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With autumn in the air, the “leaf” kanji 葉 beckons, just asking to be explored. Its shape might look rather daunting, but if you break 葉 into three pieces, it’s much less intimidating. Let’s put that leaf under a microscope:

葉

At the top, we find the grass radical . Under that, we see 世, which means “world” (as in 世界, sekai: world, world + world). And at the bottom lies 木 (ki: tree). A leafy world consists of grass and trees! Under ordinary circumstances, the tree would be above the grass, but never mind.

Autumn Passage, Wasatch Mountains, Utah
Photo credit: Elizabeth Carmel

Yomi, Yomi, Yomi,
I Got Leaves in My Tummy

Huh? …

The yomi for 葉 are quite simple: YŌ and ha, as this pair of words illustrates:

落ち葉 (ochiba: fallen leaves)     to fall + leaf

Here, ha has turned into ba through voicing.

落葉 (rakuyō: fallen leaves)     to fall + leaf

In these compounds, the same characters appear in the same order, and the words have identical meanings. And yet ochiba and rakuyō sound nothing alike! Ochiba combines two kun-yomi, whereas rakuyō contains two on-yomi. And that alone accounts for the slipsiding sounds. No matter how many times I encounter such pairs, they blow my mind. (Therefore, we could consider these particular compounds to be leaf-blowers.)

For Another Pair Like This …

On the subject of yomi surprises, I’m always thrown off when I find kun-yomi as short as ha. Kun-yomi tend to be mouthfuls, such as atarashii (新しい: new) and kanarazu (必ず: without fail). When I learned that ha was the kun-yomi for 葉, I wondered which other kanji had ha as their kun-yomi. You’ll find my answer at the next link.

Ha Ha Ha Ha …

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How much space lies between human beings? Are we naturally gregarious or solitary?

Perhaps we’re not unlike wolves, who nestle tightly in a cave at night, drawing on each other’s warmth, then stumbling out in the morning when there’s no more oxygen. If so, then those jammed together in an Indian tenement slum would seem to have achieved the most natural form of life.

Kanji and Ria, two “wolves” huddling for warmth and safety
as they brave the wild.

Or are we most naturally ourselves when acres lie between us? Maybe Thoreau knew most about what suits humans—peaceful solitude in which to think deep thoughts. I recently learned of fourteen families in Ohio who collectively bought 620 acres, then placed their houses far apart for maximum privacy. The mission statement for this community emphasizes that independence and individuality are top priorities. As someone commented to me, “It’s the anti-community community.”

I ask these questions about human nature because 人間 (ningen: human being) breaks down as person + between. One could visualize between in a positive sense here. If it materialized, it would look like connective material (strings of glue?) joining people. In that case, between would have a sense of “groupiness.” (Do I sound like Stephen Colbert here?) But with a colder outlook on human relations, one might interpret between as meaning “the space between.” In a previous blog, we looked at 間 as an interval between objects, and one could see human beings as those objects.

Whatever nuance 間 might have in 人間, the word itself has a neutral connotation, just as the English term “human being” does. But various elaborations on 人間 (mostly in the form of suffixes) create certain moods, both positive and negative. You’ll find examples of each in the first Verbal Logic Quiz.

For Verbal Logic Quiz 1 …

A Tale of Friendship

The fundamental question is, can human beings get along or not? As I rifled through Spahn’s dictionary for compounds containing 間, five words in a row jumped off the page as a unit, immediately suggesting a tale.

We start with 友人間に (yūjinkan ni: among one’s friends, friend + human being). Ah, what a lovely image. One is among friends, and they’re presumably decent human beings. This is a comforting, warming idea in a world where winds can be much too cold.

For a Note on the Yomi of 友人間に …

Spahn then mentions 仲間 (nakama: member of a group, personal relations + between). This is again reassuring; the friendships have solidified so much that there’s a definable group.

One joins the group through the process of 仲間入り (nakama-iri), which means “to become one of the group.” This 入り means “to enter, to join, to be accepted as a member,” so there’s a definite feeling of inclusion here.

But what’s this? Spahn next introduces 仲間外れ (nakamahazure: being left out). Oh, what a painful word. You may know 外 as soto or GAI, meaning “outside.” But with the yomi of hazu(reru), 外 means “to be separated.” So 仲間外れ means one is separated from other members of the group, which is to say “cast out,” “shunned,” “shunted aside,” “booed off the field,” and so on.

Then Spahn presents the grand finale to the tale he has unwittingly spun: 仲間割れ (nakamaware: split among friends, falling out, internal discord). Here, 割 means “to split into” or “to lose unity.” So the group has dissolved, with cold, hard feelings all around.

Well, maybe it’s not such a sad ending after all. Wasn’t this the group that pushed our protagonist aside so callously? Just deserts, I think.

On the Overlaps Between 離, 外, and 割 …

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Tim Page’s recent New Yorker essay “Parallel Play” contained this wonderful passage:

Falling in love surprised me; I had never imagined sustained contentment, and certainly not in the company of another person. Yet here it was: even making the bed together in the morning … took on meaning, as the prelude to another gloriously ordinary day, to be followed by tea, the newspapers, a couple hours of work, and then lunch in the neighborhood.

“Another gloriously ordinary day”! Life offers many more gloriously ordinary days than heightened moments. And yet we tend to focus on the big events, the mountaintops, somehow overlooking the valleys in between, the hours that make up our lives.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about death far more than I should. And as I do, the gloriously ordinary rituals have come to seem precious and terribly fleeting, even though they happen again and again. Savoring a milky cup of tea while lingering at the breakfast table, reading outside as the sunlight filters down through the trees, discovering abundant peaches and strawberries at the farmers’ market, and then, at the end of the day, seeing the dogs off to their beds with the same words I said the night before: “Good night! Sleep well! I love you!” … These sweet moments happen over and over, and yet they slip away just as quickly.

Hey, isn’t this blog supposed to be about kanji?!

Yes, yes, quite right. Sorry for the brief wallow in sentiment. But this discussion does relate directly to kanji, because 間, our old friend from last week, captures this sense of fleeting moments. That is, 間 (KAN, KEN, aida, ai, ma) frequently means “interval.” And there’s nothing as elusive as an interval! In some ways, it’s the part that doesn’t count. It’s the space between other objects, the cessation between moments of more “important” activity. So it’s easy to dismiss 間 as insignificant. And yet, from where I stand, 間 is the very stuff of life, the part that makes it worthwhile. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a little kanji, but I think the ubiquitous 間 can hold up just fine!

Words That Give One Pause

Although we commonly say, “Wait a minute!”, we don’t really mean someone should wait a full sixty seconds for us. We actually mean, “Wait a moment.” But how long is a moment … or an interval?

Japanese has an array of words for time intervals, including this straightforward term:

合間 (aima: time interval)     interval + interval

As a prefix, 合- (ai-) means “interval,” in the sense of “time between.” For sample sentences featuring 合間, click the link below.

For Ways to Use 合間 …

At least two more 間 compounds hint at intervals that are merely momentary:

瞬間 (shunkan: instant, moment)     blink + interval

A moment is the time it takes to blink … or the time between blinks. Isn’t that wonderful? In either case, it’s not a very long time!

On Winking and Blinking …

露の間 (tsuyunoma: a fleeting moment)     dew + ’s + interval

I’m tempted to think that 間 here is a measure of space—the distance between dewdrops. But the definition refers to a moment, so perhaps 露の間 is the moment between the time two dewdrops form.

By contrast, the following compound means “a long time,” though it’s hard to know just how long this truly is:
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From the last blog, you know all about men, particularly 男 (DAN, NAN, otoko: man). And you’ve likely seen 間 in 時間 (jikan: time), which breaks down as hours + interval. So perhaps you’ll be as surprised as I to find that 間 combines with 男 to mean “adultery, adulterer” (間男: maotoko). What does 間 contribute to this word? It’s tricky to figure out, because 間 has quite a few meanings.

I know 間 commonly means “space.” Does 間男 imply that a man commits adultery because he needs space from his wife?!

But 間 can also refer to rooms. So does the 間 in 間男 refer to the room in which an adulterer proves his manhood?

Then again, 間 can mean “timing, situation, occasion,” as in 間違い (machigai: mistake: timing + difference). And as I mentioned, 間 can mean “interval.” Both “timing” and “interval” sound like plausible interpretations of the 間 in 間男, because adultery is a matter of impeccable timing, and people having affairs need to find just the right intervals for their dalliances!

In today’s blog and the next two, we’ll look at various meanings of 間 (which has five (!) yomi: KAN, KEN, aida, ai, and ma). If it ever feels hopeless to pin down the meaning of 間, consider this: Its shape actually matches some of its meanings. Here, have a closer look:

間

I know 間 is supposed to be a pictograph of a sun (日) at a gate (門). But look how the 日 seems to have been inserted between the two sides of the gate. Well, what’s an interval but an insertion between two entities? (Think, for instance, of the intermission between acts of a play.) From another perspective, one can see 間 as a rough layout of a house—a blueprint with two corner rooms and a third room just to the “south.” Three rooms—that would come in handy for an adulterer trying to juggle several women.

Rooms for Living and Dying

Flipping through dictionaries to pin down the meaning of 間 in 間男, I made one of the coolest kanji discoveries ever:

居間 (ima: living room)     to exist + room

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My friend Tom seems to provoke Mother Nature’s wrath wherever he goes. When he stayed with friends in Michigan last month, a freak windstorm made them lose power for two days. Six months earlier, he visited Titusville, Florida, and a severe tornado arrived at precisely the same time. Not long before that, a tornado accompanied him to Olney, Maryland. When Tom was just six, a tornado hit his family’s farm in Illinois. Although the family recovered and rebuilt the garage, another tornado took that one out, as well. Coincidences? I think not.

Apparently, Tornado Tom is not the only person with these powers, as the Japanese have a similar concept:

雨男 (ameotoko: man whose presence seems to cause rain)
     rain + man

And then there’s a word with the opposite ingredients: man + drought:

男旱 (otokohideri)     man + drought

On the Logic of 旱 …

You might think this referred to a man who brought sunny skies. But no, 男旱 means “scarcity of eligible or interested men.” In other words, it’s not raining men!

Golconde, 1953, by René Magritte.

Women around the world lament the scarcity of eligible men. The Japanese may be especially knowledgeable in this area, because they’re pros at counting men.

On Counting Men …

The Measure of a Man

What is it to be a man—or, rather, to be 男 (DAN, NAN, otoko: man, male)? People have asked this through the millennia, and the Japanese are no exception. Consider, for instance, this palindrome:

男の中の男 (otoko no naka no otoko: man among men, manly man, alpha male)     man + among + men

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