日本“太鼓”考

Textual Research on“Taiko”

日语中的“太鼓”到底是什么鼓,于今除几篇中国网文介绍之外,中日两国都没有论著专门述及。依据古代汉籍和汉字知识,以及日本的乐器事典、《大日本百科事典》《世界大百科事典》《广辞苑》等工具书的相关条目解释,考证可知日语中的“太鼓”乃中国古代词汇,意即“大鼓”。“太鼓”之“太”语义虚化以至丢失,今仅存“鼓”义,然而在极个别场合还保留“大鼓”的原意,翻译时须根据具体语境做不同的处理。

What kind of drum“Taiko”is,with the exception of a few introductions in Chinese online articles,neither China nor Japan has specifically discussed it.This paper conducts a textual research on“Taiko”,based on the knowledge of ancient Chinese books and Chinese characters,as well as the relevant entries of Japanese musical instrument dictionary,Japanese Encyclopedia Dictionary,World Encyclopedia Dictionary,Kojien(Fifth Edition).The conclusion is that“Taiko”is the ancient Chinese word,meaning“big drum”.Only the meaning of“drum”exists because of the bleaching even the loss of the semantics of“Tai”,but the original meaning of“big drum”is retained on very few occasions,so it should be dealt with differently according to the specific context in translation.