YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

July 9, 2009

“Wa” and “Wa”
[“Wa” archaic word meaning Japan and “Wa” meaning harmony]

There is exhibited a duplicate copy of “Kokin-shu” (A Collection of Ancient Poetry) at Mori Museum in Hofu, Yamaguchi prefecture. The opening sentence of its expository writing attracted my attention, which was written as “Kokin Waka-shu” (Wa written in the character meaning ancient Japan). In the ancient times when our ancestors had no means of communication by letters, they called themselves “wa” meaning “I” which could be understood from the examples to refer oneself by saying “watashi”, “watakushi” and “ware”. It is easily imaginable that they called themselves “wa” probably influenced from their getting acquainted with Chinese dynasty. On the basis of their pronouncing “wa”, Chinese people must have phonetically applied the letter “wa” to this country. Chinese character “wa” was to basically imply to “leave things to others” which they might have used as a derogatory term in a sense, while looking at the same thing from this side, it might have been an expression of downgrading ourselves.

At a certain time of our history, someone applied the other Chinese character of “wa” (harmony) in the meaning of Japan; and that in combination of “great” with “wa”. It was a significantly wonderful invention. When we look back at the developing process of Japan, I think “wa” (harmony) represents not only the pronunciation of this country but also characteristic nature of the people living on the archipelago. “Wa” and “Wa”: “Chinese character phonetically applied by them” and “our own invention of ‘Wa’ meaning harmony”. What was this sense of discomfort I felt at Mori Museum? I was a passenger on a bullet train back home with this question in my mind.

Chinese characters came to the country where there had been no writing system. People who eventually mastered the imported letters made the best use of them for their easier reading as well as for better expressing the meanings of their original words by the means of “katakana” and “hiragana”. (Katakana adapted from Chinese letters and Hiragana of Japanese syllabary characters.) However, it needed several hundreds of years before they were freely used in this country. At any rate, there is no doubt that this new writing system of Chinese characters, hiragana and katakana all combined has now become a strong weapon adaptable to modern global culture. Although they depended upon Chinese characters in the beginning, they made ingenious attempts, during a course of time, to adapt those characters for better expressing soft and sensitive sentiments of Japanese people inherent to them from ancient times, which is worthy to call “invention” most likely to Japanese.

Many religions have been imported to this country from abroad in various different forms such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism and others. At each time of its import, the religion acquired a certain number of believers having prevailed in the country to a certain extent and captured people’s hearts and minds in a special way of adapting to Japanese sentiments inherent from ancient times. On an individual basis, each one may honestly believe in one’s own religion only, however, as a whole this is a perfect polytheism nation. We sing “jingle bell” at Christmas, listen to temple’s bells on New Year’s Eve and go to the shrines for worship on New Year’s Day. What about all this? For most of people of this country, this is polytheism country ambiguously mingled with Christianity, Buddhism and Shinto. This is also a part of our culture having been cultivated by the people on this archipelago for past one thousand and a couple of hundred years.

And now we are confronting “science” rushed into this country since the Meiji era. With respect to practical use of science, no other nations have been superior to Japanese under the government national policies of increasing wealth and military power and encouraging new industry. When notion of science seeps into ancient Japanese cultural mind to grow to well-balanced matured knowledge, Japan will be secured of its powerful ground to send out our information to the world. I’m hopeful in convincing myself that we are now in the middle on the way.

“Wa” (harmony) may represent our great “struggle” in a due course of history for our ancestors’ adaptability to receive and imitate selected foreign culture and then to create new system better suitable for their own life form. It was “Great Wa” and “Dynamic Wa”. In the current circumstances of human society, reaching prime age so to be said, under the threatening from invention of nuclear weapons and destruction of environments, I’m confident to say that this is high time for Japan to contribute to the true happiness of mankind by presenting our science and technology of absolute necessity in our life style nowadays in a way of applying our characteristic culture.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

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