Learn English – Are there English equivalents to Japanese word, ‘有名税－Tax on the famous’

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When you are famous, you are always the target of gossip, curiosity, and ridicule. We call that “yu-umei-zei – 有名税” in Japanese, for which the literal translation is “tax (imposed) on being famous.”

It sounds somewhat akin to the Japanese proverb, “the nail that pops up is always hammered down.” I posted a question about an English equivalent long before, but they are quite different in meaning. The former means acceptance of cost / disadvantages of being famous, the latter means an admonition not to be too conspicuous among peers. It’s also different from “noblesse oblige.”

When a politician, famous actress, singer, football player, or whoever famous makes a gaffe which would be taken for granted if it was done by an average citizen, it is picked up in TVs and newspapers hyperbolically, and people make a fuss by attributing it to “yu-umei-zei – tax on the famous.”

Are there English equivalents in a short word to “yu-umei-zei” which comes up as only three characters in Japanese?

Best Answer

We say "the price of fame".

In an article with that title in Psychology Today, 9/1/1998, Raj Persaud wrote:

The constant attention that comes with fame inflates some celebrities' egos. For others though, the effect is the reverse: it makes them so aware of their shortcomings that they may be driven to self-destruction.

Mark Schaller, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia, has surveyed the works of songwriters Kurt Cobain and Cole Porter and of writer John Cheever to see how often they used the first person singular. With each man, the rate of self-reference jumped after he became famous.

Schaller theorizes that the relentless scrutiny of fans and the media leads some celebrities to become acutely self-conscious. Some develop "impostor syndrome," he observes. "They think to themselves, 'I know that I'm not as great as they think I am.'"

The need to escape this agonizing self-awareness may lead some famous people into alcoholism, drug abuse, or compulsive sexuality, says Schaller. Porter and Cheever were both alcoholics. Using journals and letters, Schaller has found that Cheever's battles with alcohol apparently followed the periods of his greatest renown.

As for Cobain, the leader of Nirvana was addicted to heroin and ultimately killed himself with a shotgun. "Suicide has been called 'the ultimate escape from self-awareness,'" Schaller notes.

The phrase goes back to at least 1743, when "a Student of Oxford" (the Oxford Professor of Poetry Robert Lowth, a notable scholar of Hebrew literature, and author of the most influential English grammar text of the 18th-century) wrote

Who seeks [honor] must the mighty cost sustain,
And pay the price of Fame; labor, and care and pain.

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