On the Borderline: Part 1
Friday, August 1st, 2008
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In the last blog, we encountered the following words:
順境 (junkyō: favorable circumstances, prosperity)
favorable + situation環境 (kankyō: environment, situation)
to surround + situation
Clearly, 境 (KYŌ, KEI, sakai: boundary, situation) is clamoring for a closer look. For starters, it might help to crank up the size:
境
Taken alone, 境 strikes me as a cute, perky kanji—perhaps a distant cousin of 意 (I: will, heart, mind). Given that 境 breaks down into recognizable, simple components (土, 立, 日, and 儿), it’s not at all unfriendly.
But when it appears in 環境, I feel nearly blinded by the profusion of small lines going every which way. I can never seem to recognize this daunting compound. However, it is an important word, one that I hear from time to time.
The Appeal of Boundaries
So it’s time to tame this beast! Once we develop a solid level of familiarity with these two characters and even an affectionate relationship with them, everything will change. We’ll take on 境 first, examining 環 in later blogs.
It’s actually quite easy to love 境. Its original meaning is “boundary,” and I find the idea of boundaries intriguing. Sometimes the thinnest of boundaries separates two massive and powerful entities. Think of human skin: all that it keeps in, and all that it keeps out. Think of a building and how its exterior wall (also called skin) shields us from whipping winds and lashing rainstorms. Think of the border between China and Russia. (They do share a border, right? Please tell me I didn’t just pull a McCain.)
Photo Credit: © Claudia Hering
Like a door, a boundary sends mixed messages: both “Keep Out!” and “Come on in!” In fact, the more a boundary seems to be telling me “Keep Out!”, the more I feel I must cross that line. That is, I’m tempted to commit this:
越境 (ekkyō: violation of a border) to go beyond + border
The Fence: Sarimbun, Singapore
Photo Credit: Daniel Cheong
When two hostile regions meet at a single line, what tension that line contains! Conversely, when two friendly entities lie side by side, the line between them constitutes a kind of sweet union. For some reason, my mind went to the old ads for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Those ads treated the blending of chocolate and peanut butter first as a lamentable mix-up (literally!) and then as a serendipitous, delicious invention—a sweet union indeed!
Boundary in the Snow: St-Colomban, Québec, Canada
Photo Credit: Gaëtan Bourque
A Character That Does What It Says
Here’s something to blow your mind. I indicated that 境 has two very different meanings, “boundary” and “situation.” In this way, the “boundary” character 境 itself lies at the boundary between two regions! (Actually, Breen says 境 means “region,” as well!)
Certain 境 words clearly contain the meaning of “boundary”:
国境 (kokkyō or kunizakai: national boundary/border)
country + boundary
And in some words, 境 obviously means “situation”:
悲境 (hikyō: sad plight, distress) sad + situation
But in the next word, 境 can mean either “boundary” or “situation”:
境目 (sakaime: border, boundary line, crisis)
To clarify things, I’ll supply two versions with different definitions and breakdowns:
境目 (sakaime: border, boundary line) boundary + dividing line
境目 (sakaime: crisis) situation + dividing lineAnother surprise: 目 has scads of meanings, and Halpern says it can mean “dividing line, borderline,” as it seems to here.
Chinatown Boundary: Los Angeles
The characters in the pavement are 一八八七年 and 唐人街,
breaking down as 1887 + year and Chinese + people + town.
Photo Credit: Faria
At first, it seems counterintuitive that one word could mean both “boundary line” and “crisis.” But it actually makes sense. Consider this:
• Crises often occur at national borders.
• “Borderline personality disorder” moves the concept of “borderline” out of the physical world and into the emotional realm, which is where many crises occur.
• As the saying goes, based on the popular interpretation (or possible misinterpretation) of 危機 (kiki: crisis, danger + opportunity), a crisis occurs at the boundary of danger and opportunity.
• Having a crisis often involves being “on edge,” “edgy,” or even “on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” One senses that there’s a thin line between sanity and insanity, between the conscious and unconscious minds.
• Remember that wretched song by Madonna about borderlines? How did it go? Ah, here it is: “Borderline / Feels like I’m going to lose my mind / You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline.” Now that I’ve Googled those lyrics and heard them again in my mind, all the trauma of living through the ’80s has come flooding back. (Are you suffering, too, from the Madonna flashback?) It’s definitely an annoying song, but in just a few words, she captured the psychological aspects of a borderline, and for that I suppose I should be grateful. Hmm … No.
Field Boundary: Cornwall, England
Photo Credit: Roger Butterfield
Well, it seems that I’ve yammered on too long without exploring 境 in much depth. In fact, I took so long that you might say to me, “You just keep on pushing my patience over the borderline.” But don’t. Really. Please don’t.
We’ll return to 境 and 環 in weeks to come. And when that happens, I’ll make sure to create a Madonna-free 環境.
Time for your Verbal Logic Quiz!
Posted by Eve Kushner in Kanji Curiosity |
August 9th, 2008 at 8:13 am
When we Japanese refer to a Chinatown in America, we call them チャイナタウン just as the local people would call them, but when we talk about the Chinatown in Yokohama, we use 中華街 (chūka-gai), not 唐人街 or 中国人街. It is only a matter of custom, I guess.
I have never heard the word 唐人街, and maybe that is how they were called in the Edo era. In fact, dictionaries have a lot of words starting with 唐人 but all of them seem to be obsolete: 唐人笛 (tōjin-bue; Chinese whistle), 唐人踊 (tōjin- odori; Chinese dance), etc.
August 11th, 2008 at 6:40 am
It’s funny about チャイナタウン. When I took Japanese classes in San Francisco, and we asked the teacher how to say “Chinatown,” she said what sounded exactly like “Chinatown.” I was a little annoyed, because I thought she was somehow avoiding giving us the “real” way of saying it in Japanese. It never occurred to me that she was saying チャイナタウン!
August 19th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Eve:
Nice photos of boundaries. Nice thoughts about boundaries, border lines and the like.
Isn’t it strange how writers in English tend to refer to Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana as “border towns?” Those are two of the largest urban areas in all of Mexico. How come they are not “border cities?”
By the way, don’t Los Angeles and Seattle behave like border towns on the Japan/US border? Surely major countries have borders between them, even insular countries such as Japan — and, to a certain extent, the USA.
As for Toujingai, maybe you can use one of your columns to explain all the different ways to refer to China and Chinese culture in Japanese. Tou is Tang, as in Tang Dynasty. Then there is Chuuka, as in Chuukagai. Then there is Ka, or Chinese Hua. Oh, yes, one must not forget Kan as in Kanji. Maybe you can come up with an exhaustive list. I think most of them are the names of Chinese dynasties.
Lonnie Wiig