While I like the concept, I wish they didn't choose to name this with such orientalist mysticism.
There's no reason to believe this is just another case of "wow Japanese is so mystic". Lately, I'm seeing more and more people with a sort of imagined or conjured offense that someone is unduly appreciating a culture. I don't really get it.
Correct, it's considered derogatory and antiquated: https://meng.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/meng-bill...
(Became U.S. law on 5/20/1996: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/4238)
> In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world.
GGP is not using a slur, they're suggesting that this is an inappropriate use of Japanese culture as an aesthetic by a Western writer. Reducing a culture to an aesthetic is harmful because it essentializes and stereotypes a culture and those in it.
(I don't know if I agree about this particular example or not, I'm still pondering; only explaining.)
If they were borrowing words with meanings that are specific to that language are hard to convey in other languages it would make more sense. Here the new word is basically "me-leftover"; it feels exactly the same in Japanese than when spelled out in English, so either the author could accept the cheesiness in English and run with it, or choose a better fitting word in a different language that actually brings nuance to the thought.
Just borrowing another word to make it look mystical isn't wrong or forbidden, it just feels lazy and a waste of good words. Also we're in a connected world, and there's enough people speaking multiple language that "exotic" words have a way lower chance to be actually exotic anymore.
Either way, basically it's a pun. Not the world's most amazing pun, but it's not gibberish like several commenters have suggested.
If I was asked to invent the word I'd read the same characters as shiseki (私跡), or go with something like 自跡 jiseki "self-tracks". Although even that sounds more like "ruin of self" than what the author is trying to convey.
But more to the point, the person I originally replied suggested that the coinage in TFA just used Japanese to sound exotic, so that's what I was replying to. It may or not be great wordplay, but it's certainly Japanese wordplay.