) + pun (origin).  The connection to “sunrise” is in Japan lying to the east of China and the sun rising in the east.  The earliest forms in Europe were Marco Polo's Chipangu & Cipangu, variants of some form of synonymous Sinitic (日本國) (nation of Japan).  The verb japan (to coat with lacquer or varnish in the manner of Japanese lacquer-work) dates from the 1680s and immediately begat the noun japanning and the verb and adjective japanned.  The noun japonaiserie (art objects made in the Japanese style) was borrowed in 1896 from the French, which came to be described as japonism (an influence of Japanese art and culture on European art and design).  Although the lacquers used weren't exclusively black, it was the most widely-used finish and in the West "japanned" took on the slang sense of "ordained into the priesthood".  Japan (used with initial capital) is a proper noun, japan is a noun & verb, japannery, japanware & japanner are nouns, japanning is a noun & verb, japanned & Japanize are verbs and Japanesque, Japanesey, Japanesish & Japanish are adjectives; the noun plural is japans.  

In botany, the noun japonica was a species name from the New Latin and described a number of plants originally native to Japan, notably a species of camellia (Camellia japonica) and a sub-species of the rice Oryza sativa.  The Latin form was a feminine of japonicus (Japanese, of Japan), from Japon, a variant of Japan with a vowel closer to the Japanese name.  The adjective Japanese (Iapones) was known in the 1580s and by circa 1600 was a noun, the meaning extending to "the Japanese language" by 1828.  The remarkably destructive Japanese beetle was documented in 1919, the species accidentally introduced to the US in larval stage in a shipment of Japanese iris unloaded in the port of Los Angeles in 1916.  Japlish (unidiomatic English in Japan) dates from 1960s and describes the often ad-hoc linguistic code-switching on the model of Spanglish.

English Queen Anne japanned writing bureau desk with claw & ball feet, circa 1793.

The sense of the process of “costing with lacquer or varnish" in the manner of Japanese lacquer-work, is from the 1680s, the derived forms being japanned & japanning, hence also the French creation of japonaiserie (1896), adopted also, japanned furniture being almost always black, in the slang sense of "ordained into the priesthood".  The association in Europe of black being the color of the the garb of the lower orders of Roman Catholic clergy wasn’t universal but sufficiently prevalent for it to be the general motif in the depiction of the breed.  Adolf Hitler, a lapsed Catholic who extended the Church a grudging admiration as an institution which had lasted two-thousand odd years and still exerted a pull over many aspects of people's lives with which the Nazi Party couldn’t compete, called priests “those black crows”, adding “I know them very well” 

French Louis XVI japanned & ormolu Sevres porcelain writing desk, circa 1860.

The adjective Japanesque is attested from 1853.  It developed on both sides of the Atlantic to refer both to the aesthetic inspired by Japanese influence and (a little superfluously) original items from Japan.  The greater awareness after 1853 followed US Navy Commodore Matthew Perry (1794–1858) sailing that year to Japan to secure the opening to American trade, by negotiation if possible and through gunboat diplomacy if not.  The aim of US policy was to end the 250-odd years of national seclusion by Japan; without access to Japan and its markets, the US penetration into east-Asia really wasn’t possible.  The motives of the US were a mixture of commercial hunger and the missionary instincts of those anxious to bring (ie impose) the influences of Christianity and the western way of life; since 1853, that project has played-out with ups and downs for both sides.  The notion of the Japanesque was applied to a variety of objects including ceramics, lace, painting, carving and metalwork and was not of necessity associated with the lacquering process.  Japanese was noted as an adjective in the 1580s though may have been used earlier, in parallel with “Japan”.  As a noun, the first use seems to have been in 1828 in the context of “the Japanese language”.  Japlish, the noun meaning “unidiomatic English in Japan" was first noted in 1960 reflecting (1) the intrusion of US English words and phrases into the language proper and (2) a hybridised form of the language combining both although, despite the post-war years of US occupation, the English influence on Japanese was less than on many languages.  One obscure curiosity from 1819 was camellia, a Modern Latin feminised variant of japonicus (Japanese, of Japan), from Japon, a variant of Japan with a vowel closer to the Japanese name.

Lindsay Lohan, Japanese-edition magazine covers.

Giapan was first attested in English in Richard Willes's The History of Travayle in the West and East Indies (1577) in which was mentioned a translation of a letter written in 1565 which spoke of the “Ilande of Giapan”.  Like the modern Japan, Japonia was derived from the Portuguese Japão, from the Malay Jepang, from the Sinitic (日本), probably from an earlier stage of the modern Cantonese 日本 (Jat6-bun2) or Min Nan (日本) (Ji̍t-pún), from the Middle Chinese 日本 (Nyit-pwón, literally “origin of the sun”).  Related were the Mandarin 日本 (Rìběn), the Japanese 日本 (Nippon, Nihon), the Korean 일본 (Ilbon) and the Vietnamese Nhật Bản.

These notes are very much an Eurocentric scratch of the etymological surface. Japan is the exonym (an external name for a place, people or language used by foreigners instead of the native-language version) familiar to most and exonyms are not uncommon but the history of the names used to describe the construct of Japan is longer and with more forks than most.  Indeed, even within Japan, the debate about the use of Nippon, Nihon and Japan is multi-faceted and tied to influences social, political and historical, the arguments sometimes part of debates about the role of nationalism.

JAL Logo.

Japan has two airlines operating on both domestic and international routes and while that's hardly unusual, word nerds might be tempted to wonder if there’s any cultural or political significance in one being called ANA (All Nippon Airways) and one JAL (Japan Airlines).  JAL was created in 1951 as one of the state-backed national enterprises the Japanese government formed as part of the project of “kick-starting” the economy in the post-war years.  In a sense it was something like what would now be called a PPP (public-private partnership) but in 1953 JAL was wholly nationalized, becoming a “national carrier” on the model many countries in the era used for their “flag carrier” airlines.  Commencing operations in 1953 after having been founded as a private company the previous year, ANA traded initially as JHA (Japan Helicopter and Aeroplane) before in 1958 adopting the name ANA.  In the way things were then done (witness the cozy domestic duopoly the Australian government maintained between TAA (Trans-Australian Airlines) and Ansett), for decades the Japanese government effectively divided the market with JAL flying most international routes while ANA focused on domestic services, a historical division that to this day still colors perceptions of their nature.

ANA logo.

It appears dubious the choice of “Japan” and “Nippon” in the names of airlines had any significance beyond the usual processes with which brand names are chosen although, drawing a long bow, one can see why such a theory might have emerged.  “Japan” was the English exonym (the name for the country in international English) and JAL was the predominant international carrier so, it could be concluded, because “Japan Airlines” internationally was legible, JAL was “outward-facing”.  “Nippon” (日本, Nippon or Nihon) was the native Japanese name (literally “origin of the sun” or “sun source”), thus the popular use “Land of the Rising Sun.”  Still drawing on the bow, because ANA’s Japanese name was Zen Nippon Kūyu (全日本空輸) (literally “All Nippon Air Transport”), that could be interpreted as ANA being rooted in domestic culture and thus more explicitly Japanese in identity.

1961 Jaguar Mark 2 3.8.

The truth unfortunately seems be more prosaic.  According to the company history (publication of such things a Japanese tradition), the suggestion to use “All Japan Airways” had reached the JHA board but, understandably, it was judged too similar to “Japan Airlines” so “All Nippon Airways” was instead adopted.  Such an origin story is not unknown in commerce.  In the UK, when Jaguar introduced the Mark VII (1950-1956), it replaced the Mark V (1948-1951), there being no Mark VI because the company wanted to avoid marketplace confusion with the then current Bentley Mark VI (1946-1952).  As an aside, Jaguar’s use of “Mark this and that” was a tangled business.  The Mark IV was named thus only after the release of the Mark V; prior to that the range (1936-1940 by SS Cars (from the original Standard Swallow)) & 1945-1949 (as Jaguar)) had been badged and marketed as the 1½ litre, 2½ litre & 3½ litre.  There was never a Mark I, II or III and whether the company ever contemplated retrospectively applying the designations to earlier iterations seems not documented.  Anyway, it never was done but Jaguar wasn’t done with Marks.  Their smaller saloon was sold between 1955-1959 and named “2.4” & “3.8” (the larger engine introduced in 1957) but when this model was revised for a 1959 release, it was designated Mark 2 (the Roman numerals never used) and, in one form or another, these were sold until 1969.  Because that car had been dubbed “Mark 2”), the original 2.4 & 3.4 came to be styled “Mark 1” but although widely used, this was never adopted by the factory.  Concurrent with all that, the Mark VII was updated as the Mark VIII (1956-1958) & Mark IX (1958-1961) before being replaced by the radically different Mark X (1961-1966).  In 1966, Jaguar gave up, use of “Mark” abandoned with the revised Mark X becoming the 420G (1966-1970).  Beginning in 1968, subsequent model revisions were denoted by “Series” (S1, S2 etc) rather then “Mark”.

2005-2009 second-generation Mitsuoka Viewt.

The second generation Viewt was based on the Nissan Micra/March K12 platform.  In production since 1993, the Viewt is Mitsuoka's take on the Jaguar Mark 2 and is probably the best known of the company's many “retro re-imaginings” of JDM (Japanese domestic market) vehicles.  Other Mitsuoka have (loosely) be based on British machines from the 1950s & 1960s by Bentley and Vanden Plas but there are also been ventures referencing Japanese models and cars from the US including the Dodge Challenger and Chevrolet's Blazer & Corvette. 

There seems no historic or sociological significance to the use of either “Mark or “Series”, both terms remaining widely used by the car industry but use of “Nippon” seems more nuanced.  In Japanese use, Nihon is said to be the more common everyday pronunciation while Nippon is heard more in ceremonial or institutional use, the latter frequently applied to national sports teams, stamps, banknotes and corporations (Nippon Steel, Nippon Denso, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) etc.  According to surveys of passengers (a very well studied cohort), both ANA and JAL are rated among the world’s best airlines for comfort, service, food, reliability and such with the former said to be “slightly more understated, meticulous with an “obviously” “Japanese” service culture” while JAL, although still “distinctively Japanese”, is closer in its in-flight practices to international conventions.  As a final, minor linguistic note, native Japanese tend not to refer to the airlines as JAL or ANA in their English pronunciation, but by abbreviations derived from the Japanese names: JAL Nikkō (日航) & ANA Zennikkū (全日空).

On the tarmac.

In 2021 the Japanese government tried to nudge JAL & ANA to merge, citing the difficulties the airlines were enduring as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In truth, the economic rationalists in the Japanese Treasury had for some time wished the two would combine operations and the virus was just convenient cover.  What the bureaucrats knew was it was only a matter of time before there would be a crisis in the industry which would be cured in the way which has become a tradition in modern Japan: The government would give the airlines money.  By mid 2026, Japan’s national debt had reached some US$10 trillion which is around 235% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the highest ratio among developed nations.  That sounds a serious problem but the argument is Japan is a “special case” because some 88% of the debt is denominated in Yen, the Bank of Japan holding nearly half.  Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen but thus far, it remains business as usual.  By contrast the US national debt stands at US$38 trillion-odd (in excess of 124% of GDP (gross domestic product), compared with the 113% reached in 1946 after borrowing to fund much of the allied effort in World War II (1939-1945)) and despite predictions in the past there may be “psychological thresholds” (US$10 trillion, US$20 trillion etc), things continued and it may be a debt number of US$50 or US$100 trillion attracts a similar reaction.  There was a time when a US$38 trillion national debt would have been thought at least a “problem” and probably a “crisis” but now it seems accepted as the “new normal” and as well as the US, the whole world economy now depends on this method of operation, the rationale apparently that, if need be, the US Treasury could mint a single US$40 trillion coin and declare a “net debt-free” status.  Economists seem divided on the implications of such a minting but the lawyers are at one in declaring it constitutional so, there too the “borrow & spend” model remains business as usual.