0064 騒

騒

This character means ‘make a noise, make a fuss,’ and is pronounced SŌ and sawagu in Japanese, sāo in Chinese. I could find no information about its derivation. It’s parts, though, provided a simple story by which it could be remembered.

The left-hand element

馬

means ‘horse.' See the four legs and the tail and the streaming mane? The upper right-hand element

又

means ‘and, again, also, in addition,’ and the lower right-hand element

虫

means ‘insect.’

A horse is repeatedly bothered by insects and makes a fuss, makes a lot of noise.

Interestingly, these two characters together

騒人

mean ‘poet’ (sōjin), at least in Japanese. (The second character means 'man, person.') Apparently, poets are those who make noise and make a fuss. Or, at least, they used to be.

0062 問

問

This character means ‘to ask, to inquire,’ pronounced tou in Japanese and wèn in Chinese, and ‘question, problem,’ pronounced MON in Japanese.

These elements

門

represent the two facing leaves of a door and mean ‘a gate, a door,’ and

口

means ‘a mouth.’ So ‘to ask’ is to place a mouth at a door.

0061 守

守

This character means ‘to protect, guard, obey.’ In Japanese it is pronounced SHU and mamoru, in Chinese shoǔ.

The upper figure

宀

means ‘roof.’ The lower figure

寸

represents a hand here, which is seen as guarding the home.

The ancient character

clearly shows the home and hand. We talk about ‘ancient’ characters, but how ancient is ancient? Very. This style of writing was used from around 1100 BCE or earlier to 200 BCE and beyond. It is still used in seals and calligraphy.

0060 宅

宅

This character means ‘house, home, residence.’ It’s pronounced TAKU in Japanese and zhái in Chinese.

The upper figure

宀

represents a roof, while the lower figure is a sprout taking root, archaically portrayed thusly:

.

A home is where a person puts down roots.

0059 行

行

This character means ‘go, proceed, do, walk along.’ It’s pronounced KŌ and iku in Japanese, and xíng in Chinese.

The figure on the left and the figure on the right were identical mirror images in ancient times:

.

Each side shifted a little bit into the present form. The left side means ‘to step forward with the left foot,’ while the right side means ‘to step forward with the right foot.’ Combined they have the meanings mentioned above, all related to movement.

0058 坂

坂

This character means ‘slope, hill,’ pronounced HAN or saka in Japanese, bǎn in Chinese.

The figure on the left is a vertically squeezed version of

土,

which means ‘earth, ground,’ and which gets us into the semantic territory of slopes and hills. The rest of the character is there as a hint to the pronunciation, but that won’t keep us from making a story to help us recognize it. The

⺁

portion does actually mean a cliff, which happens to be related to slopes and hills. And the

又

character, which now means ‘and, again,’ was often used in ancient times to represent a hand. So we can think of ourselves scrambling up the slope or hill under the cliff, pressing our hands out for stability.

0057 生

生

This character means ‘birth, life, to live, fresh, alive.’ In Japanese there are many pronunciations, including SEI and ikiru. In Chinese, it’s shēng. (The ē in shēng is known as the ‘first tone,’ and it is a high-pitched, steady tone. There are also second, third, and fourth tones, plus a neutral tone. More on that later.)

The idea is that the character represents a plant sprout

屮

rising up out of the earth

土.

This is quite clear in the archaic characters:

     .

0056 寂

寂

This character means ‘lonely, desolate, still, silent, elegant simplicity.’ In Japanese it’s pronounced JAKU, SEKI, sabi, or sabishii, depending on the shade of meaning. In Chinese it’s jì.

A brief digression: Japanese specifies different meanings by adding other characters or syllables (written in hiragana) to the character, and these Kanji-of-the-day features have been glossing over these details. Sabishii, ‘lonely,’ for example, is not just 寂. It’s actually 寂しい. 寂 written by itself would be sabi, elegant simplicity. We will continue glossing over these details for now in these post, though, since the main task here is to gain familiarity with the characters themselves.

Back to 寂. There’s a roof on top.

宀

All the rest below the roof is there as a phonetic clue to the pronunciation of the word. And that is not very useful for those of us trying to get a grip on the meaning whenever we run across the character. Can we get any help from breaking things down?

叔 means ‘father’s younger brother.’

尗 means ‘the younger among brothers.’

上 means ‘top, highest, go up.’

小 means ‘small, tiny, insignificant.’

又 means ‘and, also, again,’ and derived from an image of a right hand which is doing things again and again.

菽  which looks almost like 寂, but with a different upper figure indicating a connection with plants, means ‘beans, peas.’ Interesting, but is it useful?

寂

So, is this where we need a story of our own making? We could say that father’s younger brother is sitting under the roof of a shed shelling peas by hand. Which could be very lonely, or sabishii, after a while. Or, if father’s younger brother were more highly evolved in his understanding of the 道, or Dao, he might appreciate the elegant simplicity, or sabi, of the task.

0055 売

売

This character means ‘to sell, to be in demand.’ It is pronounced BAI and uru (or ureru) in Japanese and mài in Chinese. It seems hard to explain because it’s a ‘cursive remnant’ of a more complicated figure, and the remaining strokes don’t really give much indication of the original idea. The upper figure

士

today, on it’s own, means ‘a gentleman, scholar, soldier, samurai.’ However, it is probably an alteration of a figure that means ‘to take, carry away.’

The lower figure

㓁

may be a net, in which one carries away things to be sold.

That’s all pretty hazy and hard to see (and Japanese doesn’t have the net character), so I’ll make up my own story about a gentleman carrying around a little table

冖

with his son (or on his own two legs)

儿

so they (or he) can sell things at the market. (That is the actual character for ‘son’ in Chinese, though in Japanese it’s just known as the ‘legs’ radical and is not used to mean ‘son.’)

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COTD diary note: On p. 93 in my edition of 雪国, Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata, he uses the word 大事, daiji, which means ‘important, valuable, serious matter.’ 事, JI, meaning ‘thing, matter, business, affair,’ was featured in COTD 0043. 大, dai, means ‘big, large.’

0054 欠

欠

This character means ‘lack, miss, be lacking; owe (in Chinese but not Japanese)’ and is pronounced KETSU or kaku in Japanese, qiàn in Chinese.

It shows a man out of breath, exhausted, trying to get his wind back, which is a little more obvious in the original character:

.

Those three diagonal strokes look like the character that now means ‘hair,’

彡,

but Wieger says that here (and in some other characters) they are synonymous with

气,

which means ‘steam, vapor, air.’

So, if you can’t catch your breath, you are seriously lacking.

0053 食

食

This character means ‘food, eating, to eat.’ It is pronounced a lot of ways in Japanese, including taberu and SHOKU, and shí in Chinese.

It represents a high-legged serving dish with a lid.

The archaic character looks like this:

or .

Not much has changed, either in the character or in the rice bowl.

0052 細

細

This is the character meaning ‘narrow, thin, slender, dainty, fine.’ It’s pronounced SAI or hosoi in Japanese and xì in Chinese. The left-hand element

糸

means ‘thread,’ and the right-hand element

田,

though altered by scribes to match the character for ‘field,’ came from a character that meant and still does mean ‘skull, top of the head, fontanel’:

囟    (archaic form)

That’s why the ‘skull’ character also shows up in

思    (archaic form),

‘to think,’ made up (rather graphically) of a head and a heart. Thus, thread was similar to the hairs on the head, very thin or fine. From the archaic character

it looks the ‘thread’ element is derived from some sort of spindle that holds the thread. Wieger says that the two round balls are silkworm cocoons, and that very fine silk was spun by combining threads from only two cocoons. The three lines on the bottom represent the threads as they are being twisted together. Wieger says that this element

厶

represents a cocoon. There are two of these nested in the character for ‘thread’ 糸 shown above.

0051 畳

畳

This is the character for ‘tatami mat’ or ‘folding’ as a prefix, and is pronounced tatami. In Chinese the character means ‘to repeat’ and is pronounced dié.

There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for its origins, but it’s common enough in Japanese literature that we need a story to remember it.

Let’s say that the upper character, which usually means ‘field,’ here means ‘a four-tatami room.’ And let’s say that the rest of the character is a person, represented by an eye

目,

sleeping on one of those tatami, on the floor (the straight line on the bottom), below a ceiling

冖.

0050 議

議

This complex character means ‘deliberation, proposal, consult, discuss.’ It’s pronounced GI in Japanese and yì in Chinese.

我

This part of the character means ‘self, my, me, we, our, one’s own.’ The left side and right side of it now look different, but originally they represented two weapons in conflict:

.

Did they mean to say that the self is always in conflict? With itself? With others? Unknown.

This part of the character

⺷ or 羊

signifies a sheep or goat. Apparently because of the gentleness of lambs, Wieger says it also meant ‘sweetness, peace, harmony’. However, it does not show that definition in current Japanese or Chinese dictionaries.

義  

The entire right side of today’s character thus represents ‘harmony, good understanding, peace restored after a conflict.’ Adding the left-hand part

言

which means ‘words, speech, speak,’ leads to the overall meaning:  ‘deliberation, proposal, consult, discuss.’