息子：もしもし、お父さんに何かあったんじゃない？
母親：まあ、良くわかったわね。実は、今朝、入院したの。
息子：やっぱり。虫が知らせたんたよ。
Mushi ga Shiraseru
(Den'wa de no kaiwa)
Musuko: Moshi moshi, ofosan ni nani ka atta'n janai?
Hahaoya: Maa, yoku wakatta wa ne. Jitsu wa, kesa, nyuuin shita no.
Musuko: Yappari. Mushi ga shiraseta'n da yo.
(A telephone conversation)
Son: Hello? Mom? Hasn't something happened to Dad?
Mother: My, howdidyouknow? He was admitted to the hospital just this morning.
Son: So I was right. I had a sense something had happened.
* * *
Mushi ga shiraseru means to know something is going to happen without really knowing why - to have a premonition, a hunch, a sense of foreboding.
Mushi refers to insects or bugs; the meaning of niushi ga shiraseru comes from the idea that there is an insect inside people which influences their feelings. The English idiom, "A little bird told me," is similar.
I think everyone has seen a dream or had a strange urge to telephone a family member, a relative, or a close friend and have it turn out that indeed something unfortunate has happened. "I was just going to call you! " they tell you. This week's expression is appropriate in such a situation: "Yahari mtishi no shirase wa atatte imashita (So my hunch was on target)." (Note here that the expression is used in its noun form - mushi no shirase.)
Oneday whenoutfora drive weall got a bit confused about whether to take the road to the right or the road to the left. Though our daughter urged us to go left, my husband decided to go right. After driving a little bit, however, we were pulled over by a policeman. "Oh no, a speed trap. I told you we should've gone the other way!" Our daughter was clearly annoyed at having been ignored. I was impressed. "Anata ni wa, mushi no shirase ga atta no ne (So you really did have the right feeling about which way to go)." Her father wasn't. "Just a lucky guess," he said.
We've all had experiences where we can't explain why we don't want to go somewhere or don't want to do something. Though not particularly superstitious, in our "science-is-almighty" age I do sometimes enjoy being confronted with such hard-to-explain experiences.
I once heard that before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated a printer in New Hampshire published a special edition announcing the president's death. If true, it means that in an age without telephones and facsimiles mushi no shirase mo ataru koto ga aru (people's sense of foreboding is also on target).
As for me, my hunchesare rarely right. Just when I think it's going to rainand bring along an umbrella, it turns out to be sunny. I then usually forget ray um- brella on the train! How about you?.Do'you sometimes get a feeling or a vague foreboding you ean't explain?