Etymon #16
Old empire, new
Borrowed from Japanese, this word entered English in 1857, in the diplomatic correspondence of newly arrived Americans in a Japan that had been closed to the West for more than two centuries. Its original sense was not what most readers now picture: it was the title of a ruler.
The word's path runs back through two languages. Japanese took it from Chinese, where it was a compound of two ancient characters: one meaning 'great', the other meaning 'prince' or 'lord'. Japanese officials revived the title in the seventeenth century, when their ruler needed a formal designation worthy of foreign emissaries.
The earliest meaning was a feudal warlord. Japan in the seventeenth century had two parallel rulers: an emperor of ancient lineage who held no political power, and a military commander who held it all. The commander's title meant 'general of the army', a designation considered unsuited to formal diplomacy. So Tokugawa officials revived an older, grander term: 'great prince', conveying to foreigners that their chief was the true ruler.
Among the English words that entered from Japanese during the same brief opening of Japan to the West, JINRIKISHA, the original form of what English speakers later shortened to rickshaw, came into English in 1874. JU-JITSU followed in 1875. Both crossed into English after Commodore Perry's expedition arrived in Japan in 1853 and forced the country to open its ports to American trade.
Four years after the word entered English, it crossed the Pacific. In April 1861, John Hay, private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, recorded the nickname the president was called around the White House. A word that had named a Japanese commander was now naming an American president. By the time of the First World War, the word had shifted again, it now named an American industrialist.
