YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

September 23, 2009

Collaborated event of space and Chinese characters

I have participated in the events such as “Space and Music” or “Space and Paintings” but not “Space and Chinese characters” in my memory. On the last September 21, there was held a lecture presentation, “Space (sky) and Japanese (we)” hosted by Tokyo Chinese Characters Exploration Team at Bunkyo Civic Hall in Tokyo. I gave my lecture under the above title at the first half of the presentation and the second half was lectured by Mr. Hiroyuki Kubo of “Shirakawa Shizuka Memorial Research Institute of Oriental Letters and Characters” in Kyoto, who talked about the Chinese characters related to space and sky. I was first worried about if any people would come to such titled event, which was only relieved by my surprise with attendance of three hundred people (mostly by children and parents) participating in the lecture meeting.

There is a philosophical book titled, “Time elapse streaming from past, present and to future, and space taking emptiness of up, down, fore, aft, left, right” which was compiled at the age of Emperor Kuang Hsu of Han Dynasty in 200 B.C. According to Enanji, those Chinese characters of the title were originated in the book called “Shishi”, which implies, in its essence, universe as meaning “Time and Space”.

I knew as much as this far, although I’m not well versed in this field of study, but Mr. Kubo further explained about the origin of Chinese character “Space” by analyzing the letter. I’m sorry I just cannot fully explain here what Mr. Kubo told us because of difficulty in expressive medium of pc word processing, but what’s important to me is that his explanation has newly added, in my mind, “Chinese characters” into the list of multifaceted aspect of space. Although I’m usually saying with an air of authority “Space education is to resonate with children’s heart through multi faces of space”, I came to notice the importance of such an aspect of philosophy for the first time in my life. “Not just Chinese characters but many other accruing studies are presented before me to follow” was my candid feeling.

Some time before I wrote about “Wa (ancient Japan)” and “Wa (harmony)” in this column.

In ancient times, people having lived in this archipelago seemed to have called themselves “Wa” when they visited, at risk of their lives, a neighbor country China to offer their greetings. They didn’t have writing system yet in this country those days. Continental people applied the Chinese character ”Wa” to people calling themselves “Wa”, although if or not people from this country were shorter in height is not clearly known. For instance, “Wei Chih” is the book to describe about people living in “Wa” area in Chinese history under the era of Wei. It may not be necessarily connected with height. I assume “Wa” probably means “those small guys in small country”, which must surely have been a derogatory term.

Those guys those days accepted the word “Wa” with thanks and imported writing of Chinese characters to master them, during whose process they came to write “Wa” to refer to their own country in the beginning. Although, if or not “Yamatai Kingdom” is synonym with “Yamato (ancient Japan)” is a subtle academic subject, they must have used the character “Wa” as meaning “Yamato” for some time. I remember to have written in this column of finding the Chinese characters of “Kokin Waka Shu (New Collection of Ancient and Modern)” in the duplicate copy handed down in Mori clan.

I don’t know what time of history it was, but someone who perfectly understood the meanings of Chinese characters and someone who possessed true pride of this nation emerged out of nowhere, replaced ancient letter of “Wa” with different word of “Wa”, which has same pronunciation having the same meaning. In addition, he put “great” before “Wa” becoming “Yamato (ancient Japan)”. For I was born in a town where the battleship “Yamato” was built, it may sound stupid to call it battleship “Wa”; in this context, I think it was a genius invention to have converted from “Wa” to another “Wa”. Historians say when the expression “Nippon (Japan)” came into history was probably at the age of Emperor Tenmu in the seventh century.

I have studied by myself the followings inspired from my learning at the lecture.

The first is “Wa”. “Wa” consists of “hito (man)” of left-side radical and “yudaneru (consign)” of right-side. Consulting Chinese-Japanese dictionary says that breaking down the right side of “yudaneru” into upper and lower parts signifies that the upper implies “drooping rice ears” while the lower is “me (woman)” having the meaning of honest, and therefore as a whole word it implies “obedient man”. And also “Wa” is similar to another word of “waishou (nanism)” to imply a “short man”. All the dictionaries I consulted say that “Wa” has the three meanings,“Japan” pronounced as “Yamato”, “far and long winding road” and “ugly”.

I know there must be disagreement to the above. There must be women who are not honest. After all, the expression itself “women are honest” or “short men are ugly” might be discriminatory words. Another disagreement may point out that if “iin (committee member)”, which is the right-side radical of “Wa”, are all honest men, the world will be free from all worldly troubles. I know of your all disagreeing to the above, but please forgive me because they are all what the dictionaries say, and I do not.

The next is “Wa (harmony)”. “Wa” consists of “drooping rice ears” above-said to the left-side radical and “kuchi (mouth) to the right-side. “Wa” generally means to chorus in harmony as well as “easing” and “cordial”. The original pronunciation of the upper part of left-side radical of “Wa” sounds “quwa” phonetically meaning to “add”, therefore “Wa” contains the meaning of adding many voices one another to chorus in harmony.

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

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)

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