Past April I made my first trip to Shikoku, and found the street name "Hata" in the city of Kochi. "Hata" means,
"Flags (are) plenty (here)," and is expressed by two Chinese characters. The
faithful pronunciation of the characters would be "Hatata." Two ta's must have
been shortened to a single ta.
My last name "Tabata" is expressed by the same two characters as those of Hata
put in the reverse order. I say to the overseas friends of mine, "My last name
means many flags." The flags of Hata and Tabata are of a vertically long kind
(nobori-bata) such as used by samurai in wars. I suppose that many samurai of the
Taira clan (Heike) secretly lived in Hata after being beaten by the Minamoto clan
(Genji) in 1185 in a naval battle at Dannoura.
Possibly my last name comes from the fact that my father-side ancestors were
fishermen, not samurai, in a village facing the Japan Sea. They must have come
back from fishing with many flags on the boat when they got much fish.
On hearing the explanation of my last name, some friends of mine ask me which I
mean, frogs or flags, because my English pronunciation is poor. I say, "Stars and
Stripes is the American flag. That flag!" Once I said this to a British friend of
mine. I should have referred to Union Jack.
(Modified from my comment on "Another
Typhoon" posted at the website "Obachan's Scribbles")
