Smudge

     In the last entry, "Covering Up Gray", I wrote about concealing gray. Then I said that I couldn't find a suitable word for the Japanese word "bokasu", which means "become unclear like unfocused pictures". My English teacher made a suggestion, "How about smudge?" I didn't know this word and looked it up in my dictionary. It says; 1: if ink, writing etc smudges, or if you smudge it, it becomes dirty and unclear because it has been touched or rubbed; 2: to make a dirty mark on a surface; Conclusively both meanings have dirty images. However, "bokasu" has a good meaning as well as a bad one. "Bokasu gray" means suppressing the glitter of gray, not dyeing or changing the color of hair and consequently gray diminishes contrast and becomes less conspicuous. I think this is just like lowering the resolution of the computer screen.

(Vocabulary)

conclusively  　疑う余地もなく, 明確に

resolution 　（スクリーンなどの） 解像度