The Japanese Word That Expresses Melancholy and Joy at the Same Time
Furusato — the hometown of our dreams
There is an aspect to Japanese culture that I’ve come to appreciate in recent years that is nicely encapsulated by the word furusato. It’s a word that is both easy to pronounce and simple to translate, yet steeped in meaning.
The simplest possible translation of furusato is “old hometown”, but that lacks any of the rich nuance that the word conveys to most Japanese. A better translation imparts the further sense of “a place with fond memories from one’s earlier life”.
By way of distinction, in everyday conversation, the word shusshin is more typically used when asking about someone’s birthplace or childhood hometown, and furusato is reserved for the more evocative meaning that is explored here.
Furusato can be spelled several ways using kanji, but the most common is 古里. With this spelling, the first kanji, furu 古 appears in words that describe “former times”, while the second kanji, sato 里 means “village” or “country house”.
Oftentimes furusato is spelled phonetically with hiragana ふるさと instead of kanji. To me this adds an important extra dimension — connecting it to childhood (because children’s books are written in hiragana). The significance of this will become…
