0014 西

西

This is SEI or nishi in Japanese, xī in Chinese, meaning ‘west.’ It pictures a bird’s nest, the place that the bird comes back to when the sun sets in the west. (Wieger)

Richard Sears, however, says that’s wrong. He says the character represents a basket, and it got borrowed because of its sound to represent ‘west.’

I think it will be easier to remember the bird’s nest idea. I can see the legs of the bird and the skinny horizontal body, sitting in the box-like nest.

西洋

SEI can be combined with another kanji, pronounced YŌ in Japanese, yáng in Chinese, that means ‘foreign,’ ‘western,’ and ‘ocean.’ The combination in Japanese, pronounced seiyō, means ‘the West, the Occident.’ The left-hand element of YŌ means ‘water’ and the right-hand element

羊  or in the ancient seal script

is there for phonetic reasons. It means sheep, and is pronounced YŌ or hitsuji in Japanese, yáng in Chinese. It shows a sheep, apparently as if the viewer is looking down onto its back, with its horns, its head, its legs splayed out to the sides, and its tail.