Are you a ladder person or a shicho person? The term "ladder" seems to derive from John Bauer's version "ladder ataris" in Go Proverbs Illustrated. We have seen the suggestion that he was not referring to the sort of ladder we keep in the garden, but to the children's game where they stack their hands one on top of the other, switching the bottom hand to the top. It always ends in a slap-fest. Being slapped around somehow seems appropriate to describe the humiliation of being caught in a ladder.

But ladder is not what shicho means. In fact, the Japanese do not know what it means. It attracts many folk etymologies. It's a popular term that has been used metaphorically in haiku, kabuki, folk songs, and so on, always with different characters and thus different meanings. Examples cover four units, four towns four birds, flying birds, dying birds (more Hitchcock!), and stopping and extending - all pronounced shicho.

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