Breen says “daddy longlegs” is actually the second meaning of 足長おじさん (ashinaga-ojisan). Check out the first meaning:
anonymous scholarship system for orphans whose parents have been killed in traffic accidents (from Daddy-Long-Legs, a 1912 novel by Jean Webster)
How extremely weird. I’ve never read that novel, so I don’t know if it’s about kids who were orphaned in that way. I can’t imagine that there were so many fatal traffic accidents in 1912, though I suppose cars were new enough that people weren’t yet accustomed to looking both ways before crossing a street.
OK, I have to know more about this. Here’s the Wikipedia link for the author of that novel. And here’s what it says at that site:
Webster’s most famous work was originally published as a serial in the Ladies’ Home Journal and tells the story of a girl named Jerusha Abbott, an orphan whose attendance at a women’s college is sponsored by an anonymous benefactor.
So that resolves that. Perhaps the “traffic accident” part of the 足長おじさん scholarship was a Japanese add-on.
Meanwhile, I’m freaked out about two things I saw in that Wikipedia entry:
• Webster died (of complications from childbirth, not a traffic accident) at exactly my age. Her daughter lived. So … after becoming famous by writing about orphans, Webster created an orphan of sorts (a half-orphan) as her final act.
• Webster attended the same college (Vassar) as my mother. And the article mentions an Annette Reynaud. That practically combines the names of my mother (Annetta) and sister (Reyna). How weird is that?!
Something else of interest:
• Webster was Mark Twain’s great-niece.
Postscript: On vacation last week, I read an English version of Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a terrific collection of short stories. In the story “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” I came upon a phrase in which a character tells someone else to donate money to the “Fund for Traffic Victims’ Orphans.”
In “Chance Traveler,” another story from that book, Murakami writes about odd coincidences. I believe I’ve got a few more for him!
