JapanesePod101.com Blog

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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