Sheeeen

Today, I would like to start with a riddle.

“What is me which disappears at the moment of calling my name, although it exists when it is quiet?”

As to make the riddles’ answer in the last, do you know onomatopoei?

Onomatopoeia

1. the formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.
2. a word so formed.
3. the use of imitative and naturally suggestive words for rhetorical, dramatic, or poetic effect.

(from Dictionary.com)

It refers to something that expresses various sounds in words, onomatopoeia I think as the great invention of the century is the “Sheeeen”(Japanese but I don’t know how to spell it). Sound “Sheeeen” expressing silent imitation. We Japanese use if it is unresponsive after saying something, it is called “Sheeeen”.

I think that it is often used in cartoons (manga), but there seems to be a controversy over Shotaro Ishinomori or Osamu Tezuka which invented it,

I sometimes draws “sound that is not sound”. Writing “Sheeeen” in scenes where there is no sound, in fact I started it.

(from “How to draw cartoons” by Osamu Tezuka”)

As it is said to be, here I suppose Mr. Osamu Tezuka invented it.

Even though Mr. Tezuka is the invention of the “Sheeeen”, it seems that it originated from the Chinese origin “Shinshin” and its changed “Shin” when it traces its etymology. Certainly, “snow falls Shinshin“, “night goes Shinshin” is a common expression in Japanese. There are some expressions using “Shin” of Soseki Natsume’s novels such as “The night was Shin“, “When there are as many forest trees as well as mountains and valleys Shin“, “Until all the worlds gently quiet down
Shin“, it seems like a word used from a long time on a daily basis.

By the way, it seems surprising that there is no other way to describe the state without sound in silence in English, right? I do not know whether it was made by expressing it in silence by words or it was born spontaneously, but I am curious about the contradiction that it disappears at the point where it generates or expresses the sound.

…well, the answer to the riddle was “silence”.