linguistics & the handmaiden
hi! I was rewatching The Handmaiden/Agassi because, we should all be doing that it’s a fantastic movie (if you’re thinking of watching it for the first time, please look up the content warnings!), and this time round i spent more time focusing on the language + formality used! I’m half Korean and i grew up learning Japanese (it’s not that great anymore) so by all means if I’m missing something, feel free to add on<3
So, Korean and Japanese both have levels of formality in how to talk and how to address someone of various ranks/age. Likewise, the usage of first names is incredibly intimate — reserved only for close friends and family members and lovers. Even nowadays, you CANNOT call someone by their first name, you have to be given permission by the other before you do so.
During Sookhee and Hideko’s first meeting during Hideko’s fake night terror, Sookhee surprisingly speaks EXTREMELY informal Japanese to Hideko. It may be because she’s trying to calm Hideko down, but it’s really interesting when you contrast it to when they meet again the light of day — Sookhee’s Japanese is appropriate and she calls Hideko “ojou-sama” (young lady as befitting of Hideko’s rank). We know that Sookhee has an affinity for babies, for small children, and to take care of them — the way Sookhee talks to Hideko in the instance is how you would speak to a startled child, and then, what truly makes Hideko calm is the usage of a Korean lullaby. The movie takes place during the Japanese Occupation of Korea where Koreans would get punished by law for speaking their native language — this alone is STARTLING, and yet, it’s probably what made Hideko be intrigued by Sookhee (besides the whole spying on her changing thing), that she would risk it to sing a Korean lullaby to her Japanese mistress (remember, Sookhee is startled when she learns that Hideko knows Korean!), and that being said that it’s a lullaby, a lullaby that Hideko’s mother never, ever got the chance to sing to her at birth.
First names are special and when you put in mind the difference in rank between Sookhee and Hideko as well as the Korean/Japanese divide, the usage of their first names by the other is really compelling? To Hideko’s face, Sookhee calls her by her appropriate title ojou-sama/agassi, even when they had sex, Sookhee calls her agassi still, thus there is this delineation between the two even during such a moment between them. And yet, Sookhee refers to Hideko as “Hideko” the next day when she sees Count Fujiwara begin to fondle Hideko, even going in her mind that “Hideko doesn’t like it!” before she tries to put a stop to it. Sookhee doesn’t even refer to her as Hideko-ojou-sama or Hideko-agassi which still would be scandalous (Izumi-ojou-sama or Izumi-agassi would be appropriate) but less so than without the usage of a suffix. Sookhee sees Hideko as Hideko. Likewise, during when Hideko goes to hang herself, she calls out to Sookhee and calls her “Sookhee-ya”. “-A/-Ya” is a suffix used at the end of first names in Korean to show camaraderie and friendliness, it’s often used by parents to their children, and among friends of the same age and rank. Thus, Hideko is putting Sookhee on her own level — it’s incredibly intimate. Hideko here is facing death and one of the last words she’ll ever speak is the usage of Sookhee’s name at it’s most informal, the way that a lover would.
I think this is pretty cool too but Count Fujiwara and Uncle Kouzuki are both Korean-born and masquerading as Japanese. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that both of them yearn for more — Kouzuki yearns for beauty and for elegance believing that Korea is inferior to Japan, and “Fujiwara” yearns for wealth and luxury, to be able to buy wine without looking at the price. Kouzuki’s Japanese is EXTREMELY formal, and Hideko even mentions in her letter to him that he never quite got how to dictate the way a true Japanese noble would, like how “Fujiwara” did despite Fujiwara also being the son of a Korean farmer. But, the thing that’s SO SO SO cool is that the only time Kouzuki utilizes Korean is when he’s torturing Fujiwara, and especially the fact that his Korean is VERY informal. There really is no words to describe just how shocking it is that this man’s speech in Japanese is very rigid within the confines of formality and yet his Korean is….well, it’s like how you could speak to a friend. You might argue that it’s because he’s mimicking Fujiwara’s Korean, but it goes to mirror Fujiwara and Kouzuki more than anything: two men whose ties to one another revolve around ownership, around wealth, around greed, and around the cruel, callous destruction of the lives around them.
