What do the Japanese/Chinese symbols on Buckaroo's headband and at the end of the film stand for?


Can any Buckaroo Banzai fans help translate some of the Japanese/Chinese characters in the film?
Drop me a line at figment@figmentfly.com.

According to BBI Shadow, this translates as "Beauty in daily life."

According to Picky Carruther's Unknown Facts on the DVD, the symbols translate as "Beauty in everyday life."

According to BBI superfloj the character for "beauty" from the headband should be sporting four horizontal lines, maybe this was an error on the part of props?


The following three images are the same characters from the end of the film.

A partial translation by Mayumi


She said - "Most of it was illegible, sorry.
I tried bringing them into Photoshop but I still couldn't read them.
I'm not even sure if most of them are real characters. Hard to say."



According to Delaney McVay, a friend did a little digging and found this on Google Translate.
Suitcase Translation
"So their best guess is that the answer is Harmony.
…which I’m kinda happy about since I love Carl Sagan’s quote: “The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition”.
…which isn’t a million miles away from “nothing is ever what it seems to be, but everything is exactly what it is”.


 

According to BBI G-man, the character is the Chinese character Xi (pronounced She), or "double happiness". It's usually given as a wedding present, since it can be a reference to the happiness of two people.

According to BBI superfloj the above in chinese is "double happiness". He found the following information at http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa120799a.htm :

Double Happiness

"A large Chinese character, Double Happiness, on a red piece of paper or in paper cut is always put where it must strike the eyes on a young couple's wedding. It has a story behind it.

In the ancient Tang Dynasty, there was a student who was on the way to the capital to attend the national final examination, in which the top learners would be selected as the ministers in the court. Unfortunately, he fell ill halfway when he passed through a mountain village. Thanks to a herbalist doctor and his daughter, he was taken to their house and treated well. He recovered quickly due to the father and the daughter's good care. Well, when he had to leave, he found it hard to say good-bye to the pretty girl, and so did she. They fell in love. So the girl wrote down the right hand part of an antithetical couplet for the student to match:

"Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration."

"Well, I can make it though it is not easy. But you'll have to wait till I have finished the examination." replied the student. The young girl nodded in significance.

In the examination the young man won the first place, who was appreciated by the emperor. Also the winners were interviewed and tested by the emperor. As luck would have it, he was asked by the emperor to finish a couplet, which would need a right part as the answer. The emperor wrote:

"Red flowers dot the land in the breeze's chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss."

The young man realized immediately the right part of the couplet by the girl was the perfect fit to the emperor's couplet, so he took the girl's part as the answer without hesitation. The emperor was delighted to see the matching half of his couplet was so talent and harmonious that he authorized the young man's identity as Minister in the court and allowed him to pay a visit to his hometown first before holding the post. The young man met the girl happily at home and told her the emperor's couplet. They soon got married. For the wedding, the couple DOUBLED the Chinese character, HAPPY, together, on a red piece of paper and put it on the wall to express the happiness for the two events. And from then on, it has been taken on and became a social custom."


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