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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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