Fun with Kanji

Japanese writing contains thousands of Chinese characters, Kanji, they are used for their meanings but also sometimes phonetically. To be properly literate you need to know about 4,000. Today many Japanese are forgetting the more obscure ones and the use use of personal computers and smart phones has made this even more of a problem.

The characters themselves are a delight. Sometimes the meaning is obvious from the form of the pictograph. At other times the meaning is hard to imagine. Because in origin they are mostly so old there are fascinating bits of custom and history buried within.

家   Here a roof with a pig under it. It's the character for "House" . It tells you a lot about where the Chinese used to and sometimes still do keep their animals.

火山  On the left is fire on the right a mountain, so fire mountain = volcano.

電車  Left is electricity. You can see a cloud, rain and a lightning bolt striking a rice field. On the right is a chariot. So here we have an electric train.

好  A female form holding a heavily swaddled child. This means "Love". Female? I hear you cry. Perhaps the figure for mother would help you see how it was derived. 母. (Hint: she's lying on her side.)

電子 This time the electricity and child symbol are combined. So it says "the child of electricity", what's this? Well an electron of course. A good example of how old symbols are used to show modern concepts. This is really the fun part as to work them out is a bit like doing a cryptic crossword.

森  A forest.

禁止 One of my all time favourites. It means "don't" and you see it on Japanese no-parking signs. The character on the right means "stop" but the character on the left means "Don't do this". It is an altar in a forest with a bowl on it. In it is sacrificial blood.....your blood.

引く  The verb "to pull" you can easily see that it's a bow.

Written in Kanji, the place names have very literal and often prosaic meanings. The morning commute from my host family's house in Kamakura to the school in Yokohama takes me through the following towns:

西鎌倉              West Sickle Storehouse    (Nishi Kamakura)
湘南深沢          River South Deep Swamp

湘南町屋          River South Town Shop

冨士見町          Mt Fuji Viewing Place

戸塚                  Door Hill

保土ケ谷          Protected Soil Valley

横浜                  Sideways Seashore (Yokohama)  

The character for "Station", 駅, has a horse with its four legs and mane and then the symbol for a measurement of distance.

 
And finally "Japan", the sun and  the root of a tree, the origin of the sun, the country furthest to the East. Land of the rising sun.