When grandmas tell their kids お天道様がみてるよ, how do the kids know who お天道様 is?


I checked Japanese Wikipedia and お天道様 is an early Edo period word for the sun,
as used in some kind of early modern popular religion that is not really
described well at all. Anyway, I've never seen a word like this in any
children's book, so how do kids know what their grandparents are talking
about? It seems like if it's a word nobody understands, the grandparents
should just say お日様 instead.




This is an interesting question but I don't think it's really Japan-specific.
Japanese kids learn the word お天道様 the same way kids everywhere learn words.

I mean, how do kids in the US know who "God" is? If anything, it should be
easier to figure out お天道様 -- at least Japanese grandmas can point to a
concrete placeholder... I'm sure there are many Japanese kids who grow up with
idiosyncratic understandings of what お天道様 means, but again, the same could be
said of "God".

> It seems like if it's a word nobody understands, the grandparents should
> just say お日様 instead.

But it isn't a word nobody understands -- it's a word (almost) everybody
understands, even if they can't put their understanding in simple words. Plus,
if grandmas said お日様 it wouldn't really make sense. There is obviously some
overlap, but watching over people and disapproving of naughtiness is just not
something that お日様 does.

