レッスン ４

Question 1

只

Answer 1

only

• When we run across abstract key words like this one, the best way to get an image it to recall some common but suggestive phrase in which the word appears. For instance, we can think of the expression “it’s the only one of its kind.” Then we imagine a barker at a side-show advertising some strange pac-manlike creature he has inside his tent, with only a gigantic mouth and two wee animal legs.
• Imagine an animal with only a mouth and legs.

Question 2

貝

Answer 2

shellfish

• To remember the primitive elements that make up this kanji, an eye and animal legs, you might be tempted to think of it as a pictograph of a shellfish with its ridged shell at the top and two little legs sticking out of the bottom. But that might not help you recall later just how many ridges to put on the shell. Better to imagine a freakish shellfish with a single, gigantic eye roaming the beaches on its slender little legs, scaring the wits out of the sunbathers.
• When used as a primitive, in addition to shells, the meanings oyster and clam will often come in handy.

Question 3

貞

Answer 3

upright

• Now take the last primitive, the shellfish, and set a magic wand over it, and you have the kanji for upright. After all, the clam and the oyster are incapable of walking upright. It would take a magician with his wand to pull off such a feat - which is precisely what we have in this kanji.
• A magic wand is needed to make a clam stand upright.

Question 4

員

Answer 4

employee

• How do we get a mouth over a shellfish to mean an employee? Simple. Just remember the advice new employees get about keeping their mouths shut and doing their job, and then make that more graphic by picturing an office building full of white collar workers scurrying around with clams pinched to their mouths.
• An employee (member of the company) has to clam up his mouth if he wants keep the job!

Question 5

見

Answer 5

see

• The elements that compose the character for see are the eye firmly fixed to a pair of human legs. Surely, somewhere in your experience, there is a vivid image just waiting to be dragged up to help you remember this character….
• As a primitive, this is Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. (the giant eyeball with legs…) Makes for easy stories later on.

Question 6

児

Answer 6

newborn babe

• The top part of the kanji in this frame, you will remember, is the character for olden times, those days so old they needed a walking stick to get around. Western mythical imagination has old “Father Time” leaning on his sickle with a newborn babe crawling around his legs, the idea being that the circle of birth and-death goes on. This is the first of three times that the kanji for olden times will appear as a primitive element in another kanji, so try to make the most of it.
• In the olden times, a newborn babe came out legs first.

Question 7

元

Answer 7

beginning

• “In the beginning…” starts that marvelous shelf of books we call the Bible. It talks about how all things were made, and tells us that when the Creator came to humanity she made two of them, man and woman. While we presume she made two of every other animal as well, we are not told as much. Hence we need only two and a pair of human legs come to the kanji that means beginning.
• In the beginning were just two who walked on human legs.

Question 8

頁

Answer 8

page

• “What we have to do here is turn a shellfish into a page of a book. The one at the top tells us that we only get a rather short book, in fact only one page. Imagine a title printed on the shell of an oyster, let us say “Pearl of Wisdom,” and then open the quaint book to its one and only page, on which you find a single, radiant drop of wisdom, one of the masterpiece poems of nature.”
• One drop of ink from a shellfish can fill a whole page.
• As a primitive, this kanji takes the unrelated meaning of a head (preferably one detached from its body), derived from the character for head (Frame 1549).

Question 9

頑

Answer 9

stubborn

• This character refers to the blockheaded, persistent stubbornness of one who sticks to an idea or a plan just the way it was at the beginning, without letting anything that comes up along the way alter things in the least. The explanation makes “sense,” but is hard to remember because the word “beginning” is too abstract. Back up to the image we used two frames ago - Adam and Eve in their Eden - and try again: The root of all stubbornness goes back to the beginning, with two brothers each stubbornly defending his own way of life and asking their God to bless it favorably. Abel stuck to agriculture, Cain to animal-raising. Picture these two with their giant, swelled heads, each vying for the favors of heaven, a stubborn grimace on their faces. No wonder something unfortunate happened!
• A stubborn person in the beginning gets something into their head and can´t change their mind.

Question 10

凡

Answer 10

mediocre

• While we refer to something insignificant as a “drop in the bucket,” the kanji for mediocre suggests the image of a “drop in the wind.”
• Is there anything as mediocre as a drop of piss in the wind?

Question 11

負

Answer 11

defeat

• Above we have the condensed form of bound up, and below the familiar shellfish. Now imagine two oysters engaged in shell-to-shell combat, the one who is defeated being bound and gagged with seaweed, the victor towering triumphantly over it. The bound shellfish thus becomes the symbol for defeat.
• Tied up, the shellfish had to accept defeat!

Question 12

万

Answer 12

ten thousand

• Japanese counts higher numbers in units of ten thousand, unlike the West, which advances according to units of one thousand. (Thus, for instance, 40,000 would be read “four ten-thousands” by a Japanese.) Given that the comma is used in larger numbers to bind up a numerical unit of one thousand, the elements for one and bound up naturally come to form ten thousand. The order of strokes here needs special attention, both because it falls outside the general principles we have learned already, and because it involves writing the element for bound up in an order opposite to the one we learned. If it is any consolation, this exception is consistent every time these three strokes come together.
• “We have “one” at the top and if you turn the kanji 90 degrees you will see arabic 4 shich means it has four zeros in front of it!”

Question 13

句

Answer 13

phrase

• By combining the two primitives bound up and mouth, we can easily see how this character can get the meaning of a phrase. After all, a phrase is nothing more than a number of words bound up tightly and neatly so that they will fit in your mouth.
• A bound mouth cannot utter a single phrase.

Question 14

肌

Answer 14

texture

• Ever notice how the texture of your face and hands is affected by the wind? A day’s skiing or sailing makes them rough and dry, and in need of a good soft cream to soothe the burn. So whenever a part of the body gets exposed to the wind, its texture is affected. (If it is any help, the Latin word hiding inside texture connotes how something is “to the touch.”)
• When you expose your flesh to the wind it gets textured: goosebumps!

Question 15

旬

Answer 15

decameron

• There simply is not a good phrase in English for the block often days which this character represents. So we resurrect the classical phrase, decameron, whose connotations the tales of Boccaccio have done much to enrich. Actually, it refers to a journey of ten days taken by a band of people - that is, a group of people bound together for the days of the decameron.
• If you bind up ten days, you get a decameron.

Question 16

勺

Answer 16

ladle

• If you want to bind up drops of anything - water, soup, lemonade - you use something to scoop these drops up, which is what we call a ladle. See the last drop left inside the ladle?
• A ladle binds drops together.

Question 17

的

Answer 17

bull´s eye

• The elements white bird and ladle easily suggest the image of a bull’s eye if you imagine a rusty old ladle with a bull’s eye painted on it in the form of a tiny white bird, who lets out a little “peep” every time you hit the target.
• I managed to hit the bull´s eye by throwing my white ladle.

Question 18

首

Answer 18

neck

• “Reading this kanji from the top down, we have: horns . . . nose. Together they bring to mind the picture of a moose-head hanging on the den wall, with its great horns and long nose. Now while we would speak of cutting off a moose’s ““head”” to hang on the wall, the Japanese speak of cutting off its neck. It’s all a matter of how you look at it. Anyway, if you let the word neck conjure up the image of a moose with a very l-o-n-g neck hanging over the fireplace, whose horns you use for a coat-rack and whose nose has spigots left and right for scotch and water, you should have no trouble with the character. Here we get a good look at what we mentioned when we first introduced the element for horns: that they can never be left floating free and require an extra horizontal stroke to prevent that from happening, as is the case here.”
• The moose’s neck supports its big horns and long nose.