0028 分

分

This is pronounced BUN or FUN in Japanese, fēn in Chinese, and means ‘to divide’ or ‘a small unit of time’ (one minute in Japanese). It represents a knife, the lower element, dividing the two-part element on top.

It also means ‘to understand’ in Japanese (but apparently not in Chinese). Maybe this comes from knowledge being conceived of as the division of some field of endeavor into smaller and smaller pieces as understanding grows. In botany, taxonomists are usually either ‘joiners’ or ‘splitters’ when it comes to breaking up a group of related plants into species. The splitters—and presumably the Japanese would approve—are those who find one extra leaf serration on a given group of plants and therefore want to call that group a species. They ‘understand’ the plant right down to that extra little notch.

The ancient character is very close to the modern one:

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天分

This is tenbun in Japanese, ‘heaven’ plus ‘to divide, to understand’ meaning ‘one’s nature, one’s natural talents, one’s sphere of activity.’