This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Silent Hunter: I believe this is also true for Korean, where they have no 4th floors in their hospitals.
//Not necessarily pronounced correctly. When the Japanese use the old Chinese numeral system, all the characters have two possible pronunciations (as do all Chinese characters used in modern Japanese). They also use the Western numeral system and use the same names for the digits.
"Shi" is a homophone for "death." Counting "ichi, ni, san, shi" is very rude. Polite people use the other pronunciation, "yon," and say "ichi, ni, san, yon."
A similar situation exists with the Japanese number nine. It can be read either as "ku" or as "kyu." "Ku" is a homophone for a rather rude word that can be translated variously as "suffering" or "misfortune" and polite people pronounce it as "kyu" instead. Thus it is "ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, shichi (or in rural Japanese dialect, 'nana'), hachi, kyu, jyu."
Ununnilium: Are you sure "ichi, ni, san, shi" is rude? I've heard it in several non-rude contexts, including repeatedly in the opening of {{2x2=Shinobuden}}. I know anime isn't exactly the best place to look for Japanese grammar lessons, but...
Yurifanboy-sama: I heard it pronounced as shi in a non-rude context too. But, it was NiHaoKai-Lan, an Western Animation show about Chinese. Either China is different or Nickelodeon got it wrong!
Adonic Meki: Which particular word you should use for 4 and 9 depends very much on what's being talked about at the time... presumably, some Japanese people at some point in time decided that "shi" sounds better than "yon" in use X, but "yon" sounds better in use Y, and now there are standards (e.g., when counting, you say "kyuu", but 9 o'clock is "ku-ji"). So there are times when "shi" and "ku" are acceptable, and times when they're not... it's the sort of thing we gaijin are destined to have trouble with, having not learned all the particulars while growing up.
Ununnilium: Makes sense, and certainly isn't weirder than, say, though, bough, and tough not rhyming.
s5555: Might I add Neo Contra takes place in A.D. 4444
Mars Dragon: Isn't the idea of the Four Heavenly Kings a bit separate from Four is Death? Especially since there are sometimes good-guy teams of the Heavenly Kings (I'm thinking of Hana Yori Dango here, which if I recall used that), and the Heavenly Kings in mythology aren't exactly evil, if I understand correctly. Should examples of this be noted as a sub-trope or so?
emertonom: I feel compelled to point out that "shichi" actually means seven, not seventeen (which is "jyuushichi"), although it's true that seven is the part that's changed, so that you would say "nanajin" for "seven people" rather than "shichijin," but likewise "jyuunanajin" for "seventeen people," so it's not exactly wrong to point out seventeen in this context.
AKK: I've read in various places that 42 is Shi-Ni, which is similar to Shi-ne(Die). Would explain why the Destiny Gundam was so easily taken down towards the end.
Xeno Veritas: Since it's been put back (I should have added it to the discussion when I originally removed it), the following:
- * (Most of) the Final Fantasy games have a monster ability (which can sometimes be learned by party members, depending on whether or not the game features a Blue Magic-type system) known as "Level 4 Death" (or something similar), which, when cast on a party member, will cause an immediate KO if and only if the character's level is a multiple of four.** Actually, it's Level 5 Death, it's ALWAYS Level 5 Death, Level 4 tends to be Graviga (Thugh not always) and Level 3 is mostly Confuse**A better Final Fantasy example is the four fiends of the elements in I, and the lords of the elements in IV. It is also subverted, however, with the number of element crystals usually being four as well.
There is no Level 4 Death in Final Fantasy. The first game with Level X spells was FF 5, and they were L2 Old, L3 Flare, L4 Qrtr, and L5 Doom. FF 6 used Level 3 Confuse, Level 4 Flare, Level 5 Death, and Level ? Holy. (At least, as far as I'm aware. This is only based on magic that players can use, there could be a creature hidden in an earlier game with a Level X spell.)
The closest you'll get is Level 4 Suicide from FF 7 - but even then, there's Level 5 Death after it. And it didn't kill, it just added the Mini status effect and reduced HP to "critical" levels.
FF 8 didn't have any Level X spells. FF 9 had L3 Def-less, L4 Holy and L5 Death. FF 10 didn't have any, FF X-2 and FFXI {{Discontinuity don't exist}}. As far as I know, FF 12 also doesn't have any Level X spells.
So, no Level 4 Death. The closest you can get is Level 4 Suicide, and even then, it's not exactly the same thing.
I also have to disagree with the concept that this trope applies just because there are groups of four monsters - after all, most of the FF games have had a party size of four, and that doesn't mean anything other than that's how they made the game. There are four fiends because there were four classical elements, not because four is death.
- Oops, I'm wrong. There IS a Level 4 Death in Final Fantasy VII. It's an ability used by Gargoyles when they die in the Northern Cave.
Dok Enkephalin: This whole concept needs a more definitive confirmation or debunking, because I've only ever seen it brought up by non-Japanese sources. Firstly, as morbid as Japanese fantasies are, I haven't seen any indication that the Japanese have the same superstitious aversion to death that medieval Western countries have. And yes, shi means 'death' and it means 'four'. It also means 'city', 'mentor' 'lyrics', 'civil servant', it means many other words. If the Japanese were so evasive of this words, why would it be a stressed syllable in countless casually used words? My familiarity with the language and culture isn't that strong, but from what I have learned, I'm skeptical about this 'trope'.
- Dok Enkephalin: Alright, this is what I've found: 1) A common auxiliary verb is conjugated to 'shi' in almost every single sentence spoken formally or semi-formally. 2) Japanese love their puns, and will play with 'death' just as freely as any other homonym. What I haven't found? Any presumed cultural aversion to death, much less superstitious avoidance of a syllable used, and stressed, in many commonly used words.
- Arutema: Whoever added the MGS 3 example forgot The Fear, the 5th Cobra unit member, therefore not an example.
VVK: This article needs some reconsideration. Right now it seems that anything involving the number four and (maybe) something evil or negative goes there. If there are four villains in a (Western) story, does that really mean they're using a Japanese numerological trope? If Monty Python mentions four castles had to be built before they stopped sinking, are they really inverting it? I don't think so. (Of course, examples of a trope that aren't done with the intention of using a pre-established trope would count too, if the trope actually had some content that wouldn't be so vague as to include practically anything.) In these cases, the number four is probably largely incidental. So it's really just "However many is convenient, and when that happens to be four you get mentioned here."
