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Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

>So when put together, "tsundoku" has the meaning of buying reading material and piling it up.

Where does the art thing come from in the article title?

I think that slapping "art of" by anglophones (no idea what other language speakers get up to here) on anything remotely connected with Japan or Japanese might be considered a strange form of racism but nonetheless I think it is a form of racism. I doubt it is considered offensive by many but to me it sounds like a re-enforcement of a stereotype.

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Not every form of cultural misunderstanding is racism. Why dilute the word? What does it even mean in this context?

I think, that this "art of" while exaggerated as you point out, is thrown around not entirely without reason. It's the first association that comes to writers' mind when you see how Japanese can elevate the most mundane (in Western understanding) stuff to the next level - think polishing mud balls, senko hanabi, kintsugi and so on.

> Where does the art thing come from in the article title?

A somewhat flowery but common English idiom used in preference to a bare noun or bare gerund phrase when referring to a generalized practice, particular in titles.

Has nothing to do with Japan.

I remember this saying originating as a riff on The Art of War, but I have no evidence of that

Not a Japanese speaker, but I'm a native Chinese speaker. I know that Bingfa (The Art of War) could also be translated as The Practice of War or Methods of War. Translations are always interpretations because phrases aren't exact.

The Art of JavaScript sure does sound more exotic than The Practice of JavaScript, so I can see why a translator would make that choice.

Even in English, one of the meanings of "art" is a "skill as a result of learning or practice."

The word itself comes from Latin "ars," meaning a skill, a craft.

"Art" used ironically, or perhaps whimsically, is fairly common in English. "The art of being well deceived" appears in both Swift and Pope. Whistler wrote The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.

Correction: in Swift it is "The peaceful possession of being well deceived". Pope made it "art".

I think this comment is right and it's too bad it's being voted down. "Tsundoku" just refers to accumulating unread books and it does seem weird that it's presented as an "art" in English just because it relates to Japan.

It's debatable as to whether it's "racism" but it's certainly Orientalism[0).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism

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