Announcement:
Have you ever been fascinated by the original Japanese names of Pokemon but wondered what they could possibly mean?
A new sister site Administered by our own Cure Dolly is bringing a daily feast of fun facts and in-depth analysis of Japanese Pokemon names to the Web for the first time in English.
You’ll learn, among many other things, about mediaeval armor, ancient schools of ninjutsu and their surprising relations to Japanese Pokemon.
The kanji for left and right may, on first sight, seem slightly confusing. It is not until we understand a little about traditional metaphysics (which was how the ancient Chinese, Japanese and everyone else before the last few centuries actually thought) that they make sense.
The kanji for both left 左 and right 右 feature a hand. This is normal, as the concepts “left” and “right” are always linguistically associated with hands. In English we speak of “the left-hand side” etc. The hands are each holding something representative of their particular side. Migi (Right) holds a mouth 口. Hidari (left) holds a symbol that means craft 工.
Why is left associated with craft? In the literal-minded thinking of the modern world, this seems counter-intuitive, since it is the right hand that is dextrous (from Latin dexter = right) and most capable of making things.
Then we look at the kanji for migi (right) and that has a mouth. Why a mouth?
Traditionally every action has two components: Wisdom and Method. These correspond to the cosmic duality of Essence and Substance. To do anything we must know how to do it. In the modern West, this has come to mean technical knowledge alone. In Japan there is still the concept of the Way 道 — the proper way that a thing should be done within the harmony of earth and heaven.
Wisdom is the teaching – the “word” by which we know the Way. Method is the physical actions that make the Way manifest in whatever we are doing.
The kanji for the Way 道 on its own is pronounced michi which can mean a literal road or the Way. In combinations it is pronounced dou and is found in the names most of the traditional Arts, because each art is precisely a Way which correctly followed leads to a measure of enlightenment.
Tatoeba (for example):
弓道 kyuudou is the Way of Archery
剣道 kendou is the Way of the Sword (kendo)
茶道 sadou is the Way of Tea (tea ceremony)
書道 shodou is the Way of Writing (traditional calligraphy)
Wisdom is the Teaching of the Way; Method is the Following of the Way. Vital to the Way in any form is the Sensei, the Teacher of the Way.
Wisdom and method are not equal. Wisdom must always lead and Method follow or the work will be out of harmony and not in the true Way.
Symbolically the right hand (the superior hand) is the hand of Wisdom and the left hand (the supporter hand) is the hand of Method. Therefore it is natural that Right should have a mouth symbolic of the teaching of the Way, while Left represents the physical and outward aspect of craft.
Interestingly, in Tibet, Wisdom is represented by the bell and Method by the dorje (Sanskrit vajra). The dorje [pictured right] is the same essential shape as the 工 of hidari (the dorje elaborated and 工 reduced to barest essenitals), while the bell emits sound (symbolic of teaching) like the mouth 口 of migi.
Naturally, in rituals, the bell is always held in the right hand and the dorje in the left hand.
To ring (a bell) in Japanese is 鳴る naru. This kanji also contains a mouth (sound) and also a bird. “The language of birds” is in various traditions symbolic of the language of angels, and the ringing of bells symbolic of that same angelic teaching.
Kanji do make sense read in the light of the traditional wisdom that underlies them, and the kanji for right and left, migi and hidari, are easy to understand once we are aware of the thought-world from which they emerged.
If we look at kanji in the light of traditional philosophy, they make a lot more sense. In kanji symbolism, fire and movement, life and humanity are depicted in terms of the ancient metaphysical thinking common to all traditional civilizations.
King Lear was in line with tradition when he called humanity a “forked animal”. This is exactly what the kanji for a person 人 (hito on its own, jin/nin in combination) shows. Notice that the “fork” is all it shows. there are no arms or head. Just, as Shakespeare said, the forked animal.
Kanji reduce things to the essential. Why is the fork the essential feature of humanity? Humanity is, in traditional thought, the center of the Middle Kingdom – the creature that links earth and heaven. The being that stands at the Axis of the World. Humanity is upright and stands on two legs rather than four.
Being “between earth and heaven” humanity is inherently dual. We have both a Heavenly and an earthly nature. Or to put it in Buddhist terms we have both a samsaric nature and a Buddha-nature. And we are always choosing between the two. That is how we create our karma.
So the fork 人expresses what is essential to humanity.
Of course people do have arms. When they hold them out wide they are saying something is this big. So we get 大 big.
Humanity also has within it the Divine Fire, the spark of life. So when we want to depict fire, we think of it in this most fundamental sense – as the Solar principle on earth. All fire comes from the Sun in traditional thought. Wood burns because it was fed for years on the warmth and light of the sun. When wood is burned, it releases that warmth and light in the form of fire.
But the highest fire – the earthly avatar of the Heavenly Sun – is the Solar principle in each human being – the Divine Spark – 火. Thus the kanji symbol fire (ka) shows the human being and the divine flames. Why two? Because we can use that heavenly power for good or evil, so even the fire in us is expressed in two flames, continuing to express our “forked” duality.
The first non-human-powered vehicle was the chariot, and, as we would expect, the chariot is deeply rooted in traditional symbolism. In the Bhagavad Gita, the entire teaching of the Scripture is given while Krishna and Arjuna are in the chariot. The chariot is the world, or human body, and within it are the Divine Principle (Krishna) and the human principle (Arjuna).
The design of the chariot itself reflects this. The body of the vehicle is the world, or the human body (these two “vehicles of manifestation” are called the macrocosm and the microcosm – the great world and the little world – in traditional Western thought). Through its center passes the World Axis with the two wheels as the dual principles that lie “above” and “below” the world.
The world itself is often described as a “field” (kshatra in Sanskrit). The chessboard is called kshatra because it represents the world in its black/white duality – the field on which the conflict of light and darkness takes place.
In kanji the field looks like this: 田. This is the simplest possible form of the symbolism that is elaborated on a chessboard or a go-board. The fourfold division is that of the material world – its four directions, four elements, four seasons.
Add the World Axis (axle) and the upper and lower wheels, and we have the chariot: 車.
The chariot being the first and fundamental human vehicle, 車 is used in Japanese for every kind of wheeled vehicle. The basic vehicle today is the car, so 車 kuruma means just that. Interestingly our English word “car” also originally means “chariot”
The Etymological dictionary tells us:
Car: “Wheeled vehicle,” from Anglo-French carre, Old North French carre, from Vulgar Latin *carra, related to Latin carrum, carrus (plural carra), originally “two-wheeled Celtic war chariot”.
Kanji etymology and English etymology alike preserve the identity of the modern “fundamental vehicle” with the essential Archetype of the Chariot.
From this basic chariot/car, which is pronounced kuruma, we have many combinations (in which it is pronounced sha. So we have, for example, 電車 densha – or electric-vehicle – a train and 自転車 jitensha, a self-revolving vehicle or bicycle (note that the 自 ji of jitensha always means oneself, as in 自己紹介 jikoshoukai, self-introduction, or 自己中 jikochuu, self-centeredness. So self-revolving means “revolved by oneself”, not “revolving itself”.
Now if a vehicle has to carry a heavy weight, we may need to add extra wheels. For carrying heavy loads the four-wheeled cart was used. Thus the concept heavy is represented by a four-wheeled vehicle. 重い omoi, heavy.
As in English, and most other languages, the concept of heavy may also be used metaphorically to mean “important”. We talk about “the gravity of the situation” or “a weighty matter”. In combinations 重 is pronounced juu, so we get, for example, 重点 juuten, “important point” (literally heavy point).
力 riki is strength or power. We will see is in many, many combinations. If you apply strength to something heavy, you move it. Thus 動く ugoku means “to move”.
動 in combinations is pronounced dou. So, for example, we get 動物 doubutsu, meaning animal. The kanji literally means move-thing. So we can see that the Japanese word for animal is essentially the same as the Latin/English word “animal” – something animated or moving.
We will see all these elements in many different combinations. For example we can tie together many of the things we have learned today with the word 人力車 jinrikisha, shortened in English to “rikshaw”.
I am sure you can see that the word literally means “person-powered vehicle”.
Thanks to Cure Dolly for the photograph.
Kawaii Japanese was a simple concept. We wanted to make a Japanese-learning site and community that focussed on kawaisa – a cute, friendly, girly Japanese language site. But it came from a deep and important concept.
To us, Japanese is an adventure. It is a long dive into the deep waters of the Japanese language. To us it is not learning a second language, but learning a new first language. To us language is not just a series of arbitrary noises and marks that have developed meaning. To us, language is a dimension of the soul. And the Japanese language is the soul-dimension we have committed ourselves to enter and explore, not as detached observers, but as children entering a new world.
People learn Japanese for a lot of reasons and from a lot of angles. The reason the main contributors of this site are learning Japanese are probably extremely unusual, but we won’t go into that here. You’ll pick it up in various articles along the way if you take an interest in the site.
One thing that we noticed in our own odyssey was that some of the sites that are closest to our approach and ideas are rather the opposite of our world-outlook. They were (like us) interested in immersion, in making the Japanese language a part of one’s life in a profound way. But at the same time they tended toward a coarseness and deliberate vulgarity and cynicism which is the very opposite of how we think and why we are adventuring into Japanese.
We felt we might not be alone in this. Which is why we began this site.
Japanese is the world we chose to enter because we find it more graceful and lovely, more gentle and pure than what modern English has become. Cynicism has become hard-wired into the English people speak these days. One thing we are seeking in Japanese is the opposite of cynicism. It is innocence.
In Japan an important dimension of the quest for innocence, the honoring of innocence, the understanding of the real value of innocence is expressed by the hugely widespread culture of Kawaisa – which is so deeply embedded in Japanese society that it is used to represent not only big companies but the police and armed services.
Not that we were thinking of joining the Japanese police or anything! Or even that we are meaning to say much about how kawaii actually operates in Japanese society. That isn’t really the point. The point, for us, is that kawaii represents a fundamental yearning for innocence and goodness, and that is the yearning we have. And we don’t think we are alone. You aren’t supposed to say things like this in the Western part of the Earth. You are supposed to be cynical and hard and knowing. Well, we aren’t and we don’t want to be, and that is what this Japanese adventure is about.
Now somewhere along the road to starting this site we added the word “profoundly” into our header. There was a reason for that. We have two special angles on the study of Japanese – one is kawaii, and the other is that we want to look into the deeper meanings of Japanese language. We believe Japanese – like all languages – has its roots in ancient and profound wisdom, and some of our articles (probably especially those by Cure Tadashiku) will talk about this too.
Is this something very different from kawaii? Well, on the surface it looks like it, but we don’t think it really is. Kawaii is a modern expression of the timeless desire for innocence and goodness. The wisdom-roots of language connect us to the fundamental realities of being – to the essential thisness of things and we believe that the underlying truth of existence is fundamentally pure and innocent.
This part may appeal to you or it may not. It doesn’t matter. If you are learning Japanese, or just interested in the language, and you love kawaisa, this is the place for you. Please make yourself at home.
Just a quickettie post from your Dolly! I am afraid I have no deep metaphysical point to make about this kanji – but it is so beautiful I had to share it!
銀世界
銀 = gin, silver; 世界 = sekai, world.
Ginsekai – “silver world” is the Japanese word for “snowscape”.
Isn’t that lovely?
Is Japanese an ambiguous language? Among some people it has that reputation. Others forcefully deny it, saying that the language can clearly express anything a speaker wishes.
My untutored impression is that both parties are correct. There is nothing in Japanese that prevents clear expression of ideas, but (more culturally than linguistically) Japanese does tend toward a degree of ambiguity.
A translator friend of mine, for example, when translating into English instructions for what to do in case of an earthquake in Japan, added various specific details that were not present in the original Japanese. Her Japanese colleagues were a little surprised and made comments like “Americans like to be so specific, don’t they?” She replied that knowing exactly what to do and how to do it could save someone’s life.
Which, of course, is true, and which demonstrates that, even in a circumstance where specificity is important, tolerating a higher degree of ambiguity is part of Japanese culture.
Is this a flaw in the language (or culture)? To a large extent the answer to that question depends on what you believe language is primarily for. West Tellurian (earth) people have for several centuries believed that language primarily exists for practical purposes. In fact they have more recently built their lives around the picture-story that life itself took form, or “evolved” on a purely practical (survival-oriented) basis. This they believe to be “science”; but to an outsider it looks uncommonly like a “mythologization” of their own cultural outlook.
Not all peoples have assumed either life or language to be primarily a matter of practicalities. Most people, in fact, have assumed that practicalities are a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. Which, when you think about it, makes sense doesn’t it? Practicalities as an end in themselves are rather like a sign saying “do not throw stones at this sign”.
So what is language primarily for? For Buddhism, as for Taoism, the highest function of language is to give us “hints” or “indications” toward that which cannot ever be expressed in words. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao. The Zen koan does not attempt to put the Truth into words, but to open the mind to that which is beyond words.
This, by definition, is the highest possible function of language. In its lower, more everyday functions, it still has some of the same “connotative” rather than “denotative” function. We cannot truly describe music or the taste of food, or the feelings the sakura arouses in our breast. The subtle feelings that define us as spiritual beings cannot be fully expressed in words, but words can hint at them and evoke them. Whether we see this as the primary way of using language may depend upon whether we see ourselves as primarily spiritual or primarily material beings.
Has this any connection with learning Japanese? For me it has. I was discussing with a Japanese-speaking American friend the question of watching anime, and she said that turning off the (Japanese) subtitles was largely a matter of confidence and tolerance of ambiguity. The ambiguity here, of course comes from unfamiliarity with the language and the uncertainty of one’s ear rather than from the nature of the language or culture. When I spoke of developing a tolerance for ambiguity she said “the Japanese are masters of that”.
This interested me. While the two ambiguities are not the same, I think they are for me related to each other and to a third ambiguity: the ambiguity a small child must tolerate while learning language. When a small child watches anime, there are various words and concepts she does not understand. She needs to build up slowly from massive ambiguity to getting the general gist while being unclear about exactitudes. She has no first language to fall back on, so she can only understand as much as she understands.
I don’t want to get into the whole immersion argument from a language-learning point of view, but to me there is a subtle intertwining here of the process of learning a “second first language” (or in a way, a first first language, since English has never felt native to me) and learning to tolerate ambiguity from a cultural point of view. Modern English is probably the most materialistic language/culture in Telluria, which is probably why it has always felt alien to me.
Everyone has her own reasons for learning Japanese and mine (appropriately enough) cannot really be put into words. I am trying to find something. And I think tolerating ambiguity is going to be a part of that process.
There are some people who just hate it when we drop Japanese words into English. It seems to be a very strange attitude. After all, Japanese is littered with English words, and English is littered with French words.
Often we even forget they are French. Someone recently asked “Why do nearly all languages use the English word for ‘restaurant’?” Well, probably because it is actually the French word!
English borrows from various languages, so why not Japanese? There seems to be a strange snobbery at work here. The current situation is that Japanese words are mostly only used for Japanese things (karate, samurai, ninja), things of Japanese origin (karaoke – which incidentally is itself half-English wasei – kara = empty, oke = English “orchestra”) and a very few others (tsunami, typhoon).
But actually there are many concepts in Japanese that are not covered by the English language, which makes them useful words to adopt. I would say that ganbaru, asobu, and wa are very good examples of words that English does not have, and I think the very concepts would be culturally enriching. So I will write about them later.
Today I want to write about a concept that is harder to incorporate from Japanese and that actually used to exist in English but has been crowded out by the increasing cynicism of the culture. Beloved things.
Have you ever heard a child say “That is my favorite flower” and a few minutes later “That is my favorite flower” — or food, or nuigurumi (stuffed toy — we don’t have a decent word for that in English either!) An adult is likely to say “They can’t both be your favorite”. Though how often have you wanted to say that many things are your favorite?
Actually this whole “favorite” thing is, in my view a symptom of the over-competitiveness and cynicism of Western thinking. It is not enough to love something. It has to be compared to other things and judged best. And in English there is no other way to say it. You could say “that is my beloved thing”, but the phrase sounds odd and old-fashioned and almost impossible to use in modern English. Before the culture became so cynicized (to coin a term), such phrases were possible.
In Japanese a phrase like watashi no suki na tabemono is translated as “my favorite food”, because in English that is the only natural way to say it. But that isn’t what it actually means (watashi no ichiban suki na tabemono means that). It means “this is the food I like”, “this is my beloved food”. It is a very natural concept. It is the concept the child is trying to express when she calls many things her “favorite”, but she can’t because English virtually demands an excluding comparison.
The Japanese phrase cannot be translated into natural English because it means more than “I like this very much” it means “this is the thing I like”. It is as strong as “my favorite thing” but without excluding other things. To the modern English ear, expressing such a positive emotion without an implied negative (exclusion of other things) sounds overly sentimental or gushing. It is the same mentality that describes cute things as “sickeningly cute”.
It is also one little window on the psychological reasons why, as explained in our sister site’s keynote essay, even an English-language tourist flyer is “cynical” compared to the innocence of the Japanese equivalent flyer.
The word “cynical” itself is inadequate. It is a clumsy term used to imply the cult of hardness, self-centeredness, suspicion, and dislike of the lovely that characterize the modern Western pop-ideology. It is the opposite of “innocent” on every level, but there is no very good word for it, so “cynical” will have to do. We won’t find that one in Japanese, because the Japanese really don’t understand it (and, frankly, neither do I).
But in any case, let’s all enjoy our beloved things! And let’s make them “sickeningly cute” – ne!
