Kotowaza: Muddy the Tracks of a Standing Chicken?

[mbarker]

Hum -- someone is having trouble with a computer that someone else used before, and didn't clean up. In talking about the problem, they fell back on this saying:

立つ鳥跡を濁さず
 たつとりあとをにこさず

立つ: standing
鳥: bird, chicken
跡: tracks
濁さず: muddy

Cover up the tracks of a standing chicken? Hide the tracks of the chicken?

Apparently a kotowaza about cleaning up after yourself, but I'm not sure how they got from the words to the implied meaning.　Sounds a bit like someone caught a chicken thief sometime by following the tracks, but that's a long stretch.

Comments

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

立つ鳥跡を濁さず　－－にこさず。

What fun. Mitsuko assured me that this refers to someone who is leaving a job, and doesn't clean up after themselves. You should clean your work place when you leave so that it looks new.

And I said okay, but how do you get from standing bird tracks and muddy to that? She puzzled over it, saying that she thinks it has something to do with flying birds . . . but admitted that she didn't know how the original phrase relates to the common meaning!

So I dug into a small kotowaza dictionary I have, and it says (Sorry, Japanese - I'll translate in a moment)

立つ鳥跡（後）を濁さず

水鳥が飛び立つとき水を濁さないように、人間も後始末が大切だということ。また、引き際のいい人のたとえ。｢飛ぶ鳥跡を濁さず｣も言う。

Freely translated: When a water bird (duck, stork, etc.) flies up, they don't muddy the water. Like that, it is important that human beings clean up after themselves. Also, for example, a good person adding their influence. We also say, "a flying bird doesn't muddy its tracks." (which the dictionary indicates is an idiom meaning it is common courtesy to clean up after yourself.

It reminds me of the advice to campers, that when you leave a campsite, there should be no evidence that you were there.

It's amusing to me that my small sample of Japanese people knew the phrase and the idiomatic meaning, but had never thought through what this phrase literally meant and how that related to the idiom. Sometimes I think we really do resemble that character who said "I have been speaking French all my life and never knew it!"

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Correction: "I've been speaking prose all my life...."

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Ah, is that what I meant? :-)