Is 世の中の渡り方 an expression?

Question

世の中の渡り方を知ってる

My guess is that it's an expression because the literal translation is weird. It would be something like "The way to cross the world".

I feel like 世の中の方 would make more sense for "The way of the world", so why are we using 渡り?

Answer 1

The "方" used here is a suffix that attaches to the 連用形 of a verb (to make a phrase meaning "the way to [verb]" or "how to [verb]") and cannot stand on its own as a noun (at least in modern Japanese). So "世の中の方" is ungrammatical.

The expression in question here is "世の中を渡る".

Yes, you can say it is an idiomatic expression, and your understanding of its literal meaning is correct: "to cross the world", like crossing a river or the sea.

デジタル大辞典 has an entry for "世を渡る" (which is pretty much the same thing as "世の中を渡る") in which it is defined as:

生活する。暮らしていく。

Which means something to the effect of "to live; to make a living".

It seems quite possible that the expression arose from an analogy between sailing across the sea (or on a smaller scale, river-crossing -- or any kind of crossing, at any rate) and living, both of which are fraught with obstacles and hardships, and sometimes require tricky maneuvers to get through successfully.

(If it did, it is not the only expression that similarity between the two underlies; we also have "世間の荒波" ("rough waves of life/society"), which describes the harshness of human life/society.)

I think the dictionary's definition is fair enough, but my own little advice is that it might be a good idea to understand it to mean not just "to live" or "to make a living" but also "to navigate through life/society" or something like that.

There is also a related expression, "世渡り上手" (or "世渡りがうまい"), which describes someone who is world-wise and street-smart and knows how to get what they want, get ahead in life, get into people's favor, cultivate a social network, etc.