Go-Etsu doushuu
Mark Spahn
In KD, 2o5.7-12, we have
呉越同舟 Go-Etsu doushuu enemies in the same boat
Here’s an explanation of how 呉越 came to designate a region of China:
http://www.unz.com/plee/what-if-it-wasnt-one-china-vs-two-chinas-what-if-there-was-no-china/
Excerpt:
I might also point out that the Japanese imperialist roots of this version are embarrassingly plain. The flags for the Manchurian and Khitan states are warmed-over versions of the flags for the Manchukuo and Mengjiang puppet regimes of the 1930s. Nor is “Goetsu” (which gets most of the eastern seaboard here as 大吴越国 ) doing itself any favors with a hybrid rising sun backdrop in its banner.
To get the simple part out of the way first, Goetsu is not a Mandarin or modern local Chinese dialect variant; it’s the Japanese rendering of the term 吴越. 吴and 越 were Chinese kingdoms that date way back to the Warring States period, of course in the East China regions championed by the Goetsu separatists.
吴 and 越 are “Wu” and “Yue” in Mandarin. Judging by a useful on-line pronunciation dictionary with audio files for several dialects including Wu, http://zh.forvo.com/,吴越 is pronounced somewhere around “Wo ya” and “Ho yue” in two Wu dialects variants (Wu dialects are notoriously fragmented).
Whatever it is, 吴越 is not “Goetsu” in Mandarin, or in modern Wu dialect.
“Goetsu” probably entered the Japanese vocabulary as a pronunciation of “吴越” pretty early on, since the character pair appears in Sunzi’s Art of War, which itself had made its way to Japan by the eighth century CE via Korea.
The reference appears in a passage: 《孫子·九地》：“夫吳人與越人相惡也，當其同舟而濟，遇風，其相救也，如左右手： “People from Wu and Yue detested each other, when they were crowded on a boat together and ran into a storm they had to work together to save each other”.
Same idea of “in the same boat” or “we’re all in this together so let’s help each other”. Or, if you’re David Cameron, “I’m going to chop a hole in the bottom of the boat, hand the oars to Boris Johnson, and jump overboard.” There, your Brexit reference.
In China, this anecdote was summed up in the four-character idiom, 吴越同舟, “Wu and Yue Same Boat”; in Japanese, it becomes 呉越同じ船 , which is phonetically rendered as Go etsu onaji fune.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our “Goetsu”. It’s Japanese.
Therefore, I drew the inference that the maps employing the term “Goetsu” drew on Japanese separatist agitprop dating back to the 1930s.
Well, it is separatist, and the term is Japanese, but I haven’t found a use of the term in literature related to Imperial Japanese partition-related scheming AFTER GOOGLING FOR A WHOLE HOUR AND A HALF!
The closest I could come up in a link between eastern China separatism & Japanese skullduggery was a Youtube posted by “Great Goetsu” of a 1942 barnburning military tune, “Song of the Decisive Battle in Great East Asia” playing over a depiction of what is apparently regarded as the “Goetsu” logo:
The song seems to enjoy considerable favor among nostalgic Japanese militarists, since it is a) a bitching ditty and b) on the Internet in several loving incarnations like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7GZr1LMi8Y
[This 大東亜決戦の歌 is *not* in Chinese.]
It does not appear, however, to mention “Goetsu”. Consider it likely that “Great Goetsu” is a Japanese imperial fanboy, not a local separatist.
