Kinda Sorta a Binding Commitment: Part 1
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
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In the past, we’ve encountered kanji that embody opposite meanings—namely, 出 and 追. Well, I’ve found another culprit: 約 (YAKU)!
In one side of its split personality, this is the laid-back kanji of approximations; when you don’t know a precise number, you can precede it with 約 to express the idea of “about” or “circa” or “kinda sorta like that.” For instance, you might use 約 to say “about half”:
約半分 (yaku hanbun: about half) about + half (last 2 chars.)
The full breakdown is about + half + part.
When I wrote an article about the soon-to-be-unveiled Shibuya Station, I asked a project architect for its dimensions. He supplied this information (without the rōmaji or English, of course!):
敷地面積 (shikichi menseki: site area)：約１４,０００m2
総床面積 (sō yukamenseki: gross square footage)：約２８,０００m2
The 約 allowed him to round off his figures.
Then, during a very different conversation, this kanji emerged in the opposite way, appearing in the word 約束 (yakusoku: promise, promise + to bind).
I had arranged to chat with a new Japanese language partner on Skype at 5 p.m. To my surprise, he contacted me at 4:15 and wanted to get going. I told my friend Mayumi about this. She grew up in Japan but has lived in Italy for years. Ever amused at the differences between the two cultures, she had this to say:
それにしても5時に約束して4時15分って早いですね。なんか日本らしさを少し感じます。イタリア人ではありえないな。きっと5時に約束して6時とか …。:—)
Sorenishitemo goji ni yakusoku shite yoji jūgofun tte hayai desune. Nanka Nihonrashisa o sukoshi kanjimasu. Itariajin dewa arienaina. Kitto goji ni yakusoku shite rokuji toka …. :—)When you’ve set a time for 5:00, 4:15 is early, isn’t it? That somewhat gives off the feeling of a typical Japanese. That’s impossible for Italians—promising to meet at 5:00 surely means showing up at 6:00 or something…. :—)
A Breakdown of the Kanji and Difficult Words …
Reading her email and admiring how compactly she said 「5時に約束して」(an expression that seems to require a bit more verbiage in English), I realized that 約 is the opposite of an approximation here. That is, 約束 is a firm promise. For untrustworthy sorts, a promise might be a nice gesture, a bunch of empty words that the speaker never plans to fulfill:
空約束 (karayakusoku: empty promise)
empty + promise (last 2 chars.)
But 約束 is a promise to take seriously. Breen defines it in all these ways:
(1) arrangement; promise; appointment; pact; engagement
(2) convention; rule
Halpern throws in “vow” and “pledge.” That’s some hardcore promise.
After all, consider the breakdown of 約束:
約 (YAKU: to promise, make an agreement, conclude a treaty)
束 (SOKU, taba: to tie up, restrain, bind)
With the kun-yomi of taba, 束 means “bundle” and appears in words about being tied up in a bundle:
花束 (hanataba: bunch of flowers) flower + bundle
札束 (satsutaba: bundle of bank notes, wad of bills)
paper money + bundle
And with the on-yomi of SOKU, 束 gives off the sense of a necktie pulled so tight that it has become a noose:
束縛する (sokubaku suru: to restrain, restrict, bind, fetter)
to bind + to bind
拘束 (kōsoku: restriction, restraint, binding) to confine + to bind
Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said “necktie” but rather sokutai:
束帯 (sokutai: old ceremonial court dress) to bind + to wear
In any case, there’s no freewheeling feeling here. When my partner and I agreed to talk at 5:00, he (as a native speaker) should have known that he was almost literally forming a binding agreement. Given the severity of what he entered into, he should have been hogtied after calling 45 minutes early, because I might have been fit to be tied … or at least tied up in knots … or even tied up (or down!) with another 約束.
Fortunately, I was happy to hear from him, and we had a great talk. Since our story had a happy ending, I’ll tie it up here. Just one more thing. As a kanji with a dual and therefore inexact meaning, 約 embodies the very idea of “approximate.” That is, 約 refuses to be bound to any one sense.
OK, now that I’ve taken this waaaaay too far, it’s about (約) time for a Verbal Logic Quiz!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
April 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Four people on my blog mailing list happen to have birthdays this week! A very happy birthday to Nina, Stan, Jake, and the increasingly famous Mayumi!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:57 am
This blog teaches us a lot of things that even average native speakers don’t know. I never knew that the kun-yomi tsuzu(maru) and tsuzu(meru) ever existed.
It is intriguing that the kanji 約 has two basically different meanings: “to bind” and “about”. The following is only a speculation on how it has developed to be so. When you bind something, it is mostly to make it easy to carry or store, and so usually you squeeze it by binding the object tightly. By association, the kanji has developed to mean “to truncate” or to retain only the essential part and throw away the rest. Again by association, it has developed to mean to drop some decimals in numbers, and hence the meaning of “about”. How credible do you think my theory is?
April 26th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Interesting…. Although I wrote that 束 (not 約) means “to bind,” Henshall supports your statement that 約 originally had that meaning. He also supports your theory!
The left-hand side of 約 is 糸 (thread). Henshall says the right-hand side functions phonetically to express “tie tightly.” He writes, “On the one hand this came by figurative association to be applied to ‘binding agreements,’ and on the other to mean ‘tighten up’ in the sense of remove non-essential elements, i.e. ’summarize.’ By further association summary/gist led to ‘approximation.’”
Sounds like a pretty good match for what you were thinking!
April 30th, 2008 at 3:14 am
A few entries earlier, I pointed out that in 睡眠 (suimin) the two constituent kanji have almost the same meaning, “to sleep”. It may be a coincidence but many jukugo that have since appeared belong to the same category: look at 秘密, where both kanji mean “secrecy”, and 約束, where both kanji mean “to bind”, though these kanji also have other meanings. There seem to be many other examples: 婚姻 (kon-in: both kanji mean marriage), 嫉妬 (shitto; both kanji mean jealousy), and 妊娠 (ninshin; both kanji mean pregnancy).
Any explanation for this? Why two kanji where one will do? Maybe because one kanji is verbally too short for understanding on the listening side.