Sense and Sensibility: Part 3 of 4
Friday, July 20th, 2007
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I firmly believe that every kanji has its own personality. And as with people or dogs (or most creatures), it takes a while to get to know a complex kanji. By “complex,” I don’t mean something like this:
Read as KYŪ or kuji, this crazy concoction means “lottery” (though “circuit board” would have been more fitting). It certainly looks complicated. But when I say “complex,” I mean a character with … well, with lots of character! That is, one with emotional depth and many sides to its personality, a kanji that sets a mood or conveys layers of meaning.
When you think of 後 (KŌ, GO, ato, ushi(ro)), which generally means “after” or “behind,” what associations would you expect such a kanji to have? Take a moment to think about it. Then, after reading today’s blog, see how your expectations matched up to the reality of 後!
Looking Back
As you might have guessed, 後 figures into words about reflecting on the past, but not nearly as many as I would have thought. Here’s what I could find:
後知恵 (atojie: hindsight)
after + to know + wisdomTogether, the last two characters mean “wisdom.” When they stand alone as 知恵, the yomi is chie.
後口 (atokuchi: aftertaste, reminder)
after + mouthEnglish speakers call it the aftermath. For the Japanese, it’s the aftermouth!
読後感 (dokugokan: one’s impression (of a book))
to read + after + impression
In previous blogs, we’ve seen these:
後日談 (gojitsudan: reminiscences)
after + day + to discuss
別後 (betsugo: since we last saw each other)
to separate + after
後悔 (kōkai: regret)
later + regret
後思案 (atojian: afterthought)
after + thoughtThe last two characters break down as to think + idea.
I would have expected 後 to be drenched in nostalgia or bittersweet sentiment, but that’s true in only about half these compounds. The rest feel matter-of-fact, as if they’re straightforward indications of where one is in time.
Stabbed in the Back
The anatomical part known as the “back” is 背 (se).
If you want to refer to this body part, you would definitely use 背. Nevertheless, 後 also refers to the backside of one’s body (or to the space behind one’s back), as in these compounds:
後足 (atoashi, ushiroashi: hind leg) rear + leg
後ろ姿 (ushirosugata: appearance from behind) rear + figure
Many phrases about betrayal include 後 (though others contain 背 instead).
For Betrayal Expressions Using 背 …
Check out these expressions about turning one’s back on someone or biting someone’s back with gossip:
後ろ暗い (ushirogurai: shady, underhanded)
behind + darkness後ろ指 (ushiro yubi: being talked about or backbitten)
behind + finger
This compound is part of a very cool-looking but obscure expression: 後ろ指を指す (ushiro yubi o sasu: to backbite), in which the 指 kanji appears twice with different yomi and different meanings! First, it’s yubi (finger), and then it’s sa(su) (to point to). How about that?! One more thing about 後ろ指: Spahn’s dictionary defines it only as “bird’s hind toe, finger of scorn.” The second part is clear enough, but “bird’s hind toe”?!?!
面従後言 (menjūkōgen: pretending to obey someone to his face but badmouthing him behind his back)
face + to comply + behind + to say
For Two Ways to Screw Someone Over …
The Life Cycle Compressed into Compounds
Here’s a compound that blew me away:
後天 (kōten: not inborn)
I was initially tempted to break 後天 down as after + heaven, which sounds like something that happens after one dies and goes to heaven. But the definition of 後天, “not inborn,” refers to birth (or rather a nonevent at birth, bringing to mind the “unbirthday” concept from Alice-in-Wonderland).
So what’s the connection between heaven and birth? My mind began to spin with thoughts about heaven as the dwelling place of gods (who give us traits) and Buddhist ideas of being born again, carrying traits from previous lifetimes.
And then I found (in Jack Halpern’s trusty Kanji Learner’s Dictionary) that 天 can mean “by nature” or “innate.” In fact, that’s its function in 天才 (tensai: genius, natural gift, innate + talent).
Aha! So we start with some innate traits, and 後天 covers those we acquire after that.
And what traits might we acquire in this lifetime? I could think of many possible answers, but I never expected to stumble onto this one:
後天性免疫不全症候群 (kōtenseimen’ekifuzenshōkōgun:
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS))
Here’s how this behemoth breaks down:
後天性 (kōtensei: acquired trait)
not inborn (1st 2 chars.) + quality免疫不全 (men’ekifuzen: immunodeficiency)
免疫 (men’eki: immunity) to be immune + epidemic
不全 (fuzen: imperfect, incomplete) not + all症候群 (shōkōgun: syndrome)
症候 (shōkō: symptoms) illness + climate
群 (gun: cluster)
The difficulty of this 10-kanji compound may be why the Japanese use エイズ (Aizu) to say “AIDS”!
Sadly, the discussion of AIDS provides a smooth segue to the topic of death. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that many 後 compounds refer to the end of life—that is, to old age and death:
老後 (rōgo: one’s old age) old + after
後半生 (kōhansei: the latter half of one’s life)
later + half + life
亡き後 (nakiato: after one’s death)
death + after
死後 (shigo: after death, posthumous)
death + after
死して後已む (shi shite nochiyamu: to be determined to do or die) death + after + to stop
And if you’re very good as you cycle through life’s stages, maybe you’ll get one of these:
後光 (gokō: halo) after + light
Now it’s time for today’s Verbal Logic Quiz. Just click on the following link, and it’ll whisk you away to the proper place.
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
July 21st, 2007 at 3:09 am
Again, it is so educational! I have a native Chinese co-worker, and I showed him the very first Kanji (lottery - combines two kings and turtle in the frame) which he did not realize at first, then realized that it was showing in Bible about Jesus’s crucification. They had a lucky drawing who is going to get his clothes….it is very interesting! I never knew how AIDS were written and called in kanji and I never thought “Heaven - ten” meant innate or nature, but yes, it is if I think of tensai and kouten, etc. Thank you for giving me such depth…
July 21st, 2007 at 3:53 am
Thanks, Hitomi-san, for a very stimulating comment! Although I could easily see the kings (王) in the character, I didn’t know what the turtle kanji was, particularly the hanzi version. I looked it up and found this:
The Japanese write “turtle” as 亀 (kame).
That’s hard to see, isn’t it? Maybe this link will help:
http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=4e80
The traditional Chinese way of writing it is 龜.
http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=9F9C&useutf8=false
On the way to these discoveries, I came across an intriguing Japanese compound: 盲亀 (mōki: blind turtle). Wonder how that came into being!
July 21st, 2007 at 5:00 am
What is Mouki? It is very interesting. I never heard of it. Does it mean something beyond just blind turtle?
July 21st, 2007 at 5:27 am
I did a quick Web search, and the very first hit brought me to the answer. (Maybe that’s not too surprising; there’s probably not a lot of text out there about blind turtles!) The answer is to be found on No-Sword, a blog about the Japanese language by my brilliant friend Matt. Here’s the link:
http://no-sword.jp/blog/2005/02/irregular-weekly-four-14.html
Meanwhile, I found some other fun turtle compounds:
阿亀 (okame: ugly woman), breaking down as “to fawn upon” + “turtle.” (The first kanji is also a prefix before women’s names, so maybe that’s the function it serves here.)
兎角亀毛 (tokakukimō: horns on rabbits and fur on turtles (used as a metaphor for things that do not exist)). It breaks down, unsurprisingly, as “rabbit” + “horns” + “turtle” + “fur.” This compound is supposedly an obscure Buddhist term.
亀頭 (kitō): the head of a male anatomical part! I won’t go into detail here (as Peter says this site is G-rated!). The breakdown is “turtle” + “head.”
July 21st, 2007 at 5:55 am
Woow! It blew me away!!! I am a SGI USA member and this link just brought me to my organization’s home website! We studied this over and over about one-eyed turtle floating on wood. I did not realize that this is the same thing we studied for a long time. This is a story - It is rare to be born as a human being, and moreover to encounter a great teaching (Lotus sutra) is rare, just like a one-eyed turtle encountring a sandal-wood in the vast ocean, who travels a long time trying to find a sandle-wood branch in order to warm his cold stomach. The branch is rare wood to find, so just finding that branch of the tree is hard in the vast ocean and when he finally finds it, he has to warm his cold stomach since he was traveling for a long time floating (swimming)on the water, so he tries to flip over on the branch, but he cannot balance well because he only has one-eye…So, he may fall into the deep of ocean and has to start over again……..Thank you so much for your friend, Matt!
July 21st, 2007 at 6:48 am
Glad that resonated with you so much, Hitomi!
Now you’ve sent me off on another search–trying to find out what SGI is! Aha: Soka Gakkai International.
Wow, that turtle really had a hard time. Come to think of it, turtles haven’t fared too well in most of the discussion above! Always interesting to see what various animals represent from culture to culture. In these parts, I think turtles are most closely associated with computers at the moment, thanks to those Comcast commercials!
July 21st, 2007 at 8:28 am
I haven’t seen an in-depth discussion like this for some time. I might comment on “okame” that Eve has brought up. I only knew the word in hiragana form and had no idea that it was written as “turtle”. What do a turtle and an ugly woman have in common after all? My dictionary has it like this: the epitome of an ugly woman with high cheeks and a tiny nose. We have okame masks and hyottoko masks (hyottoko being the male couterpart of okame) that are usually worn by villagers at traditional local festivals all over Japan. I would rather translate okame as “homely woman,” because the face has smiling eyes, a down-to-earth quality to it, and is actually likable.
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:45 am
I could be wrong, but I think high cheekbones and a tiny nose are hallmarks of beauty around here!
Any idea if hyottoko has kanji, Hiroshi-san? The reason I ask is that hyottoko looks like something (hyotsu?) plus otoko.
I tried searching on the Web, but I wasn’t terribly successful. I did, however, find a Tokyo restaurant called おかめ ひょっとこ店 (okame hyottoko ten). Here’s the link: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g965400
I also found a book called おかめひょっとこ (okame hyottoko):
http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4163121706/apjaps-1-22/ref=nosim
July 26th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Hi Eve,
I’m just starting to go through all your posts. You’ve really done a great job. I’ve always kind of thought of Kanji like Latin root words–once you get the meanings, compounds really begin to make much more sense.
I saw on your site you work out of Berkeley. I’m originally from Piedmont, but I’m head at Japanesepod101 for the summer.
Keep up the good work!
Brian
July 27th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Thanks for the very kind words, Brian!
Piedmont–practically a neighbor!
I don’t know why, but kanji seems so much more appealing to me than Latin. Then again, when I studied Latin (with a gun to my head, I might add), all the vocab. was about war or farming, so I couldn’t get too interested. Funny, though–as I write this, I realize that I have an irrational attachment to the kanji for “farming,” 農 (nō), and I’m very interested in the Japanese experience of WWII, so I also perk up when I see war-related words such as …
Hmm, I couldn’t think of any, so I consulted my dictionary. Some fascinating discoveries:
戦雲 (sen’un: war clouds; threat of war) war + cloud
戦中派 (senchūha: the war generation) war + in + group
軍犬 (gunken: war dog) war + dog ………….. What’s this one about?!
刺股 (sasumata: two-pronged weapon for catching a criminal; man-catcher war fork) pierce + thigh …………………… Man-catcher war fork?!?!?!?
I also found 4 listings for “war of words,” including 舌戦 (zessen: tongue + war). God, Japanese is great, isn’t it?! I’m telling you, I never felt this way about Latin–not once!