Gruesome Kanji - slaves and slavery

Happiness, happiness, the greatest gift that I possess.... That almost undefinable feeling that we all strive for in one way or another. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that the common people in ancient China didn't have an awful lot of it. Given its importance to the human condition, its no surprise that the concept is written using a relatively simple kanji: 幸, a pictograph of some shackles.

This isn't a phonetic borrowing and the leap from shackles to happiness is surprisingly short: if a slave was punished, chances are they would be put to death. If they were lucky, they'd just be clapped in chains. Happiness is all relative.

The original character for 'railway station' 駅 was 驛. Here you can see a beady eye 目 looking over the shackled prisoners 幸 from one to the next 睪. In the same way, a station is where you move from one horse 馬 to the next. The derivations of the meanings of kanji is often difficult for us to appreciate, but this would have been more obvious to the ancient Chinese reader as 睪 and 驛 were pronounced the same way.

辛 looks similar to 幸, but the two are not directly related. 辛 is a needle, and its modern meaning of 'hard going'  tsurai or 'spicy'  karai (both, confusingly, written 辛い) are from the sense of prickling with needles. However, 辛 does appear in characters related to people in less than fortunate circumstances for a slightly different reason.

童 means 'child', and is in words such as 児童 jidō 'child', 童話 dōwa 'children's story' and 童謡 dōyō,  'a children's song' or 'nursery rhyme'.

The original character has a needle 辛 above an eye 目 and a weight 重 at the bottom. This needle is a tattoo needle, and indicates that the person has a mark above their eye. In other words, a person with a marked forehead that carries heavy weights: a slave. From there it meant someone who was not a full person, and by extension a child. Marking slaves with a tattoo was a common practice, and was used in Japan up to the Edo period as a means of identifying criminals. The actual mark depended on the region. One method was to write the kanji for 'dog' in three stages for each crime committed 一 ナ 犬 ; the fourth punishment would be death.

The kanji 僕, which, although is used as the male first-person pronoun boku, is also read shimobe to mean slave or servant.

The original character again shows a needle 辛 marking a person's forehead, and 其, a winnowing basket. The basket is filled with grain, and then the grain is repeatedly tossed into the air as the wind carries away any chaff, the worthless part. The person also has a tail (the ↟), i.e. caught by the tail. So we have a caught, worthless, marked worker: a slave. The needle and the winnowing basked merged together into 丵 and then were replaced by 菐 which had the same sound as the original character, despite having a different meaning.

The Winnower, Jean-Francois Millet 1848

The character for people (as in 'the people of a nation') 民 comes from a pictograph of an eye being stabbed by a needle. 

A common punishment for slaves was to blind one eye. It made them easily identifiable should they try to run away, as well as being gruesomely oppressive enough. The character then became a way of referring to slaves: 'hey, you know, those people who we stab in the eye', and from there to mean 'those people', 'the people'. At first it may seem inappropriate that China includes the character in its modern name: 中華民国. But it's a reminder that, ideologically at least, the oppressed are now the ones calling the shots.

Months of the Year

When first learning how to say the date in Japanese it can seem strange that the months of the year are just given numbers. In English we do that for years and days of the month, but for some reason feel that months should have their own special names, even though we often use numbers as an abbreviation. In Japanese the number is the official name so August is simply 8月 (hachi-gatsu).

However, when the Chinese lunar calendar was used in Japan each of the months had its own special name as well as the number. Most of the names are quite poetic and fit in well with the four seasons, but have dropped out of use. As the lunar calendar begins in the middle of February, they're often a month or so out of synch with the weather in the solar calendar, although a few survive in idioms and as alternatives to the more standard numbering system.

睦月　むつき Mutsuki 1月 January
There are a couple of possible explanations for this name. 睦 means 'harmonious' or 'friendly', so it was the month to be friendly, greeting people as part of the New Year. Alternatively it could be from 元月 もとつき (mototsuki, origin/base month) as it is the first month of the year, and the pronunciation changed over time from mototsuki to mutsuki.

如月　きさらぎ　Kisaragi 2月 February
February is a cold month, so you need to wear another layer of clothes, hence the name 衣更着. 衣 ki(nu) is clothes or cloth, 更 sara means 'even more' and 着  is the ki of kimono, literally 'a thing for wearing'. So 'clothes and even more clothes'.

弥生　やよい Yayoi 3月 March
The month when the grass at last 弥 ya grows 生 oi again. The Yayoi period, between approximately the third century B.C. to the third century A.D., is named after an area in Tokyo called Yayoi where an earthenware pot from the era was discovered in 1884.

卯月　うづき Uzuki 4月 April
The month when 卯の花 unohana blooms.



皐月　さつき Satsuki 5月 May
Satsuki is still quite widely used in idioms, although usually written as 五月.
五月晴れ Satsuki-bare Fine weather in May
五月雨 Satsuki-ame Rain in early summer
五月闇 Satsuki-yami Gloomy weather during the rainy season

This is because, as the lunar year starts a month later, 皐月 was the month of the rainy season. However, as its association with being the 5th month of the year haven't been lost, the words are often used to refer to the weather in May. The month isn't names after the rains, though, and sa is an old word for ploughing, or is short for 早苗 sanae 'early shoots'. Clearly agriculture was more of a concern than the weather!

In the film となりのトトロ (Tonari no Totoro), the two girls are called Satsuki and Mei, both named after this month.

水無月　みなづき Minazuki 6月 June
The kanji mean no water (水 + 無), but the na was originally no, so it was 'the month of water' rather than 'no water month'. The kanji for 'not' was just used for its sound. This doesn't mean rainwater, as the rainy season was the previous month in the lunar calendar. Instead, this is referring to the filling of paddy fields.

There is an alternative theory that it refers to the fact that this is the month after the rainy season in the lunar calendar, so it really is (relatively) 'without water', but given that the name of previous month isn't related to rain, as explanations go, it doesn't hold much water.

文月　ふみづき Fumizuki 7月 July
Fumi means letter or writings, and one likely explanation is that this is the month of Tanabata when people write their wishes or poems on strips of paper called 短冊 tanzaku.

葉月　はづき Hazuki 8月 August
The month of leaves (葉 ha), as it's the start of Autumn

長月　ながつき Nagatsuki 9月 September
One explanation is that this is the month when the nights start getting longer 長.

神無月　かんなづき Kannazuki 10月 October
The kanji means no gods (神 + 無). There is a folk etymology that all the gods of Japan would go to Izumo in Shimane prefecture during October, so there would be no gods anywhere else. However, as with Minazuki, the na is probably no, giving 'the gods' month'; the harvest is in so this is the month for celebration, with parades and giving thanks to the gods.

霜月　しもつき Shimozuki 11月 November
The month of frost (霜 shimo).

師走　しわす Shiwasu 12月 December
The kanji mean 師 teacher and 走 run. The end of the year is very busy for Buddhist priests. A likely origin could be 師馳す　shi +hasu. Hasu or haseru in modern Japanese, means to run or hurry.

It’s alive! Power over life and death with aru and iru

Aru and iru are two of the first words that students of Japanese learn. Aru is for inanimate things and iru is for animate things.
テーブルの上にペンがある。tēburu no ue ni pen ga aru There is a pen on the table.
庭にワニがいる。niwa ni wani ga iru There is a crocodile in the garden.
The pen is inanimate, so we use aru. The crocodile is animate, so we use iru.
Aru can be used with people, and in old Japanese there only was aru for everything. Even today it is perfectly acceptable grammatically to say:
あの人は子供がある。ano hito wa kodomo ga aru That person has children.
However, this is just ticking the ‘has child’ box, rather than conjure up images of living breathing children.　In this case, iru is preferable, and as a non-native speaker if you use aru it may sound like a mistake. The distinction between iru and aru gets more interesting, though, when you consider what it means to be ‘animate’.

Live fish for sale in a supermarket, would use aru. They may be alive, and animate, but they’re food, first and foremost. Live bait is the same.

スーパーに活魚がある
sūpā ni katsugyo ga aru
There are live fish (for sale) at the supermarket.

ワニの生き餌として使うウサギがこのかごの中にある
wani no ikiesa toshite tsukau usage ga kono kago no naka ni aru
The rabbits that we'll use for the crocodile's live bait are in this cage.

Lice and fleas as well can be distinguished in this way. Iru and you’re talking about a creature, aru and you’re talking about an infestation. The use of aru depersonalises them; they’re condemned.

肩の上にノミが一匹いる
kata no ue ni nomi ga ippki iru
There is a flea on (your) shoulder.

このハリネズミはノミがある
kono harinezumi wa nomi ga aru
This hedgehog has fleas.

On the other hand, you can use iru to give life to inanimate objects.

急いでいるときにかぎって、タクシーがいない。
isoideiru toki ni kagitte, takushī ga inai
There's never a taxi when you're in a hurry.

The taxi moves about under it’s own power, so you use iru. They move around freely and independently. Trains don’t get the same treatment, though. You can’t use iru with a train, because they’re stuck to a track and a timetable. There’s no free will. In fact, just having a person associated with the car can warrant the use of iru. If you see a police car outside your house:

パトカーがいる patokā ga iru

Because you know that there’s a policeman nearby, possibly in your house and asking too many questions. But if it was parked outside a police station

パトカーがある patokā ga aru

It’s just a car.

Cuddly toys in a shop for sale would be aru. Who cares about them?
But a child’s favourite toy would be iru, because of the personal relationship between the toy and the child. In Toy story, Andy would use iru with Woody, even without seeing him move. Because to Andy, Woody is alive! In Toy Story 3, he might use aru, though. Poor Woody.

ウッディとバズがベッドの上にいる Uddi to Bazu ga beddo no ue ni iru Woody and Buzz are on the bed.

ウッディとバズがゴミ箱の中にある Uddi to Bazu ga gomibako no naka ni aru Woody and Buzz are in the bin.

The distinction is very much at the discretion of the speaker, and given the right context, almost anything could use either.

NHK has a remit to provide television that commercial channels don’t, and produce quite astounding concepts such as panel shows about washers. I don’t mean anything related to cleaning, but the small disk that goes on a bolt to help the nut stay on. As I say, NHK take their remit very seriously. The fact I was watching such a programme says more about the quality of commercial television in Japan than it does about my interest in washers. Anyway, after various explanations about the importance of washers, they wheeled on a rusty old bicycle. Do you think we can unscrew this bolt? They asked, showing just how rusted and manky the nut was. A quick spin of the spanner, and off it came. The big reveal: there was a washer there, stopping the nut from rusting to the bolt. In surprise, one of the panellists exclaimed: ワッシャーがいた！Wasshā ga ita! This wasn’t just a simple ring of metal: it was the hero of the day. By using iru, she’d granted the washer a soul.

Stop thinking in English! Active, passive and causative

Japanese verb conjugations are often said to be easy, due to having so few irregular verbs. However, that doesn’t mean that they are easy to use. The causative, despite being a fairly elementary bit of Japanese, is really hard to master. It’s not used as much as other verb endings, and it feels so different from English equivalent that it doesn’t come naturally. I’m not going to cover how it’s formed; there are plenty of other places on the internet with that information.

What do I want to explain is how it logically fits in with way of thinking behind Japanese.

Let’s take a simple situation. We’ve got a queen, a crocodile and the seven dwarfs. The queen, alloyed that the dwarfs helped Snow White, sets the crocodile on them. Things don’t end well for the seven dwarfs.

There are three participants in this incident, and we can describe what it happening with each of them as the subject.

The queen makes the crocodile eat the seven dwarfs.
女王がワニに７人の小人を食べさせる
This sentence has two objects: the crocodile and the dwarfs. Japanese doesn’t like having two を in one sentence, so the actor, the crocodile, is marked with a ‘ni’. Now, what does the queen do? In Japanese we can drop the objects and it’s still a grammatical sentence.
女王が食べさせる
She caused it, so the verb is in the causative.

With the crocodile as the subject it becomes:
The crocodile eats the seven dwarfs
ワニが７人の小人を食べる
What does the crocodile do?
ワニが食べる
He’s doing the main action, so his verb is in the active voice.

Finally, the poor seven dwarfs.
The seven dwarfs are eaten.
７人の小人が食べられる
What do the seven dwarfs do?
７人の小人が食べられる
They are the victims of this heartless attack, so the verb is in the passive.
I believe that linguists normally use the word ‘patient’, but victim is more appropriate, and this very apt for the Japanese passive that tends to have a negative sense.

You can see that the causative, active and passive voices can be used to change the focus of the narrative, even though they’re all describing the same scene.

In English and many, if not all, other Indo-European languages, it is very important to include information on who is the subject; the person, gender and number. Is the subject the person speaking, the listener, or somebody else? Are they alone, or in a group? English has mostly lost the verb inflexions that mark this, but the pronouns live on and it’s still a core part of the way of thinking behind the language.

In contrast, Japanese doesn’t really care about that. The language is far more interested in the role of the subject. Did they cause it? Did they do it? Were they affected by it? This is why Japanese doesn't really have pronouns in the same way English and other European languages do. There is such a wide variety of ways of saying 'I' and 'you' in Japanese because they're not grammatically fundamental to the language and are therefore easier to change.

The meaning translates easily into English, but not without losing the symmetry in the verb forms. Often for any given situation you only hear a single sentence describing it, so the relationship between the causative, active and passive isn’t always obvious, but knowing the relationship between them is key to understanding the internal logic of the Japanese language.

Any old iron

Iron is a common element, and the kanji for iron 鉄 is taught in the third year of the Japanese education system. The modern form is actually a simplification of the far more complicated original:
鐵
Whilst it's fortunate that a 21 stroke character has been reduced to a mere 13 strokes, the new form is less than lucky.

It was first used as a military abbreviation and appeared in a list of approved kanji for weapon names in 1940. Two years later, the abbreviated form was included in a list of government approved common kanji, but with the old form after it in brackets. On 5 November 1946 the approved list of tōyō kanji, the precursor to today's jōyō kanji, was released and included both characters as alternatives. However, the very next week, the old form was removed; 鉄 would be the only approved form. The final nail in the coffin for 鐵 came in 1948, when parents were limited to the 1850 kanji in the tōyō list for naming their children. As 鉄 was the approved form, 鐵 was not permitted.

What this also meant is that company names also had to use 鉄. This wouldn't be a problem, but the new character is made up of 金 (metal or money) and 失 (to lose). お金を失う?!! That's not particularly auspicious for a company that hopes to make a profit.

So, what you often find in company logos is an alternative, completely non-standard form. JR East, the railway company that serves Eastern Japan, writes its logo like this:

It's looks normal at first glance, but the 鉄 in 鉄道 is rendered as 金+矢 instead of 金+失. 矢 means arrow; apart from its resemblance to 失 it is entirely unrelated, but at least it can't be construed as having a negative meaning.

Now, JR and other companies with 鉄 in their names aren't paranoid about using the character, and will only use the non-standard form when practical. Their web site isn't filled with lots of tiny image files at every occurrence of the offending kanji.

This demonstrates two interesting features of kanji: the potential for hidden meanings, and the ease with which new forms can be made up. It's particularly ironic when the made up form only became necessary when the original was made obsolete.Kanji is a very serious word game!

The history of the character 鉄 is taken from here:
http://dictionary.sanseido-publ.co.jp/wp/2011/02/24/tetsu/