Funeral

Funeral (pronounced fyoo-ner-uhl)

(1) The ceremonies for a dead person prior to burial or cremation; the obsequies.  Technically, it’s distinguished from a memorial service by the presence of the corpse although, for various reasons, this is not absolute.

(2) The processional element of such a ceremony.

(3) The sermon delivered at a burial (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English adjective funeral, from the Medieval Latin fūnerālia (funeral rites), originally the neuter plural from the adjective fūnerālis (having to do with a funeral), the construct being fūner- (stem of fūnus (funeral rites; death, corpse) + -ālis (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals).  The origin of the Latin forms (In Classical Latin the adjective was funebris) is unknown, the common speculation linking to the primitive Indo-European dhew (to die).  The noun emerged in the early sixteenth century, probably from the Middle French plural funerailles, from the Medieval Latin fūnerālia, neuter plural of fūnerālis and the singular and plural were used interchangeably in English until circa 1700.  In Elizabethan times, funeral operated also as transitive verb in the sense of "to mourn".  The adjective funereal dates from 1725, influenced by the Middle French funerail, from the Latin fūnereus, from fūnus.  The Middle English forms from Latin via French displaced the native Old English līcþeġnung (literally the helpfully descriptive “dead body service”).

Funeral differs from burial, cremation, entombment, inhumation, interment & planting in that those words refer to a method whereas funeral concerns the ceremonial aspects; the words obsequies, sepulture & solemnities more synonymous although, historically, the closest was probably the obsolete exequy (the also obsolete exsequy the alternative form), a back-formation from exequies, from the Middle English exequies, from the Old French exequies, from the Latin exsequiās, accusative of exsequiae (train of followers).  Funeral appears in many European languages with the odd variation in spelling but in Portuguese, the velório (wake) is a more common reference.  The adjective funerary (pertaining to funerals or burials) dates from the 1690s, from Late Latin funerarius.  The adjective funest (portending death) emerged in the 1650s and had been obsolete since the late eighteenth century except as a poetic device; it was from the fourteenth century French funeste (unlucky), from the Latin funestus (causing death, destructive; mournful) from fūnus (“funeral rites" in this sense)  The related funestal was from a century earlier and died even sooner.  Funeral is a noun & adjective (the verb long obsolete), funereal, funerary & (the obsolete) funebrial are adjectives, funereally an adverb and funeralize is a verb; the noun plural is funerals.  The adjective funereal is used to refer to anything grim and dour rather than funeral as such and in idiomatic use, to say “it will be your funeral” is to suggest there will be unpleasant consequences if some course of action is followed.

In English, undertaker was an agent noun from the verb undertake, the early meaning, strictly speaking, "a contractor of any sort hired to perform some task" but it was applied mostly to those engaged is some sort of commercial enterprise.  There had long been instances of the use of “funeral-undertaker” but by the 1690s, “undertaker” had come to mean almost exclusively those whose profession was to “embalm and bury”.  Most etymologists conclude this organic shift to linguistic exclusivity came via the word being used as a euphemism for the mechanics of the profession, matters of mortality something of a taboo topic.

Undertaker faded from use as “mortician” and “funeral director” came to be preferred, firstly in the US with the latter soon becoming the standard form in the rest of the English-speaking world.  It was at the July 1895 meeting of the Funeral Directors' Association of Kentucky that it was proclaimed “…an undertaker will no longer be known as an "undertaker and embalmer." In the future he will be known as the "mortician."  This soon spread and the term undertaker is now almost unknown except in historic references or in figurative use in fields such as politics and sport.  In general use, the words "undertake", "undertaken" or "undertaking" are now used to describe just about any activity and with no sense of a taint of association with corpses.

In the narrow technical sense, even in modern use, the terms funeral director, mortician, and undertaker mean the same thing (a person who supervises or conducts the preparation of the dead for burial and directs or arranges funerals"  Nuances have however emerged, especially in the US where a funeral director tends to be someone who owns or operates a funeral home whereas the term mortician implies a technical role, a person who handles the body (the embalmer) in preparation for a funeral.  Often of course, these roles are combined, especially in smaller operations so for practical purposes, funeral director and mortician are generally interchangeable and the place a funeral director or mortician works is usually called either a funeral parlor or funeral home.  Although it would probably once have seemed a bizarre construction, there are also now funeral celebrants who officiate at ceremonies not (or only vaguely) connected with religious practice and are thus analogous to the civil celebrants who perform secular marriage ceremonies.  They're not directly connected with the school of thought which prefers to "celebrate a life" rather than "mourn a death" at a funeral, an approach which can be taken even in an overtly religious service. 

So it's largely a matter of how those within the profession prefer to style themselves and Funeral Director seems now the most popular choice although mortician remains widely used in the US.  Mirriam-Webster helpful suggests provides:

Funeral Director: A person whose job is to arrange and manage funerals.

Mortician: A person whose job is to prepare dead people to be buried and to arrange and manage funerals.

Undertaker: One whose business is to prepare the dead for burial and to arrange and manage funerals.

In the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, a pauper's funeral was a funeral for a pauper paid for by the state, originally under the terms of the under the English Poor Law (last codified in 1834 but with legislative antecedents which stretched back centuries.  The common law right of the dead to a dignified burial was first recognized in England in R v Stewart, 12 AD. & E. 773 (1840) and was thus an early recognition of basic human rights.  The phrase "pauper's funeral" is now not widely used in formal discourse but apparently remains undertakers slang and, around the old British Empire, local authorities quietly conduct thousands of funerals a year.  Although not a "State Funeral" as defined, each is a funeral paid for by the state.

Top - Ceremonial funerals: Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997) (left), Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021) (centre) & Baroness Thatcher (1925-2013 (right).

Bottom - State Funerals: George V (1865-1936) (left), George VI (1895-1952) (centre) & Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965 (right). 

So, when Lord Salisbury (1893–1972) was asked by one of Winston Churchill’s (1874-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) private secretaries what a State Funeral was, in answering “A funeral paid for by the state” he was only partly correct, a State Funeral in the UK requiring uniquely the consent of both houses of parliament: the Commons and the Lords Spiritual & Temporal.  In the UK, the state funeral has long been a rare thing and in recent years it’s become more exclusive still, Elizabeth II’s upcoming event only the sixth in the last hundred years of which two were not departed sovereigns, the last being Churchill’s in 1965.  The big, set piece, televised events which look like State Funerals such as those of the Queen Mother (1900-2002 and Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997) were styled as “ceremonial funerals” and over the same period there have been eight of these.  There has been speculation about the form Elizabeth’s funeral (operation "London Bridge", planned since 1962) will take, some suggesting it will, befitting the end of an era, be a glittering, elaborate spectacle which will contrast with the later coronation of Charles III, that expected to be something simpler than the last in 1953, reflecting the changed times.  It's not known how many people, over the years, have been involved in planning "London Bridge" but as a comparison, some sources claim 277 souls were on the committee which designed the State Funeral of Kim Il-sung (Kim I, 1912-1994; The Great Leader of the DPRK (North Korea (1948-1994)).  

Not all jurisdictions treat them as such rarified events.  While governments have different rules for state funerals, few show the largess of the Australian states which grant them to well-behaved pop singers and reasonably successful football coaches though, being obviously symbolic, they serve many purposes: both Adolf Hitler (1889-1945, Nazi head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; Soviet leader 1922-1953) attended (as chief mourner) a number of state funerals where the deceased had been murdered on their orders.

Mormon Funeral Potatoes

Although often called Mormon Funeral potatoes (although the same general recipe also produces great potatoes, cheesy potatoes, hash brown casserole, cheesy hash browns & party potatoes), the unusual combination of potatoes and toppings is popular beyond Utah as a traditional potato hotdish or casserole in the US West and Midwest.  The name "funeral potatoes" comes from the frequency with which the side-dish is served at funerals where it's popular not only because of tradition but the ease with which it can be transported and re-heated.  It remains a standard component of funerals conducted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).  Although there are variations, the recipe usually includes hash browns or cubed potatoes, some type of cheese, onions, a cream soup (chicken, mushroom, or celery) or sauce, sour cream, and a topping of butter with corn flakes or (latterly) crushed potato chips.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 50-55 minutes

Serving time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

20 oz frozen hash browns, slightly defrosted
2 cups of a cheese which melts well (cheddar, mozzarella etc)
1.5 cup of sour cream
1 can of cream soup (alternatively use 1 cup of stock concentrate and increase sour cream to 2 cups)
8 tablespoons of butter, melted
1 cup of corn flakes
1 cup of fried onions
Salt, pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) Pre-heat oven to 330^o F (165^o C) and butter baking tray.

(2) In large bowl, thoroughly mix hash browns, sour cream, chicken soup, dried onion, butter, salt and pepper and cheese.

(3) Put mixture in baking tray, spreading to an even depth.

(4) Evenly sprinkle cornflakes on top by gently crushing them.

(5) Bake for 50-55 minutes.  Allow to cool down for 10 minutes before serving.

The Machete funeral hearse

Lindsay Lohan in habit, emerging from hearse in Machete (2010).  The Machete hearse was based on a 1987 Cadillac Brougham (1987-1992).

Between 1931-1979, General Motors' Cadillac division offered a line called the Cadillac Commercial Chassis, a long-wheelbase, heavy-duty platform which was mechanically complete but with a partially built body (without bodywork rear of the windscreen, doors and other panels included on request).  Produced on the D platform (exclusive to Cadillac), the Commercial Chassis was used by coach-builders to create high-roofed ambulances, hearses (often called funeral coaches in the US) and cleverly designed hybrids which at short notice could be converted from ambulances to hearses or used by a coroner's staff to transport a corpse; they were popular in towns with small populations.  The early Commercial Chassis were based on the Series 355 (1931-1935) and the Series 75 (1936-1992) from 1936 and although there were specific modification to the frame, the mechanical components were always shared with the 75 which, used for the big limousines, meant costs were amortized across the ranges.  After 1980, production continued on the downsized platform but there was no longer a separate D platform, the partially bodied cars structurally identical to the mainstream line.  The landau irons (which some coachbuilders insist should be called "carriage bars") on the rear side-panels emulate in style (though not function) those used on horse-drawn carriages and early automobiles (the last probably the Mercedes-Benz 300 (the “Adenauer”; W186 (1951-1957) & W189 (1957-1962)) Cabriolet D).  On those vehicles, the irons actually supported the folding mechanism for the fabric roof but on hearses they are merely decorative, there to relieve the slab-sidedness of the expanse of flat metal.

Undertaker

Undertaker (pronounced uhn-der-tey-ker)

(1) A person whose profession is the preparation of the dead for burial or cremation and the management of funerals (like embalmer, now mostly a historic reference, the preferred modern terms being funeral director or mortician)

(2) A person receiving land in Ireland during the Elizabethan era, so named because they gave an undertaking to abide by several conditions regarding marriage, to be loyal to the crown, and to use English as their spoken language (obsolete, now used only for historic references).

(3) A contractor for the royal revenue in England, one of those who undertook to manage the House of Commons for the king in the Addled Parliament of 1614 (obsolete, now used only for historic references).

(4) A person who undertakes something (became rare because of the likelihood of confusion with funeral directors but "undertake", "undertaking" and "undertaken" now common).  Historically, the word was associated in Middle and early Modern English with those running businesses but as the association with embalming and burials became pervasive, it came to be replaced with the French entrepreneur.

1350–1400: A compound word under- + -take- + -er, a back-formation from the earlier undertake (after undernim (from the Middle English undernimen, from the Old English underniman (to take in, receive, comprehend, understand, blame, be indignant at, take upon oneself, steal), the construct being under- +‎ nim.  It was cognate with the Dutch ondernemen (to undertake, attempt) and the German unternehmen (to undertake, attempt).  Under is from the Middle English under-, from the Old English under-, from the Proto-Germanic under, from the primitive Indo-European n̥dhér (lower) and n̥tér (inside).

Take is from the Middle English taken (to take, lay hold of, grasp, strike), from the Old English tacan (to grasp, touch), of North Germanic origin, from the Old Norse taka (to touch, take), from the Proto-Germanic tēkaną (to touch), from the primitive Indo-European dehig- (to touch).  Gradually, it displaced the Middle English nimen (to take), from the Old English niman (to take).  It was cognate with the Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk taka (to take), the Norwegian Bokmål ta (to take), the Swedish ta (to take), the Danish tage (to take, seize), the Middle Dutch taken (to grasp), the Dutch taken (to take; grasp) and the Middle Low German tacken (to grasp); tackle is related.

The –er suffix was added to verbs to create a person or thing that does an action indicated by the root verb; used to form an agent noun.  It added to a noun it denoted an occupation.  The suffix is from the Middle English -er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, a borrowing from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought to have been borrowed from Latin -ārius and reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French -or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant of which was -our), from the Latin -(ā)tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr.

Mercedes-Benz 600 Hearse

In English, undertaker was an agent noun from the verb undertake, the early meaning, strictly speaking, "a contractor of any sort hired to perform some task" but it was applied mostly to those engaged is some sort of commercial enterprise.  There had long been instances of the use of “funeral-undertaker” but by the 1690s, “undertaker” had come to mean almost exclusively those whose profession was to “embalm and bury”.  Most etymologists conclude this organic shift to linguistic exclusivity came via the word being used as a euphemism for the mechanics of the profession, matters of mortality something of a taboo topic.

Undertaker faded from use as “mortician” and “funeral director” came to be preferred, firstly in the US with the latter soon becoming the standard form in the rest of the English-speaking world.  It was at the July 1895 meeting of the Funeral Directors' Association of Kentucky that it was proclaimed “…an undertaker will no longer be known as an "undertaker and embalmer." In the future he will be known as the "mortician."  This soon spread and the term undertaker is now almost unknown except in historic references or in figurative use in fields such as politics and sport.  In general use, the words "undertake", "undertaken" or "undertaking" are now used to describe just about any activity and with no sense of a taint of association with corpses. 

In the narrow technical sense, even in modern use, the terms funeral director, mortician, and undertaker mean the same thing (a person who supervises or conducts the preparation of the dead for burial and directs or arranges funerals"  Nuances have however emerged, especially in the US where a funeral director tends to be someone who owns or operates a funeral home whereas the term mortician implies a technical role, a person who handles the body (the embalmer) in preparation for a funeral.  Often of course, these roles are combined, especially in smaller operations so for practical purposes, funeral director and mortician are generally interchangeable.  Although it would probably once have seemed a bizarre construction, there are also now funeral celebrants who officiate at ceremonies not (or only vaguely) connected with religious practice and are thus analogous to the civil celebrants who perform secular marriage ceremonies.  They're not directly connected with the school of thought which prefers to "celebrate a life" rather than "mourn a death" at a funeral, an approach which can be taken even in an overtly religious service.  

So it's largely a matter of how those within the profession prefer to style themselves and Funeral Director seems now the most popular choice although mortician remains widely used in the US.  Mirriam-Webster provides:

Funeral Director: A person whose job is to arrange and manage funerals.

Mortician: A person whose job is to prepare dead people to be buried and to arrange and manage funerals.

Undertaker: One whose business is to prepare the dead for burial and to arrange and manage funerals.

1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) hearse by German coach builders, Pollmann of Bremen.

Built on a (lengthened) 1967 short wheelbase (SWB) platform, it’s a genuine one-off, the only 600 hearse ever built.  The story (which may be true), repeated whenever it’s offered for sale, is it was originally a sedan purchased by a German farmer (always referred to as Herr K) whose particular experience of the Wirtschaftswunder (the German post-war economic miracle) was the massive capital gain he enjoyed when he sold his farmland for urban development.  Happy, he bought Mercedes-Benz 600 (in champagne metallic gold) for his wife and commissioned an architect to design a house for them to enjoy.  Unfortunately, he arrived home one day to find the ungrateful hausfrau had run off with the architect and, unable to bear to keep the 600 because it was a reminder of the strumpet’s infidelity, he returned the car to the dealer to off-load.  It was sold to the coach-builders Pollmann which converted it to a hearse which seems appropriate although it's not known if the former farmer was impressed by the symbolism of the transformation.  It was used for some years for the purpose for which it was designed and has since been restored by US-based expert in all things 600esque, Karl Middelhauve.

The Machete funeral hearse

Lindsay Lohan in habit, emerging from hearse in Machete (2010).  The Machete hearse was based on a 1987 Cadillac Brougham (1987-1992).

Between 1931-1979, General Motors' Cadillac division offered a line called the Cadillac Commercial Chassis, a long-wheelbase, heavy-duty platform which was mechanically complete but with a partially built body (without bodywork rear of the windscreen, doors and other panels included on request).  Produced on the D platform (exclusive to Cadillac), the "Commercial Chassis" was used by coach-builders to create high-roofed ambulances, hearses (often called funeral coaches in the US) and cleverly designed hybrids which at short notice could be converted from ambulances to hearses or used by a coroner's staff to transport a corpse; these multi-purpose devices were popular in towns with small populations.  The early Commercial Chassis were based on the Series 355 (1931-1935) and the Series 75 (1936-1992) from 1936 and although there were specific modification to the frame, the mechanical components were always shared with the 75 which, used for the big limousines, meant costs were amortized across the ranges.  After 1980, production continued on the downsized platform but there was no longer a separate D platform, the partially bodied cars structurally identical to the mainstream line.

1960 Mercedes-Benz 300d Cabriolet D (left) and 1960 Cadillac hearse (Funeral Carriage) on the Commercial Chassis (right).

Dating from the age of horse drawn carriages, the landau irons (which some coachbuilders insist should be called "carriage bars") on the rear side-panels of hearses emulate in style (though not function) those used on carriages and early automobiles (the last probably the Mercedes-Benz 300 (the “Adenauer”; W186 (1951-1957) & W189 (1957-1962)) Cabriolet D).  On those vehicles, the irons actually supported the folding mechanism for the fabric roof but on hearses they are merely decorative, there to relieve the slab-sidedness of the expanse of flat metal.  The alternative approach with hearses is to use a more conventional glass panel, usually with curtains fitted which can be drawn as desired.  In many cases, there is a desire to make the coffin (casket) as visible as possible because some, to permit the dead a final act of conspicuous consumption, are crafted with some extravagance.

1971 Ford Thunderbird with standard vinyl roof (left) and 1967 Ford Thunderbird with the vinyl removed (right).

There was however one curious use of a stylized iron for a purpose which was both functional and aesthetic.  When, in a sign of the times, the 1967-1971 Ford Thunderbird included a four-door sedan rather than a convertible as a companion to the coupés in the range, the sedans were fitted with the combination of the irons and a vinyl roof.  In this one, unique, case the irons and the vinyl actually improved rather than detracted from the appearance because, built on a surprisingly short wheelbase, the Thunderbird had to be fitted with rather short rear doors (also compelling the use of the front-opening "suicide door" configuration) and to accommodate the shape of C-pillar, each had to intrude on the other.  What the (always dark) vinyl and the sweep of the irons did was conceal the compromise and for that reason, this generation of Thunderbirds is probably the only car where vinyl roofs are rarely removed because exposing the metal results in a very strange look.  Because (1) they're ugly and (2) they trap moisture, thereby encouraging rust, removing a vinyl roof usually improves the appearance of a car but this is the one exception.       

Diet

Diet (pronounced dahy-it)

(1) Food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health.

(2) A particular selection of food, especially as designed or prescribed to improve a person's physical condition or to prevent or treat a disease.

(3) Such a selection or a limitation on the amount a person eats for reducing weight.

(4) The foods eaten, as by a particular person or group.

(5) Food or feed habitually eaten or provided.

(6) Anything (food and otherwise) habitually provided or partaken of.

(7) To regulate the food of, especially in order to improve the physical condition.

(8) Legislative bodies of certain countries.

(9) The general assembly (Reichstag) of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire.

(10) In the law of Scotland, the date fixed by a court for hearing a case.

(11) In the law of Scotland, a single session of a court.

(12) In microbiology, the abbreviation of Direct Interspecies Electron Transfer.

1175-1225: From the Middle English diete or dieten (pittance, fare) and the Old French diete (diet, pittance, fare), from the Medieval Latin dieta (parliamentary assembly (also "a day's work”; daily food allowance, food) from diaeta (prescribed way of life) from the Ancient Greek díaita (way of life, regimen, dwelling), from diaitan & diaitasthai (separate, select (food and drink) which later had the sense “to direct or lead one's life”), frequentative of diainysthai (take apart), the construct being dia (apart) + aita (akin to aîsa share, lot) from ainysthai (take), from the primitive Indo-European root ai- (to give, to allocate).

As a verb, diet began its evolution to the current modern meaning from the late fourteenth century with a range of meanings such as “customary way of eating", "food considered in relation to its quantity and effects" & "a course of food regulated by a physician or by medical rules", the latter often a restriction of food or certain foods, hence the sense of “putting someone on a diet” which was attested by the 1650s in the sense of the specific meaning "to regulate oneself as to food" and applied especially against growing fat; from here came “dieted” & “dieting”.  A long obsolete word for this was banting (an early system for weight loss through diet control, named after its inventor, William Banting (1797-1878), the English undertaker(!) who self-tested the programme and advertised it in his 1863 pamphlet: Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public").  The undertaker lived a long life and was inspired to enter the embryonic field which would become such a huge industry because, in the course of his work, he noted, impressionistically, a striking correlation between obesity and those who died young.  Because of the linguistic coincidence, although the word is a surname, it was used as a verbal noun as in “she needs to start banting".  The system was similar to some modern diet advice in that it advocated eating lean meats and limiting the intake of fat, starch, and sugar.

As a noun applied to legislative bodies (assembly of delegates, etc., held from day to day for legislative, political, or other business), it came into use in the fifteenth century, the Medieval Latin diēta (public assembly) apparently the same word as Latin diaeta, from the Ancient Greek diaita (way of life, regimen, dwelling) but associated with Latin dies (day).  Technically, diēta was a variant of diaeta (daily office of the Church) most often translated as daily duty or an assembly or meeting of counsellors.  In Latin diēta meant also "a day's work, diet, daily food allowance", derived from diaeta (prescribed way of life), from the Greek diaita and the best-known early assemblies were the German and Austrian of the Holy Roman Empire, “diet” used as a descriptor by both French and English authors.  The (now rare) adjective dietal (pertaining to a diet in the “assembly” sense) entered the language in 1845.

Product placement: Diet Coke in Mean Girls (2004).

The verbal noun “dieting” from the verb diet was first noted circa 1400 and the first practicing (or at least one advertised as such) dietician (one who practices some theory of diet) dates from 1845, from the noun diet on the model of physician, replacing the older dietist from circa 1600 although it seems curious dietist hasn’t been picked up as an Instagram niche; one can hardly think of a better tag for many an influencer.  The adjective dietary (pertaining to diet) is from the 1610s, from the Medieval Latin dietarius, from the Classical Latin diaetarius.  The old adjectives are listed by dictionaries thus: diætetic (archaic), dietetical (dated) and dietetic (obsolete).  All meant “pertaining to the rules for regulating the kind and quantity of food taken” and again were from the diaeteticus, from the Ancient Greek διαιτητικός (diaitētikós).  The adjective “diet” as a trade-name meaning (or at least implying) “slimming, having reduced calories” was first used in the US in 1958 when the Diet Rite soft drink was released, its novelty being sugar-free and the Coca-Cola Company responded in 1963 with the similar Tab which remained available in a gradually dwindling number of markets until 2020.  Interestingly, the Coca-Cola Company which since 1983 had been selling Diet Coke, discovered from its extensive market research that “diet” was off-putting to male consumers and thus in 2005 released Coca-Cola Zero though they must have though consumers just didn’t get it because in 2017 it was re-named Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

Japanese Diet: Upper (2013 & 2016) and Lower House (2017) Election Results

Elections for the lower house (House of Representatives) of the Japanese diet became rambunctious sometime in the 1950s but those for the upper house (House of Councillors) were usually rather sleepy affairs which seemed to matter little until, in retrospect, the polls of 2013 and 2016 seemed to assume an unexpected importance after the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) unexpectedly decisive victory in the 2017 (lower house) general election.  What the 2017 landslide meant was that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s (b 1954; Prime Minister of Japan 2006-2007 & 2012-2020) LDP suddenly enjoyed a two-thirds majority in both houses, a type of control of the legislature called a supermajority, giving Mr Abe the legal means, if perhaps not a mandate, to attempt to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution which had been a long-held ambition of members of certain LDP factions.

Adopted in 1947 when Japan was under US occupation, the constitution has ensured Japan’s so-called Self-Defense Forces have never been deployed in combat although successive LDP administrations have for decades stretched policy well-beyond what the constitution technically permits.  The critical matter is Article 9 of the constitution which prohibits war as a means to settle international disputes and its repeal would be controversial in the region where the conduct of Imperial Japan’s military remains in living memory.  Nor is it universally popular at home, some fearing a government might be tempted by risky military adventurism.  However it’s analyzed, the people of post-war Japan have done very well out of their “pacifist” constitution and even with his double-chamber supermajority, constitutional revision was no simple thing, a change requiring a national referendum and the opinion polls indicated there was no certainty voters would approve what would have been the be the first change to the document which has been the nation’s basic law for some seventy-five years.  It is now the world’s oldest, un-amended constitution.

Under the terms of Article 9, the Japanese people “…forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes".  That would seem to make illegal the waging of offensive war, confirmed by the phrase “The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized” but Article 9 also stipulates "…land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained".  Article 9 needs obviously to be read in conjunction with more recent documents, given the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) consists of: Ground Self-Defense Force (Rikujou Jieitai, GSDF; includes aviation), Maritime Self-Defense Force (Kaijou Jieitai, MSDF; includes naval aviation), Air Self-Defense Force (Koukuu Jieitai, ASDF); Japan Coast Guard (Ministry of Land, Transport, Infrastructure and Tourism) (2021) with an establishment of approximately 240,000 active personnel (145,000 Ground; 45,000 Maritime; 45,000 Air; 4,000 Joint Forces); 14,000 Coast Guard (2021).

JSDF helicopter carrier Hyūga (DDH-181) on exercises with a US carrier strike group.  Listed as an escort ship according to JSDF naming conventions, the two Hyūga-class carriers are the largest largest ships commissioned by the Japanese navy since the Second World War.

The emphasis admittedly is certainly on self-defense because the official overseas deployment in January 2022 stood at 175, all attached to the US base in Djibouti (2021).  Still, most analysts rate the JSDF as the fifth most powerful (in non-nuclear capability) military on the planet so the idea that “…land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” clearly needs a bit of mental gymnastics to be understood.  Indeed, in the years immediately after Japan regained its sovereignty in 1954, some black-letter law judges in lower courts felt compelled to declare the JSDF unconstitutional but appellate courts found a number of ways to rationalize matters and have always regarded it as a political matter, declining to be involved and in recent years it’s never been tested.  Political it certainly is, the US, authors of Article 9 (in the years before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conquered mainland China), soon began to review its position, re-equipping the embryonic forces which would become the JSDF, the constitutional constraints apparently no impediment.  In the years since, the US has more than once encouraged Japan to amend Article 9, the Pentagon not unhappy at the thought of the JSDF’s impressive capabilities being able to augment US forces in overseas deployments.  Those capabilities may be more impressive still, some analysts claiming the country has the capacity to commission and equip existing delivery systems with nuclear warheads within weeks or even days, depending on who is running the numbers.  According to some, lurking deep in (the inevitably secret underground) bunkers, the warheads lie in an almost complete state, awaiting only the placement of the weapons-grade plutonium.  A marvelous conspiracy theory, no evidence has ever been presented other than the circumstantial matters of technical capability and a supposed ability use the capacity of the local nuclear industry for the purpose.  It became an especially interesting theory after the passage of a “Regional Affairs” law in 1999 which permitted Japan automatically to participate as "rear support", were the US to be engaged in armed conflict involving "regional affairs”.  Nobody has ever suggested the South China Sea is anything but a “regional affair”.

Neither Beijing nor Seoul have suggested Tokyo is planning a second attempt at an East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere but a change meaning Japan can again declare or wage war remains controversial at home and abroad although given how the force has evolved since 1954 and the doubtless ability of Japanese governments to be most expansive in just what “regional” means, the status of Article 9 may be less significant than once it appeared.  As things transpired, the implications of Mr Abe’s rare dual chamber supermajority remained unexplored and he retired from office in 2020 as Japan’s longest-serving prime-minister.

In praise of dieting: Lindsay Lohan before and after.

Omnibus

Omnibus (pronounced om-nuh-buhs)

(1) A now less commonly used term for a bus (a public mass-transit vehicle).

(2) A volume of reprinted works of a single author or of works related in interest or theme, by extension later applied to a television or radio programme consisting of two or more programmes earlier broadcast.

(3) Something pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once, the best known example being the omnibus bills submitted to a legislature (a number of bills combined as one).

(4) As a pre-nominal, of, dealing with, or providing for many different things or cases. 

(5) In philately, a stamp issue, usually commemorative, that appears simultaneously in several countries as a common issue.

(6) In public transportation, a service which stops at every station, as opposed to a point-to-point express.

(7) In literary use as a humorous device, a jack of all trades (a person with knowledge in multiple fields, usually with some hint of lacking competence in at least some).

(8) In restaurants, both (1) a waiter’s assistant (obsolete, replaced by busboy or (now more commonly) busser or commis waiter) & (2) later the small, wheeled cart used by a waiter's assistant.

1829: A adoption in English to describe a "long-bodied, horse-drawn, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers", from the French voiture omnibus (carriage for all, common (conveyance)), from the Latin omnibus (for all), dative plural of omnis (all), ablative of omnia, from the primitive Indo-European hep-ni- (working), from hep- (to work; to possess) or hop- (to work; to take).  Bus was thus a convenient shortening to describe the (then horse drawn) forms of public transport and subsequent uses by analogy with transporting (even weightless) stuff is derived from this.  The present participle is omnibusing or omnibussing and the past participle omnibused or omnibussed; the noun plural is either omnibuses or (for the public transportation) omnibusses; the attractive omnibi unfortunately wholly non-standard.

Omnibus entered English to describe a “horse-drawn, long-bodied, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers” in 1829 as a borrowing from the French where it had been in use for a decade, introduced in Paris in the winter of 1819-1820 by a Monsieur Jacques Lafitte (1761-1833) who used the term voiture omnibus”, combining the French word for "carriage" with the Latin phrase meaning "for all".  An Englishman named George Shillibeer (1797-1866) was the coach-builder to whom Lafitte awarded the contract to build his omnibuses and after returning to London, he built similar models, introducing them in 1929 to immediate success.  In the manner of the Brougham and Hansom cabs, they were known first as Shillibeers (and use of his name to describe the vehicles did persist until late in the nineteenth century) but omnibus was soon preferred and that for more than a century remained the official designation (and indeed still appears in some legislation and ordinances) but predictably, the public preferred the more phonetically economical "bus" and that endures to this day.  Encouraged by his success, Mr Shillibeer remained entrepreneurial, introducing in 1858 the “funeral omnibus” which combined in the one vehicle (in separate compartments), accommodation for both coffin (casket) and mourners.  Thus a combination of bus and hearse, the advertising suggested that for smaller funeral parties it would be cheaper than hiring multiple vehicles (with their attendant staff and horses).  Perhaps for cultural reasons it seems not to have been a success, but hearses with similar configuration are used in some countries and, in the West, some are built with seating for up to four passengers, apparently intended for the undertaker’s staff.

Lindsay Lohan display advertising on Italian omnibus, Milan.

The use of omnibus to describe a junior staff member in a restaurant who was assigned essentially “all the tasks the waiters preferred not to do” dates from 1880 and came soon to be applied to the wheeled carts such helpers used to more around crockery, cutlery, flatware and such.  This simultaneous use may have proved confusing or else three syllables was just too much because by 1913 the carts were being called busses and their operators busboys (although that seems not to have survived our more gender-sensitive age and “commis waiter” seems now preferred (usually as “commis”).  Omnibus was the name of a long-running live TV series (1952-1961) hosted on US television by expatriate English journalist Alistair Cooke (1908-2004).  The use of omnibus to describe a legislative bill which addresses a number of vaguely related (or even wholly dissimilar) matters in the one document technically dates from 1842 although, as an adjective referring to legislation "designed to cover many different cases, embracing numerous distinct objects", it was in use in the US as early as 1835 and is most famously associated with the act (made of five separate bills) passed in 1850 to secure the Compromise of 1850 which (temporarily) defused a political confrontation between slave and free states over the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War.

The Man on the Clapham Omnibus

1932 Lancia Autoalveare, a triple-decker omnibus which served the Rome-Tvoli route.  The upper deck was apparently, at least on some occasions, designated as "non-smoking" but history doesn't record whether the bus company enjoyed any more success than the government of Italy in enforcing such edicts.

The phrase “man on the Clapham omnibus” was one adopted (apparently from early in the twentieth century) by judges of English courts to illustrate the “reasonable person”.  The word “reasonable” had been in English since circa 1300 as a borrowing from the Old French raisonable and the Latin rationabilis (from ratio) and in this context was an attempt by example encapsulate “the average man” or “the man in the street”, judges varying in their descriptions of this construct but meaning usually something like “a reasonably intelligent and impartial person unversed in legal esoteric” (Jones v US, DC Court of Appeals).  When the phrase was in 1903 used by Lord Justice Sir Richard Collins MR, the Clapham omnibus would have been horse drawn and he credited the expression to one he’d heard mentioned by a previous Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Bowen (1835-1894).

The judicial choice of a bus passenger was based on the idea that such a person could be thought to be representative of an upstanding, respectable and thoroughly ordinary member of society, one for whom views of things were not infected by legal technicalities.  The choice of Clapham was significant only that it was an unexceptional London suburb something like many of dozens that might be said to have been “typical” of the city.  The man on the Clapham omnibus was thus in the tradition of legal fictions, a hypothetical person used for illustrative purposes, the first known instance of which in Western legal tradition was the creation by Roman jurists of the figure of bonus pater familias (good family father) a chap said to be not only respectable but unrelentingly and reliably average in every aspect of life.  In the Canadian province of Quebec, the very similar standard of the bon père de famille is derived from the Roman bonus pater familias.  The reasonable man (now of course a reasonable person) is a necessity in many aspects of law because so many standards upon which cases are decided depend on the word reasonable.  Were the consequences of an action reasonably foreseeable?  Would a reasonable person believe a certain thing told to them?  Was a claim by advertisement reasonable?  Was the violence used reasonable given the manner in which the defendant was assaulted.

Crooked Hillary dumping on deplorables, Georgia, 2016.

Omnibuses have long been used by politicians for their campaign tours.  They offer lots of advantages, being offices and communications centres with at least some of their running costs offset by a reduction in staff travel expenses.  Additionally, with five large, flat surfaces, they are a rolling billboard although that can be good or bad.  In 2016, one of crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses was photographed in Lawrenceville, Georgia dumping a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain.  The local news service reported that when police attended the street was “…was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious”.  Hazmat crews were called to clean up the scene and the matter was referred to the environmental protection division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) later issued an apology, claiming the incident was “an honest mistake.”  Using the word “honest” in any statement related to crooked Hillary Clinton is always a bit of a gamble and there was no word on whether the dumping of human excrement had been delayed until the bus was somewhere it was thought many deplorables may be living.  If so, that may have been another “honest mistake” because Gwinett County (in which lies Lawrenceville) voted 51.02% Clinton/Kaine & 45.14% Trump/Pence although the symbolism may not have been lost on much of the rest of Georgia; state wide the Republican ticket prevailed 50.38% to 45.29%.

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses also attracted memes referencing a crash and a breakdown.  Both were fake news but surprisingly prescient, the Clinton/Kaine ticket securing an absolute majority of votes cast but failing to gain the requisite numbers in the Electoral College because the campaign neglected adequately to target areas in states the DNC regarded either (1) solidly in the possession of their machine or (2) populated by folk from the "basket of deplorables" and thus worthy only of a dumping of shit, figurative and literal.  Like the candidate, the 2016 campaign was something like what was planned for 2008, taken from the cold-room, rechauffed and served with the claim it was fresh.  It wasn't quite that the staff had "learned nothing and forgotten everything" but it does seem the operation was top-heavy with political operatives and lacking in those with a mastery of the techniques of data analysis.  All the evidence suggests there was no lack of data, just an inability to extract from it useful information. 

Before Photoshop imbued all with cynical disbelief, the triple decked omnibus was a popular vehicle for April fool's day pranks, the photograph on the left published in Lisbon on the day in 1951.  The one on the right is from 1926 and was in the German magazine Echo Continental (trade publication of the auto and truck parts manufacturer Continental AG) which "reported" the development of Berlin's new triple-decker city omnibus.  So lovely are the art deco lines, it's a shame it wasn't real.