RTK Lesson 5

Question 1

Fish Guts

Answer 1

乙

75 Pictograph for a hook… a fishhook! This should keep fish guts in your head.

*As a primitive it will maintain its meaning of fishhook. The shape, however will change. When it appears below, it will straighten like an L. When it appears on the side, it will squish and appear more hook-like.

Question 2

Riot

Answer 2

乱

76 (Tongue, Fishhook)

In a riot all manners are laid aside and tempers are short, even in the infamously courteous Land of the Rising Sun. This character shows what happens to a rioting tongue: it gets barbed like a fishhook.

Question 3

Straightaway

Answer 3

直

77 (Needle, Eye, Fishhook)

Start with the first two primitives, needle and eye. Together they represent the eye of the needle. The fishhook that passes through has been straightened out and its bard removed so it can pass straightaway through the eye of the needle.

Question 4

Tool

Answer 4

具(-目)

This primitive is not very common, but useful to know. Conveniently, it is always drawn at the bottom of a kanji. The first horizontal stroke is always detached from the above character. The sense of the element is a carpenter’s tool, which comes from its pictographic representation of a small table with legs, so that any element lying on top of it will come to be viewed as a tool in the hands of a carpenter.

Question 5

Tool

Answer 5

具

78 (Eye, Tool)

Here is a full kanji upon which the primitive is based. Think of a carpenters tools, gold and engraved, encrusted with jewels and hewn from rare hardwoods. Naturally, we must keep an eye on such valuable tools that rest on the table! True

Question 6

True

Answer 6

真

78 (Eye of the Needle, Tool)

Of all the tools on the carpenters table, the eye of the needle measures truth. Only straight, unbent honesty can pass through the eye of the needle and hold true. To measure what is true and what is not.

Question 7

By One’s Side

Answer 7

ナ

This primitive has a look of ten, except that the left stroke is bent down toward the left. It indicates here your hands (and ten fingers) fall when you let them droop: By your side.

*This stroke order can be reversed and curve to the right. Whichever way it curves, the second stroke should always be slightly longer than the first.

Question 8

Craft

Answer 8

工

80

This pictograph of an I beam, like the kind that is used in heavy construction work on buildings and bridges, gives us the kanji for craft in general.

*As a primitive this character maintains its meaning, but also gives us the related meaning of I Beam and artificial.

Question 9

Left

Answer 9

左

81 (By One’s Side, Craft)

By combining the primitive By One’s Side and Craft, which conveniently means left. Western imagination traditionally tells us how the left is associated with the sinister side, where dark and occult crafts are cultivated.

Question 10

Right

Answer 10

右

82 (By One’s Side, Mouth)

When thinking of the key word right, in order to avoid confusion with left, take advantage of the double meaning here, too. Imagine a little mouth hanging down by your side- like a little voice of conscience- telling you to do the right thing.

Question 11

Possess

Answer 11

有

83 (By One’s Side, Flesh)

Why would one have putrid flesh dangling from one’s side? They must be possessed by demons to have flesh by one’s side. Grotesque, but nonetheless part of the world we inhabit, and to ignore these atrocities would be willful ignorance.

Question 12

Bribe

Answer 12

賄

84 (Shellfish, Possess)

Starting over three thousand years ago, cowry shells were used as Chinese Currency. Shells were also used as currency in India. Expand the image of shells to include the ancient value they had as money. Now imagine one possessed by shells is likely to abandon higher principles to acquire more wealth. These are the easiest to bribe with a few extra shells.

Question 13

Tribute

Answer 13

貢

85 (Craft, Shellfish)

Tribute has a kind of double-meaning in English: honor paid freely and money collected by coercion. Simply because a noble bestows a noble name on a deed is hardly any consolation to the masses who must part with their hard earned money. Little wonder that this ancient craft of getting money by calling it a tribute has given way to a name closer to how it felt to those who pay it: a tax.

Question 14

Paragraph

Answer 14

項

86 (Craft, Head)

When we think of paragraphs, we immediately think of a heading device to break text into parts. Just think of the illuminated manuscripts from medieval Europe. Just when and how to make these heading breaks depend on the writer’s craft. Hence, we define paragraphing as the “heading craft” to remember this character.

Question 15

Sword

Answer 15

刀

87

Although this kanji no longer looks like a sword, it does have some resemblance to the handle of the sword. This is to our advantage, in that it helps us make a distinction between two primitive elements based on this kanji.

*In the form of the kanji, this primitive also means dagger. When it appears to the right of another element, it is commonly stretched out like this刂and takes the
sense of a great and flashing saber, a meaning it gets from a character we shall learn later.

Question 16

Blade

Answer 16

刃

88 (Dagger, Drop of)

Think of using a dagger as a razor blade and it shouldn’t be difficult to imagine cutting yourself. See the little drop of blood lining to the blade?

Question 17

Cut

Answer 17

切

89 (Diced, Dagger)

To the right we see dagger, and the left we see seven, which we decided means diced when used as a primitive. It is hard to think of cutting without the image of a skillful Japanese chef. Only let us say he had too much to drink at a party, grabs a dagger lying on the mantelpiece and starts dicing up everything!

Question 18

Seduce

Answer 18

召

90 (Dagger, Mouth)

A dagger posed over a mouth is how the character for “beckoning” is written. The related but less tame word seduce was chosen because it is a better fit with the Freudian implications of this Character. Observe if you will that it is not clear whether the long slender object is seducing the small round one, or vice versa.

Question 19

Shining

Answer 19

昭

91 (Day, Seduce)

Let the word suggest shining one’s shoes, the purpose of seducing the sun to shine them up for all to see.

Question 20

Rule

Answer 20

則

92 (Shellfish, Saber)

The character depicts a shellfish alongside a great and flashing saber. Think of digging up clams in an area where there are gaming rules on governing how large a find has to be before you can keep it. So you take your trusty saber, which you have carefully notched like a yardstick, crack open a clam, and then measure the poor little beastie to see if it is as long as the rules say it has to be.

Question 21

Wealth

Answer 21

畐

(One, Mouth, Rice Field)

To prepare for the following frame, we introduce a rather rare primitive which means wealth. It takes its meaning from the common image of the over wealthy also being overfed. More specifically, it shows a character of one single mouth devouring all the harvest of the fields, presumably while those who labor in them go hungry. Think of the phrase exactly as it is written when you draw the character, and the disposition of the elements is easy.

Question 22

Vice-

Answer 22

副

93 (Wealth, Saber)

The key word vice has the sense of someone who is second in command. The great and flashing saber to the right (it’s usual location), and the wealth on the left combine to create the image of dividing one’s property to give a share to one’s vice-wealth holder. Another way to think of this kanji is to think that the wealthy are often powerful figures, and they need a right hand man. The righthand man ii thought of the sword, the extension, the aide, the assistant who get’s the job done.

Question 23

Separate

Answer 23

別

94 (Mouth, Bound Up, Saber)

In Old Japan, the samurai and his saber were never separated. They were constant companions, like the cowboys of the Old West and his trusty six-shooter. This character depicts what must have been the height of separation-anxiety for the samurai: to be bound up with a rope and unable to get to his saber leaning only a few feet away from him. Look at that mouth bellowing out for shame and sorrow!

Question 24

Street

Answer 24

丁

95

This is meant to be pictographic. Think of a street sign on a long pole.

*As a primitive, we sometimes change the meaning of the keyword and take the shape to dignify a nail or spike. Imagine yanking the street sign out of the ground and using it as a nail to fix your garage roof.

Question 25

Village

Answer 25

町

96 (Rice Field, Street Sign)

Street signs standing at the corner of the rice fields depict village limits.

Question 26

Can

Answer 26

可

97 (Spike, Mouth)

Remember the story of the “Little Engine that Could” when you hear this key word, and the rest is simple. See the little locomotive huffing and puffing up the mountain “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…”-spitting railroad spikes out of its mouth as it chews up the line to the top.

Question 27

Place on the Head

Answer 27

頂

98 (Nail, Head)

The key word is actually a formal metaphor for “humble acceptance.” Reading of the two primitive elements in the order of their writing, we have (nail… head). As in “hitting the nail on the head.” Now one presumes that most people can handle metaphors, but if you were to run into a dimwit working in a hardware store who only knew literal meanings of things, and you were to ask him, in your best Japanese, to place on your head a nail, he might miss the point and cause you considerable torment.