JapanesePod101.com Blog

Recently, when I logged onto JapanesePod101.com to listen to some podcasts, a photo with big, bold, striking kanji stopped me in my tracks.

The lesson was about 過労死 (karōshi), “death by overworking,” but none of those kanji appeared in the photo. I knew 残業 (to remain + work) as zangyō, “overtime.” And I knew 風 (FU-, kaze) in several ways, often having to do with wind. But how did 風 factor into overtime? And what was 呂敷?

What Does サービス Mean Here? …

Because the characters appeared in a photo, I couldn’t copy and paste them into Breen, and somehow all other methods of kanji investigation failed me. What would the radical of 呂 be? It couldn’t be 口, could it? (Yes, it could and it is.) I refused to think that was possible, so I didn’t even try looking it up that way, instead preferring (why???) to flail around with utterly ineffective alternative methods. I got nowhere.

Searching for 敷 in Breen finally did the trick, but only after a loooong time, because I had assumed that this character would be a Jōyō kanji, which is true, only Breen hadn’t classified it as such, which hampered my search.

Anyway, I eventually deciphered 風呂敷 as furoshiki, which means “wrapping cloth” or “cloth wrapper,” which is what the ever-so-practical people on the resource-limited Japanese islands have used to wrap presents, purchases, and whatever else might need carrying.

Shibori Omiyage
Credit: Glennis Dolce
Shibori artist Glennis Dolce makes incredible silk shibori cloths for
a variety of applications, including furoshiki.
The kanji for shibori is 絞り.

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One might think of a jumble as a negative thing: a massive ball of knotted string that takes forever to untangle, a scrambled mind that keeps nothing straight, a mess of feelings and problems that you can’t sort out, a messy house where you can’t locate what you need.

But there are also positive jumbles, and for some reason (hunger?!), I can mostly think of examples related to food: an appetizer sampler plate, variety packs of candy bars for Halloween, a stew. In fact, when you cook and mix things together, a jumble is often the goal.

Hence the Term “Jambalaya”? …

Chaos of Color, the Big Hodgepodge
Photo credit: © John W. Hammond

Kun-kun 混 combinations formed with the yomi ma(zeru) often have to do with jumbles. They even sound like jumbles. Take, for instance, this word:

混ぜこぜ (mazekoze: jumble (of two or several things); mix)

Japanese usually write this word in hiragana.

The consonants z and k in mazekoze create the impression of chaos, just as the ateji term mechakucha (目茶苦茶: disorder, confusion) has the onomatopoetic feel of disorganization. Why should this be, when the repetition of syllables (ze in mazekoze, cha in mechakucha) create some semblance of order?

More on Mechakucha …

Loopy Glass Jungle
Photo credit: © John W. Hammond

With the yomi of ma(zeru), 混 plays into at least one compound with a pejorative sense, bringing us back to the downside of jumbles:

混ぜ返す (mazekaesu: to banter, make fun of (what a person says), jeer at; to stir up)     to toss + to repeat

Ma(zeru) can also mean “to toss.” Given the breakdown, I suppose 混ぜ返す is like throwing words back in someone’s face.

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Do you think of Old Japan as an orderly or disorderly place? My gut reaction is to think of orderliness: the constant cleaning of already spotless houses, the exquisite presentation of shōjin ryōri (精進料理: vegetarian Buddhist food served at temples, meticulous + to offer + cuisine (last 2 chars.)), the dainty washi wrapped around purchases, and the minute attention to detail in the tea ceremony.

And yet kanji calligraphy tends toward chaos! Only highly trained practitioners can read the flowing lines. And there’s the matter of twisting, narrow roads in Tokyo and how easy it is to get lost there, with the unclear or nonexistent indication of streets and building numbers. As Donald Richie wrote so beautifully in A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan, plots of land follow natural topography, rather than grid lines:

One … sees this from the air, a good introduction to the patterns of a country. Cultivated Japan is all paddies winding in free-form serpentine between the mountains, a quilt of checks and triangles on the lowlands—very different from the neat squares of Germany, or that vast and regular checkerboard of the United States. The Japanese pattern is drawn from nature. The paddy fields assume their shape because mountains are observed and valleys followed, because this is the country where the house was once made to fit into the curve of the landscape and where the farmer used to cut a hole in the roof rather than cut down the tree. (19–20)

I can only conclude that Japan, old and new, presents an enticing combination of order and disorder. The following picture (which reminds me of a circuit board) is of Tokyo. On Flickr, the photographer’s caption says, “Japanese have a way of making even disorder neat, somehow.”

Neat Disorder
Photo credit: Poagao

We saw last week that 混 (KON, ma(jiru), ma(zeru), ma(zaru)) can mean “to confuse” and “to mix.” As ma(jiru), “to be mixed or blended,” 混 shows up in several terms that remind me of cooking, seeming to contain a dash of this word, and a dash of that word—true mixes! Take, for example, this word:

混じり気 (majirike: a dash of (something), impurity, mixture)
     to mix + a trace

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When I came upon the compound 混沌 (konton: confusion, chaos, disorder), I couldn’t fathom why this word had taken on so much water (). I wondered whether the moisture had anything to do with the “swirling waters of confusion” to which English speakers refer. As it turns out, yes! Check out some of the meanings of these kanji (the second of which happens to be rare):

混: confused
沌: swirling water, to be blocked, primeval chaos

Primeval chaos?! Burbling bodies of water must have terrified some early people!

Swirl
Photo credit: Ray Byrne

Henshall says that 混 originally referred to water rushing and swirling with no fixed course, as in a flood. Then “confused waters” came to mean “confused” in a broader sense. He also says the 昆 inside 混 means “multitude” and acts phonetically here to express “to spin, swirl.” The element 昆 even lends its own idea of confusion, because people in a crowd mill around chaotically.

Swirling Waters
Photo credit: eatzycath

If this sounds entirely negative, never fear. The kanji 混 also means “to mix.” This associated meaning came about because impure elements often find their way into the swirling waters of confusion. This idea of “mixing” is not inherently negative. Just consider these appealing mixes:

雨混じりの雪 (ame majiri no yuki: snow mingled with rain)     rain + to mix + snow

混合酒 (kongōshu: cocktail, mixed drink, blended liquor)
     to mix + to join + alcohol

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In English, “tail of the yak” and “tale of the yak” both make sense but mean very different things. This is nothing compared with the profusion of Japanese homonyms. When you type YAKU in hiragana and convert it to kanji, any of the following characters could pop up, as all have the on-yomi of YAKU:

約 (to promise, shrink, about)
訳 (to translate)
薬 (medicine)
役 (service, serviceability)
厄 (misfortune)
躍 (to leap)
疫 (epidemic)
益 (benefit, profit)　

This leads to a plethora of homophonous YAKU compounds.

There are three more types of yaku:

焼く (to burn, roast, grill, bake)

In this case, ya(ku) is the kun-yomi. Some compounds include the kun-yomi of this kanji, but the form is always yaki or yake. This kanji therefore doesn’t factor into the YAKU homonym confusion.

妬く (to become jealous)

This kun-yomi is uncommon and seems to play no part in any homonym problem.

ヤク (yak)

I believe this word also causes no compound confusion.

Yak Near the Sacred Yundrok Yumtso Lake, Tibet
Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis

Yakity Yak
Photo credit: Valerie Abbott

Yet Another YAKU …

YAKU Words with Great Internal Rhymes …

Kanji with Both EKI and YAKU as On-Yomi …

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Last week we saw how the 約 in 約束 (yakusoku: promise, promise + to bind) can imply a binding contract. I don’t usually associate contracts with any sense of contracting, which is to say “shrinking.” But just as “contract” has these two meanings, so does 約, strangely enough.

“Contract” in English (and Latin) …

In fact, Halpern says that “shortening” is the original meaning of 約. When does 約 convey a sense of shrinking? I can think of no better example than this one:

括約筋 (katsuyakukin: sphincter)
     to constrict + to shrink + muscle

Oh, come now. There are several sphincters in the body!

What’s With the Breakdown of 括?! …

Whereas 括約筋 conveys a drawing together, other 約 words are more about condensing something long:

要約 (yōyaku: summary, abridged statement)
     important + to shrink

約言 (yakugen: contraction, summary)     to shrink + speech

Two more 約 compounds have to do with restricting or regulating people’s rights:

制約 (seiyaku: restriction, limitation, condition)
     rule + to contract

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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)!

A Note on the Yomi …

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

A Breakdown of the Kanji …

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:
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I’ve never liked the term “passing away,” perhaps because it’s euphemistic or … I don’t know. I’ve just never liked the way it sounds. But this week, as my grandmother has been lying in a semi-conscious haze, close to death, I’ve taken comfort in the idea of a passage. That is, I like to think that she’s not passing away but rather passing through. I imagine that she’s going through a tunnel.

Much as we come into this world through a birth canal, I choose to believe that she’s working her way down a “death canal.” And that somehow makes the idea more palatable. Death is about stopping: 止. It’s about going no farther. But if she’s in a passage, then she’s still moving along, still headed somewhere, possibly floating on waves of hallucinations. Maybe it’s a trippy kind of trip, a kaleidoscope of images from a long life. She might be seeing the faces of people she loved, people who “passed through” before.

All week, I’ve visualized this kanji:

通

It means “to pass.” Not “pass away” but “pass through.” I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with this character, never knowing quite how to read it. The on-yomi can be either TSŪ or TSU, and the kun-yomi can be tō(ru), to(su), or even kayo(u). But just this week, I’ve developed a fondness for this kanji.

It even looks like a tunnel at its core:

用

The top, マ, strikes me as an ornamental crest that dresses up the tunnel. The movement radical indicates progress through that tunnel. And the main part, 用, well, that’s an opening, 冂, with bars that close the tunnel to the rest of us until our time comes. When it does, the bars lift briefly, admit one, and swiftly shut again.

The following links represent more passageways. Choose your destination carefully. The first three “doors” will take you farther into kanji-land. And the fourth meanders down memory lane with only the faintest sprinkling of kanji. If you have no interest in hearing more about death, elderly relatives, and personal memories, it might be best to leave that fourth door bolted. (Of course, you’ll miss photos of some hot girls in swimsuits!)

The Real Meaning of the Components …

A Whale-Fish Compound…

A Passage to Words About Passages ..

Passages and Memories …

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We saw two weeks back that 密 has three disparate meanings:

1) Close, dense, thick, compact, tight
2) Minuteness, carefulness
3) Secret, private, illegal, stealthy

Thus far, we’ve only explored meaning #3.

As I’ve said, it’s odd that these meanings appear to be so far apart. But are they really? Maybe not. Let’s look at some takes on secrecy:

He’s obviously linking secrecy (meaning #3) with closeness, density, compactness (meaning #1). OK, let’s try another:

This Walpole fellow clearly linked secrecy (meaning #3) with careful, highly detailed exploration (meaning #2). And I’m pretty sure that this quote espouses a deep love of kanji, while also advocating general curiosity. So … kanji curiosity is a good thing, right?

Let’s hear words of wisdom from one more source:

Oh, dear. Why do I have a terrible feeling that this, too, refers to Kanji Curiosity?

OK, without further ado, let’s look at meanings #1 and #2.

1. Being Dense

Here are some examples of 密 as “dense”:

密林 (mitsurin: dense forest, jungle)     dense + forest

Not much to say about this word, except that I like its straightforward logic!

過密 (kamitsu: overcrowded)     to exceed + dense
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In English, we speak of “airtight excuses.” This is a strange idiom. “Airtight” means something so impermeable that air cannot pass in or out of it. But how could air pass in or out of an excuse? Are we talking about hot air? No, I think the point isn’t actually the air; the point is the sturdiness of the excuse. It’s so solid that you can’t poke a hole in it, deflating it like a flimsy balloon. Oh, dear, we’re back to air. Well, so be it.

If you’ve confided your most scandalous secrets to a friend, you might hope for something similarly airtight—a hermetic seal around those secrets. Here’s how you can say “airtight” in Japanese:

気密 (kimitsu: airtight)     air + tight

Sample Sentences with 気密 …

At first glance, this compound might seem to be about secrecy. As we saw last week, 密 (MITSU) can mean “secret,” as well as “dense” and “detailed.” But there’s actually another meaning; as a suffix, -密 can mean “tight.” That’s the case above, as well as in the next, unusual word:

油密 (yumitsu: oil tight (seal, joint, etc.))     oil + tight

It’s tempting to read this as “the secret of oil,” which might mean “the secret location of oil under a vast desert” or something politically hard-edged. But 油密 is again about a hermetic seal, one that keeps oil in place.

If you’re looking for words in which 密 does mean “secret,” you needn’t despair. (Were you despairing? I couldn’t tell. Given the strange medium in which we’re conversing, your feelings seem inscrutable, as if you’ve protected them with a hermetic seal. From time to time, you might consider breaking the seal, much as a character jumped off the movie screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo, interacting with the audience. I might enjoy some company on this side of the screen. Did you ever stop to think of that?)

Sorry … got a bit off track there. At any rate, let’s look at 密 as “secret.”

We’ve already seen one kimitsu (気密). Here’s another:

機密 (kimitsu: secrecy; highly classified information)
     occasion + secret

On the Breakdown of 機密 …

Sample Sentence with 機密 …

Other Types of Secrets …

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