0024 真

真

In Japanese, this is SHIN, ‘true, genuine,’ and makoto, ‘true, sincere,’ and the prefix ma-, ‘pure, genuine, true.’ In Chinese, it’s zhēn, meaning ‘really; truly; indeed; real; true; genuine.’

直, archaic version

The upper part means ‘straight, honest, frank.’ It’s supposed to be an eye looking at a straight line (the one on top), while the lower right angle seems to be suggestive of a nose.

To obtain the kanji-of-the-day, reduce the angle to a line, add two legs, and you get a table below, on which you put something so people can see that it’s real or straight.

archaic version . There’s a lot of good logo material here for start-ups.

There’s a Japanese word in Snow Country—pronounced either majime, ‘serious-minded, earnest, honest,’ or shinmenmoku, ‘one’s true self, seriousness’—which is made with three characters:

真面目.

There would be lots of ways to interpret it: ‘honest-face-eye,’ ‘serious-face-eye,’ etc. What a great word! You may remember the middle character from post 0023.

Chinese has the same three-character word, pronounced zhēn miànmù, and it means ‘true identity, true colors.’