Replacement

by Nao

ka-waru, ka-eru, yo, dai, tai

The verb kawaru means to take place of something like positions, which is sometimes related to a responsible job.  One of the compounds that represent this sense is dairi meaning a deputy or a representative. With the same characters and mother, the noun dairihaha means surrogate mother. Delivery by a surrogate mother is dairishussan.  Shussan means to give birth.

Dai or sedai is a generation. Using this character twice, you can say daidai to mean generations.

Jidai means time, era, or period. For those who are interested in Japanese history, let me show some Japanese historical periods we learned at school.

• Heian jidai (794-1185)
• Kamakura jidai (1185-1333)
• Azuchi momoyama jidai (1568-1600)
• Edo jidai (1603-1867)
• Meiji jidai (1868-1912)
• Taishō jidai (1912-1926)

Ancient times is kodai. Modern times is kindai, of which the kin means near.

1. Draw the sweeping stroke from the top to the lower left.
2. Draw the vertical stroke below it.
3. Draw the quasi-horizontal stroke.
4. Draw the curve with an upward turn at the end.
5. Draw the dot in the upper-right corner of the character.

Yen

by Nao

maru-i, en

Yen is the unit of money used in Japan. One hundred yen is hyakuen. Japanese “hyakuen shoppu” is equivalent of a dollar store. Shoppu is written in katakana. Prices are either takai (high) or yasui (low). When a dollar is expensive, we call the tendency endaka. Daka is the voiced sound of taka, which means high. Enyasu is the opposite trend.

This character expresses round. The adjective marui means round. The noun en means a circle. With shin meaning true, shin’en is a perfect circle. Daen means ellipse. Da means to elongate a circle.

Ichien is one yen or the entire area. For example, kantō ichien means “the entire Kantō region.” By the way, the Kantō region is Tokyo and its surrounding areas.

1. Draw the vertical stroke on the left-hand side.
2. Draw the hook with an upward turn at the end.
3. Draw the vertical stroke.
4. Draw the horizontal stroke in the middle.

Old

by Nao

furu-i, ko

The adjectives furui and furubita mean old. The “i” of furui and the “bita” of furubita is in hiragana.

The adjective “furumekashii“ means oldish.

Furuhon and kosho are used books. Particularly, kosho sounds like an antique book.

Chūko means something used or second-hand.

Taiko means antiquity or old times. “Taiko no mukashi yori” is “since the ancient times.” Mukashi means “a long time ago.” “No” and “yori” are in hiragana. The “no,” a particle, implies equivalence. Yori means since.

“Ko kon tō zai” means all times and places.

Both kokon and kokin means the past and now but both are obsolete words. We see or hear them as part of other words.

Once we have mentioned Kokin wakashū. It’s the First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Ancient and Modern Poetry collected in the tenth century.

1. Draw the horizontal line from the left to the right.
2. Draw the vertical line.
3. Draw the left side of the rectangle.
4. Draw the upper and right sides of the rectangle.
5. Draw the lower side of the rectangle.

Child and the Rat

by Nao

ko, shi, su

This character means a child or the Rat of the oriental zodiac. The former is ko; the latter, ne. The recent year of the Rat, nedoshi, was two years ago. The next nedoshi is year 2020.

A child in general is called kodomo. Domo used to be a suffix meaning plural but now kodomo can be used as the singular. Rather, we use kodomotachi, adding tachi after kodomo to mean children. Tachi is also the suffix to mean plural. It doesn’t sound redundant to me.

At school, teachers call boys danshi and girls joshi.

A puppy is koinu. A kitten is koneko. Neko means a cat.

“Take noko” is a bamboo shoot.

This letter also means interest or money you receive after investing. Rishi is the word meaning interest. Ri means benefit. Motomokomonai is a phrase that uses “ko” in this sense. It literally means both principal and interest have gone. It expresses a kind of failure.

The noun chōshi is a condition, a state of health, a tone of the voice, or a pitch.

1. Draw the hook on the top.
2. Draw the curve with an upward turn.
3. Draw the horizontal line from the left to the right.

Tip or Ahead

by Nao

saki, ma-zu, sen

The noun saki means ahead or future. The way ahead is also saki. If you have been to Japan, you might have seen a sign saying, “kono saki ikidomari,” which means this road leads to a dead-end. Kono means this and ikidomari means a dead-end. Yukisaki means a destination. Ki is in hiragana. With the same characters in the opposite order, sakiyuki means future.

“Osaki ni dōzo” means “after you.” On the contrary, if you say, “osaki ni,” you are politely saying that you’re about to go somewhere or do something before somebody. The prefix “o” makes a noun sound polite.

Both saki and sen become part of compounds.

“Te no saki” or “tesaki” is the tip of your hands. With the same characters, tesaki sometimes means minions or underlings. We hear this word in gangster movies.

“Tesaki ga kiyō” means dexterous. Kiyō means dexterous, too.

Atosaki means “back and front,” “past and future,” or “the process of doing something.” People often fail to see it.

Mesaki is right before your eyes. Myopic attitude is described as thinking about “mesaki no koto,” or something before your eyes.

Sensei is a teacher. You can call a teacher “sensei.” When we are referring to or speaking to a teacher, we add “sensei” after his name.

1. Draw the sweeping stroke in the upper-left corner.
2. Draw the horizontal stroke touching the previous stroke.
3. Draw the vertical stroke crossing the second stroke.
4. Draw the longer horizontal stroke from the left to the right.
5. Draw the sweeping stroke heading toward the lower-left corner.
6. Draw the curve with an upward turn at the end.

Art

by Nao

gei

This character means art but the noun “gei” sounds like popular entertainment, such as performance. We can regard gei as accomplishments. Let’s see what kinds of gei require much skill.

• Dai dōgei means a street performance.
• Kōgei means craft, which includes tōgei (ceramic art) and shitsugei (Japanese lacquer art).
• Shugei means handcraft.
• Bungei means literature.

For fine arts and music, we use geijutsu. Jutsu means technique. Most Japanese calligraphers believe that calligraphy is geijutsu.

1. Draw the dot from the top left.
2. Draw the horizontal line crossing the first dot.
3. Draw the sweeping dot from the top right.
4. Draw the shorter horizontal stroke at the center.
5. Draw the longer horizontal stroke.
6. Draw the sweeping stroke.
7. Draw the quasi-horizontal sweeping stroke.
8. Draw the dot in the lower right corner of the character.

When written with a pen, the sixth and seventh strokes are not separated. So, in the kanji dictionary, this is categorized as a 7-stroke character.

Arrow

by Nao

ya, shi

An arrow is “ya” in Japanese. Arrows are also “ya.”

Yumiya means a set of a bow and an arrow.

If somebody asks you to do something ceaselessly, you are suffering from “ya no saisoku,” literally meaning a request like arrows. Saisoku means demand or a request.

“Time flies” is translated as the proverb, “kōin ya no gotoshi.” Kōin means the sun and the moon. The proverb means that time is like an arrow. As this example tells us, an arrow is analogous to a quick mover.

When you shoot arrows, you fit an arrow to your bow. This action is described as “ya wo tsugu.” The verb tsugu means “to fit an arrow to a bow.” If you do something like a rapid-fire series of actions, you do it in a pace of yatsugibaya. Yatsugi means fitting an arrow to a bow; baya means rapid. This expression implies that when you shoot arrows, you need to fit arrows to your bow very quickly.

1. Draw the sweeping stroke from the top.
2. Draw the horizontal line touching the previous stroke.
3. Draw the other horizontal line from left to right.
4. Draw the curve. Make the line thinner gradually.
5. From where the second and third strokes intersect, draw the shorter curve.

Now

by Nao

ima, kon, kin

The noun ima means now.

Being read kon and combined with other characters, it exactly means “this present.”

Let’s see some other words of this kind. Konya is tonight. Konshū is this week. Shū means a week. Kongetsu is this month. Kotoshi is this year. This word consists of today’s character and a year (toshi). It is not a misspelling but a special reading. A longer time span is Konseiki, meaning “this century.” Seiki means a century.

Kyō and konnichi are composed of the same characters but they have different meanings. The former is today; the latter, nowadays. Sakkon also means nowadays.

Other interesting expressions with this character are tadaima, imadoki, imasara, and imaichi.Tadaima means this moment or the greeting, “I’m home.” Imadoki means nowadays, by this moment, or the contemporary fashion with an implication of a slight obsoleteness or deviation. The sara of imasara is usually written in hiragana. Sara can be written in kanji and it means to revise or to change. Although these characters are likely to mean “to change now,” imasara implies that it’s too late to change. Imaichi implies a regretful result or lacking something small of a satisfactory condition.

1. Draw the sweeping stroke from top to lower left.
2. Draw the sweeping stroke from top to lower right.
3. Draw the horizontal stroke.
4. Draw the hook. Make it narrower gradually toward the end.

To Bend or Anti-

by Nao

so-ru, han-suru, han

The verb soru means “to bend” or “to arch.” The verb hansuru means “to be against.” The ru of soru and the suru of hansuru are in hiragana. The prefix han means “anti-.”

Handō means reaction or counteraction.

Hankan means antipathy. If you feel it, you can say, “hankan wo idaku.” It literally means to hold antipathy. If someone feels this against you, you can describe the situation like, “hankan wo kau” whose literal meaning is “to buy antipathy.”

Hanmoku means hostility. To change it to a verb, add the suffix “–suru.” Being at odds with each other can be expressed as, “hanmoku shiau.” “Shi” is a conjugation of suru. “Shiau” means “to do something each other.”

You can use this character like “anti-,“ adding it to other words. Hankaku undō, for example, is an antinuclear movement. Kaku means nuclear and undō means a movement.

1. Draw the horizontal line on the top.
2. Draw the sweeping stroke touching the previous stroke.
3. Draw the hook. The first part is horizontal and the second one is a sweeping stroke.
4. Draw the sweeping stroke crossing the previous stroke.

Craft or Engineering

by Nao

kō, ku

This character implies activity that involves making something. In other words, roughly it means craft and engineering. Compounds including this character relate to these meanings.

Craft

Kōsaku means making, constructing, and maneuvering. It also implies handcraft, a school subject.

Creators devise good ways to make something. Such an activity is called kuhū. Add the suffix “–suru” to change it to a verb.

Saiku is work that you produce. Sai means minute. Saiku becomes zaiku with a voiced sound if you add something before the word. Takezaiku is bamboo work.

This character sometimes means a worker or an artisan. For example, daiku is a carpenter.

Engineering

Once we have mentioned the word kōgaku here. It means engineering as an academic subject. Artificial is Jinkō. Industry is kōgyō, of which the gyō means a business. A factory is kōjō or kōba. Both jō and ba is the same character meaning a field or a place.

The first stroke is the upper horizontal line. The second one is the vertical stroke. The lower horizontal line is longer than the first one.