Category Archives: Japan

by | 13 April 2006 · 11:09 pm

Japanese Zen’s Return to Shinto Aesthetics

Many commentators associate the Japanese emphasis on naturalness and simplicity with Zen Buddhism rather than Shinto. In such books as Zen and Japanese Culture, D. T. Suzuki popularized this view in Japan as well as in the West. Suzuki was correct to point out that many arts associated with Japan have a close association with Zen Buddhism, especially through the tea ceremony and all its accoutrements including ikebana, calligraphy, poetry, gardens, and pottery. Suzuki accurately portrayed Zen’s historical significance in the development and institutionalization of these arts. At times, though, he seemed to imply more—namely, that Zen Buddhism introduced the aesthetic of simplicity and naturalness to Japan. This claim, if he indeed meant to make it, is wrong.

Simplicity and naturalness were part of Japanese culture and represented in Shinto practices centuries before Zen’s emergence in the thirteenth century. The kind of grand simplicity found in many Shinto shrines such as that of the sun kami at Ise is an obvious example. Zen prospered through its connection with the Japanese arts, not so much because it was introducing something totally new to the culture, but because it resonated with something old. The so-called Zen simplicity in many drinking bowls used in the tea ceremony, for example, can also be seen as far back as some of the unglazed pottery of the Yayoi period, a millennium before Japanese Zen developed and tea plants were cultivated in Japan.

One can argue, therefore, that the Zen aesthetic was similarly a return to a simplicity predating the Heian court’s aesthetic of elegance. This aesthetic of courtly elegance predominated among the aristocrats of the Heian period (794–1185) and reflected the high arts from China, including those from esoteric Buddhism, rather than Shinto. The power of the nobles had waned, however, by the time Zen blossomed in Japan. Zen melded the Kamakura period‘s (1185–1333) tendency to go back to the ideals of a simpler, less refined, sometimes even rustic, lifestyle. This aesthetic fit the military mentality of the new political leaders, many of whom had come from the outlands distant from the cultural capital of Kyoto [like Ashikaga]. By this process, Zen values and practices became the center of aesthetic development in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries [during the Ashikaga shogunate].

SOURCE: Shinto: The Way Home, by Thomas P. Kasulis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2004), pp. 45-46

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by | 12 April 2006 · 5:22 pm

Shinto: Practices vs. Doctrines

From ancient times, the Japanese (indeed East Asians generally) had not missed the point that many of what we call “religious traditions” of East Asia were alike in some fundamental way. In general, the Japanese grouped together the Asian spiritual traditions by giving them names (usually borrowed from Chinese) sharing one of two suffixes: kyō ([教] broadly meaning “teachings”) or dō ([道] broadly meaning “path,” “way,” or “course”). The convention was to precede this suffix with the name of the spiritual inspiration behind the tradition. Thus jukyō indicated Confucianism ([儒教] “Confucian scholar” plus kyō), butsudō or (later) bukkyō indicated Buddhism ([仏道/仏教] Buddha” plus dō or kyō), and dōkyō indicated Daoism ([道教] “dao” plus kyō). The name “Shinto” itself consists of the character for kami ([神] in such compounds pronounced shin) and dō ([道] in this case mutated into tō). In referring to Christianity today in Japan, the common term is kirisutokyō ([キリスト教] “Christ” plus kyō).

As we see in the two terms for Buddhism (butsudō and bukkyō), the suffixes dō and kyō may be interchangeable. There is, however, a difference in their etymologies: dō has the nuance of praxis and kyō of doctrines. Hence the Japanese arts as well as religions may have the suffix dō: budō ([武道] “way of the warrior” or martial arts), chadō ([茶道] “way of tea” or tea ceremony), shodō ([書道] “way of writing” or calligraphy). In self-consciously creating a word to translate the Western term “religion,” this difference in nuance between kyō and dō is relevant. The use kyō in shukyō suggests a Japanese impression that the concept of “religion” is more about doctrine or creed than practice.

What about the first part of the word, the shū of shūkyō [宗教]? The term shū suggests a discrete religious community with common practices and teachings. In fact, the term shūkyō was not truly a neologism. There was a rather arcane Buddhist use of the term to mean specifically the doctrines of any particular Buddhist sect or school. Given this etymological context, to inquire in Japanese whether someone is “religious” (shūkyōteki) may seem a little like asking them if they are “sectarian” or “dogmatic.” In choosing such a word to designate “religion,” the scholars who created the neologism might have been thinking of the evangelical and exclusivist aspects of the Western religions they had encountered (especially through Christian missionaries). This exclusivity in Japanese Christianity continues today, incidentally: the large majority of the 1 percent of Japanese who designate “Christian” as their religious affiliation do not, unlike many of their Buddhist or Shinto compatriots, also select another tradition.

SOURCE: Shinto: The Way Home, by Thomas P. Kasulis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2004), pp. 30-31

NOTE: Some quotes around italics eliminated. Kanji characters added.

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by | 11 April 2006 · 3:25 am

The Shinto Torii: A Reminder to Purify the Heart

[The torii (鳥居)] does not demarcate something external into which I can simply tap. To function properly, the mysterious power beyond the torii must be in an internal relation with the person passing through it. If your mind is befuddled and clouded, if your heart is defiled and disingenuous, passage through the gateway will only return you to that. A symbol sacred to Shinto is the mirror. In fact, in many shrines, large and small, major and minor, the altar contains nothing other than a mirror. Along with the sword and comma-shaped jewel [magatama], the mirror is part of the official regalia of the emperor as chief priest of the tradition. A mirror’s capacity to reflect depends on its cleanliness. Hence Shinto sites usually have a water trough for purification near the entrance. As people enter the heart of the shrine, they are expected to wash their hands and mouth, cleansing themselves of any pollution from physical or verbal misdeeds. Washing away dirt from the journey, they are ready to be a home in the kami-filled, tama-empowered shrine. Their hearts and minds are pure. Even the torii along the path on Mount Fuji serves a similar function. The torii reminds pilgrims to cleanse their inner self in preparation for approaching the peak.

SOURCE: Shinto: The Way Home, by Thomas P. Kasulis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2004), p. 23

I’ve never climbed Mt. Fuji, but I can well imagine the female voice recording familiar to every train passenger in Japan telling the pilgrims as they approach the torii of their impending arrival at the summit, thanking them for having climbed up, and asking them to mind their magokoro ‘truehearts’ instead of their ashimoto ‘footsteps’ as they pass through the torii: 間もなく山頂に到着いたします。ご乗山真にありがとうございました。鳥居を通るとき真心にご注意願います。(Mamonaku sanchou ni touchaku itashimasu. Gojousan makoto ni arigatou gozaimashita. Torii o tooru toki, magokoro ni gochuui negaimasu.)

And then telling them where to find the toilets and vending machines.

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by | 7 April 2006 · 11:22 pm

Shinto’s Material Spirituality

One of the books I brought along to read while in Japan is Shinto: The Way Home, by Thomas P. Kasulis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2004). The introduction is available online in PDF form. Here’s how it begins.

Westerners with some exposure to Shinto know it also as a religious tradition stressing sensitivity to nature, purification, and simplicity. Most foreign tourists to Japan have been impressed with the extraordinary serenity, restrained design, and natural beauty of many Shinto sites. Towering trees, white gravel grounds, carefully pruned shrubs, and beautiful flowers instill peace in many visitors, a peace arising not from an aesthetic flight from the world but from a heightened appreciation and outright enjoyment of it. Boisterous Japanese families with young children and old folks on pilgrimages suggest Shinto not only celebrates life but also brings celebration to life. I have heard many foreigners say they felt oddly at home in such environs. Some who have lived in Japan for some time have gone so far as to say that on many occasions they have “felt Shinto” themselves.

Most people are aware of another dimension of Shinto as well: the Shinto of nationalism, imperial reverence, and ethnocentricity. It is the Shinto of kamikaze pilots and militarist fervor, the Shinto of a divine emperor leading a unique global mission for the Japanese nation and its people. It is the Shinto that dominated the international politics of the first half of the twentieth century.

This book investigates how these aspects—the traditional festivals and rites, the celebration of nature and life, the nationalism and militarism—can coexist in the same religion. Is there perhaps something about the paradox in Shinto that can shed light on other religious traditions as well? Or, on the contrary, is the case of Japanese Shinto unique? In exploring such questions we will examine Shinto spirituality as both point of departure and ultimate destination. By framing the discussion in this way, we will find subtle links within the development of Shinto that we might otherwise overlook. There are two warnings, however, about the term “spirituality” as employed in this book. First, the term is not being used to emphasize personal over social or institutional religiosity. Second, the term does not necessarily imply something mystical or transcendent. Let us consider each point briefly.

With respect to the first admonition, when some people hear the word “spirituality” rather than “religion” they think of a religious experience that is especially personal, individual, and outside “organized” religious institutions. Yet reflection shows that spirituality is seldom a strictly private affair. Felt as an inner resonance, spirituality is not an external phenomenon we can study simply by looking at it. Its character emerges only through the intimation of those who share their intimate experiences with us. The neophyte internalizes spirituality by doing what others do and talking how they talk. To express one’s own spirituality, one must first be impressed by the spirituality of others. Even the Buddhist or Christian hermit, alone in an isolated cave or cell, sits in the lotus position or kneels in prayer. The hermit did not invent these postures but learned them from someone else. Even in solitude, the hermit reflects a communal context. We must not overlook this vital communal dimension in even the most personal expressions of the spiritual.

The other admonition is not to assume that “spirituality” always implies a belief in something transcendent or supernatural. People sometimes think that spirituality is inherently mystical, a withdrawal from everyday affairs. It need not be so. Whereas any religious tradition may include ecstatic departures from the ordinary, religious people frequently find the spiritual in the most quotidian of human experiences. Spirituality can be like our awareness of light: we might experience it as a blinding, all-encompassing flash or as the medium through which we see the configuration and coloration of our ordinary world. It is the difference between a flashbulb going off near our faces in a darkened room and our being engrossed in the luminescent nuances of an Ansel Adams photograph. Both are experiences of light. Indeed the light of the flashbulb and the highlights on the misty peak of El Capitan are in some respects the same thing—light. Yet the different contexts make for a different kind of experience. So, too, for spirituality. It may appear so intensely and abruptly that it obliterates everything else, or it may be reflected off or refracted through the most mundane events. As we will see, Shinto spirituality most often takes the latter form. To limit our sense of spirituality to the mystical would be to miss a major part of what it means to be Shinto.

Long ago, when I was freelance proofreading to support myself in grad school, I had the chance to proofread Kasulis’s Zen Action/Zen Person, a book that very much impressed me with its creative thinking and clear writing. This one looks to be similar.

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by | 6 April 2006 · 5:04 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Bokeh, Shidare-zakura

Yesterday the weather was clear and my wife was still on term break this week, so we took local trains through small towns and sometimes scenic countryside from Ashikaga to Oyama to Mito to visit the nationally famous Kairakuen (偕楽園 ‘shared pleasure park’), one of Japan’s three most beautiful landscape gardens. As the name implies, the park is open to the public; and the views are indeed spectacular. The blossoms on the 3,000 plum trees for which the park is most famous may have been a few weeks past their prime, but the cherry blossoms were in full bloom (満開, compare 満タン ‘full tank [of gas]) both in the park and across the broad expanse of Senba (千波 ‘thousand wave’) Lake and Park, which the Kairakuen hillside overlooks. Here are two verbal souvenirs from the trip.

Bokeh – This is an English technical term borrowed from Japanese, as I learned from Philbert Ono’s PhotoWords. The Photoxels Glossary of Digital Photography Terms defines it thus:

Boke (pronounced BOH-KEH), and increasingly referred to in print as “Bokeh” – Japanese word meaning “fuzzy” and referring to the out-of-focus (OOF) portions of a picture. A lens is said to have “good boke” if the OOF is pleasant and does not detract from the main subject. A lens with good boke produces out of focus smooth-edged highlights and reproduces an out of focus point of light as bright in the middle and progressively getting fainter with a fuzzy edge.

I’m not sure which Japanese boke this English borrowing comes from. Certainly not 木瓜 ‘Japanese quince, japonica’, which I was excited to find in full bloom, glistening like coral on the garden path down to Senba Lake. My best guess is 惚け/呆け, whose several meanings include ‘dull, dullheadedness’, as in 呆け色 boke iro ‘dull color’, from a verb 惚け/呆け meaning ‘grow senile; become mentally weak; fade, discolor’. The New Nelson kanji dictionary and Kenkyusha’s New Japanese–English Intermediate Dictionary, 5th ed. (in my Canon Wordtank), are not quite in synch on this, and neither of them mentions usage in photography. In any case, both my digital photographs and my digital words here are sure to provide plenty of evidence of boke.

Oddly enough, while English has borrowed a Japanese word for the out-of-focus part of a photo, Japanese appears to have borrowed a Dutch word for the in-focus spot: Japanese ピント pinto, from Dutch punt van focus or (focus)punt. (Dutch u is a front-rounded vowel—front like Italian i, round like Italian u—while Dutch oe renders the equivalent of English oo.)

枝垂れ桜 shidare-zakura ‘branch-drooping cherry tree’, Prunus pendula – Among the few types of cherry trees I can now reliably recognize are the branch-drooping ones. I’m also pretty good on 枝垂れ柳 shidare-yanagi ‘branch-drooping willow’. Yes, yes, I know that most people characterize both types as ‘weeping’, but that bit of poetic license completely bypasses the etymological briar patch that this prosaic pedant intends to poke his nose into.

Leaving out the tree itself, there are two pieces to the attribute 枝垂れ: 枝 shi ‘branch’, whose Japanese reading is eda, as in edamame ‘(soy)beans on the branch (or at least in their pods)’; and 垂れ tare ‘drippings, sauce, gravy, jus’. When it relates to apparel, 垂れ can also mean ‘hanging, curtain, lapel, flap, skirts of a coat’. So 垂れ tare covers the range of ‘drip, drop, droop, drape’ (which helped inspire one English linguist to coin the term phonaesthesia).

The Sino-Japanese phonetic element 支 shi of the two-part kanji 枝 itself means ‘branch’ in a lot of compounds, such as 支社 shisha ‘branch (company) office’; 支流 shiryuu ‘branch (flow), tributary’; 支族 shizoku ‘branch family, tribe’. To be more specific, one can rely on the semantic element 木 ki ‘tree’, which often relates to wood (either woody plants or items once made of wood), to disambiguate the 枝 shi that specifically means ‘tree branch’. Another contrast relies on the semantic element 肉 ‘meat’ (= 月 in combination), which usually relates to the body, so 肢 shi indicates ‘limbs of the body, arms and legs’.

Finally, 支 (in the shape of 枝) shi can be completely redundant. The New Nelson gives shidareru as an alternate reading for simple 垂れる tareru (vi and vt) ‘hang, droop, drop, lower, pull down; dangle; sag; drip, ooze, trickle’, so it’s perfectly okay to say 柳の枝が枝垂れている yanagi no eda ga shidareteiru ‘the branches of the willow are (branch-)drooping’. Webster’s Online Dictionary offers more—much more—on the semantics of droop in a wide range of languages. Turkish and Romanian are particularly rich.

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by | 4 April 2006 · 2:45 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Denchi

How many tales can be spun out of something as small and insignificant as a portable battery? Let’s see.

First, the word itself. In Japanese, ‘battery’ is rendered as 電池 denchi, lit. ‘electricity reservoir’. The second kanji also translates ‘pond’ and (small) ‘lake’, Japanese ike.

Second, where the word turns up. Denchi first lodged permanently in my mind while I was doing fieldwork in Yap, Micronesia, where (1) I was dependent on batteries for my flashlight and portable cassette-radio while living out in a village without electricity (at that time, anyway); and (2) people had managed to borrow a lot of Japanese vocabulary during three decades of Japanese rule (1914–1945), like sikoki ‘airplane’, and sikojo ‘airport’. Some of the more amusing borrowings are now archaic, if not obsolete, in Japanese, like sarumata ‘traditional Japanese men’s underwear’ (now used with reference to adult diapers) (Yapese didn’t need to borrow a word like fundoshi ‘loincloth’), chichibando ‘breast band’ (definitely a foreign concept in traditional Yap), and kachido ‘movie’ (< Japanese 活動大写真 katsudou daishashin ‘moving big picture’).

Third, how the items so labelled are subclassified. The relative sizes of the old familiar cylindrical dry-cell batteries are indicated numerically in Japanese, ranging from largest to smallest: 単１形 tan-ichi-gata (D cell), 単２形 tan-ni-gata (C cell), 単３形 tan-san-gata (AA cell), 単４形 tan-yon-gata (AAA cell). My electronic dictionary requires two 単４形, my digital camera requires two 単３形 (I forgot to bring my recharger), and our gas stove requires two 単１形. I’ve recently had to replace all three sets. At least I don’t have to carry two spares of the largest size around with me. (BTW, Philbert Ono’s Photowords is a great resource for translating photography-related vocabulary, including battery types, between English and Japanese.)

Finally, when I removed the Fujitsu 単１形 batteries from the stove and looked for the size designation, I first thought they were 単０形. After all, the midnight hour in Japanese is 0:00 reiji ‘zero o’clock’. But the characters surrounding the 0 were making a different claim: 水銀０使用 suigin zero shiyou ‘mercury zero use’. When I examined the other replacement batteries I had bought, they all made the same claim, no matter whether the brand was Maxell or Fujitsu (both made in Japan), or Konnoc (made in China). I hadn’t kept up on dry-cell battery technology. Fujitsu Magazine (July 1997) explains.

By using purified materials，a special zinc alloy powder，and a zinc-indium-bismuth-aluminum anode，and by establishing clean production lines，we have been able to develop an alkaline-manganese dry battery that has no mercury．The discharge rate of the battery was improved by remodeling the structure of the cathode．Moreover，by remodeling the anode disc，the battery has been made much safer．

Also，since 1996 we have been producing ferrite cores for the deflection yokes of cathode ray tubes using raw material recovered from spent dry batteries.

There are still a few other products from which mercury needs to be eliminated.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s good that Japan is trying to restrict mercury pollution, which caused Minamata disease. BTW, the Japanese (and general Sinitic) compound for the element mercury 水銀 suigin translates literally as ‘water silver’ rather than ‘quick (i.e., living) silver’. The planet Mercury is 水星 suisei ‘water-star’, and Wednesday is 水曜日 suiyoubi ‘water weekday’, which matches pretty well the Romance-language names for the same day of the week: Romanian miercuri, Spanish miércoles, Portuguese mercoles, French mercredi.

UPDATE: Reader Peter North adds a comment and query:

Sorry, I can’t resist reporting a new usage in Philippine English, not “Taglish” (since 2003). “Low Bat” describing a child lacking energy – needing food or sleep. Presumably derived from abbreviations on cell phone displays – you appreciate how widespread and central to life cell phones have become. Anyone seen this elsewhere?

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by | 3 April 2006 · 1:41 pm

Crescent, Star, and Cherry Blossoms, 1943

The Japanese had promised less to the Malays than they had to the Burmese, but by early 1943 they seemed to be offering a little more. The Marquis Tokugawa’s scheme to reform and diminish the Malay sultanates was abandoned, and the Japanese became more solicitous towards the rulers themselves. The also began to dabble in Islamic affairs. On 5-7 April 1943, the ulama, Islamic religious leaders from across the peninsula and from Sumatra, were summoned to a conference in Singapore…. The mayor even went to the trouble of having a room set aside for the delegates’ evening prayers. The ulama was regaled with a show, a film presentation and speeches on the progress of the war. The Japanese impressed on the Malays that Nippon was the true defender of the faith….

The delegates were each sent home with a white commemorative medal, enamelled in scarlet, embossed with a crescent and a star, surrounded by twelve cherry blossoms. The Malay phrase Sehiduplah dengan Nippon – ‘Live with Nippon’ – was inscribed on the back in Arabic script. The ulama left giving formal expressions of satisfaction at Japan’s commitment to protect Islam and of support for the war.

The gestures were token on both sides. Before the Mufti of Pahang had left for the meeting he had met with his sultan and the Japanese governor of the state. The governor had posed the question: ‘Can the Malay States declare a holy war (jihad) against the British and her allies?’ The question was referred to the Mufti. He quickly answered: ‘Yes, provided that the Japanese emperor is a Muslim.’ And there the matter rested. There was confusion and anger when the Japanese followed through their initiative by thrusting prepared texts on kathis to be included in their Friday sermons and by encouraging prayers for the emperor and the success of the war. On occasion, Japanese officers themselves invaded mosques and interrupted prayers with speeches, even ordering the worshippers to turn their prayer mats 180 degrees away from Mecca and towards Tokyo. This propaganda became more subtle over time, but it generated anxieties. In some areas attendance at the mosque for Friday prayers fell. More generally, religious values were felt to be under threat; divorce rates, gambling and opium use were dramatically on the rise. These were profane times. Like all Japan’s efforts at political engineering, the most important effects of the Islamic conference were unforeseen by its initiators. It realized a long-held ambition of many clerics: the creation of a more unified voice for Islam, outside of the control of the rulers and their courts. This was to have far reaching implications for politics of religious reform in Malaya after the war. The real significance of pan-Asianism lay not in what it achieved for the Japanese Empire but in what it allowed others to achieve for themselves.

SOURCE: Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire & the War with Japan, by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper (Penguin, 2004), pp. 315-316

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by | 3 April 2006 · 11:39 am

Japanese History to Chew on

Here‘s a history course that really gives you something to chew on.

Last semester I gave a course on the historical development of East Asian cuisines and food cultures. While some food history courses take anthropological approaches, this was a conventional history course. We traced a narrative arc from the earliest known foods of the region, examining how political, economic, technological and trade developments affected diet and foodways. So, for example, when we got to the Tokugawa period, we discussed both how sankin kotai, by creating a permanent population of temporary bachelors in Edo, spurred the development of restaurant culture and dramatically increased the popularity of foods suitable for take-away dining, like sushi and noodles, and how the closed country policy meant that Japan experienced a much slower process of assimilating New World ingredients than China did. Plus we had some “cool show-and-tell cultural events.”

via Frog in a Well

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by | 1 April 2006 · 10:58 pm

Fruitful English? Or a Dying Language?

This Fruitful English website tells you all you need to know about teaching English in Japan. (I found it by way of an ad at the top of my Gmail inbox.) It looks like an online 自動販売機 jidouhanbaiki ‘(automatic) vending machine’, with instructions entirely in Japanese. Selling One-Cup English. English classes in Japan explain the language; they don’t teach it. As if it were Hittite. Well, at least that won’t be a problem after the demise of English on March 31, 2058 (according to Language Hat).

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by | 31 March 2006 · 3:37 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Hata, Hi, Tateito, Yokoito

Ashikaga was once an important center for Japanese textile manufacturing, dating back to the days of silkworm-raising. In the early days of Japan’s industrial revolution, there were waterwheels (水車 mizuguruma) all over this piedmont town. Nowadays, the textile industry has left town, leaving behind a legacy of handicraft artisans, fine textile shops, and a few working pieces of machinery in a “play-learn” emporium (遊学館 yuugakkan), where you can learn how to weave a coaster on a small floor loom. (It costs ¥400 and usually takes 30-45 minutes.) Last week, while my visiting in-laws were trying their hands at weaving, I stood around translating, looking up words in my electronic dictionary, and listening to the two old timers who were demonstrating a braiding machine and a spinning machine that was plying thread from bobbins onto reels (clockwise on one side, counterclockwise on the other). They were excited to have an interested audience for a change.

One of the best things about doing fieldwork in a second language is that you often learn new things in the process, and also get a better command of vocabulary in your primary language. I learned a lot of English fish names a couple of decades ago when I elicited the local names for several hundred fish in a coastal language of New Guinea. Here are a few items of useful vocabulary from my 遊学館 experience.

機 hata, loom – The Chinese character with which Japanese hata is written also indicates all manner of new-fangled machinery, such as 洗濯機 sentakki ‘washing machine’, 飛行機 hikouki ‘flying machine (= airplane)’, and the Japanese ‘machine man’ superhero Kikaida. So now ‘loom’ can also be rendered as 織機 shokki ‘weaving machine’, and ‘power loom’ as 機械機 kikaibata (lit. ‘machine loom’). Worse yet, the same character also occurs in the famous Sinitic compound meaning ‘crisis’: 危機 kiki, danger + something not quite equal to opportunity—more like ‘wit, resource, device’.

杼 hi, shuttle – In sharp contrast to 機 ‘loom’, the character for ‘shuttle’ is rare enough that my electronic dictionary ranks it last among the ten kanji pronounced hi and Microsoft’s Japanese-language input system doesn’t even offer it among its 42 ways to write the syllable hi. I had to go copy the character from unicode.org. In any case, most Japanese are quite familiar with the word adapted from English: シャトル shatoru, as in shatoru basu and supeesu shatoru.

縦糸 tateito, warp thread; 横糸 yokoito, weft thread – The terms that translate ‘warp’ and ‘weft’ render a whole range of similar oppositions: 縦引き鋸 tatebiki nokogiri ‘ripsaw‘ vs. 横切り yokogiri ‘cross-cut saw‘; 縦波 tatenami ‘longitudinal wave’ vs. 横波 yokonami ‘broadside wave, cross sea’; 縦揺れ tateyure ‘pitch (of a ship)’ vs. 横揺れ yokoyure ‘roll (or a ship)’; 縦書き tategaki ‘vertical writing’ vs. 横書き yokogaki ‘horizontal writing’. Finally, the highest rank in sumo is the 横綱 yokozuna (lit. ‘horizontal rope’), who is entitled to wear the ceremonial rope (綱 tsuna) across his waist.

Postscript: Weave : Weft :: Heave : Heft :: Leave : Left :: Bereave : Bereft. Can you think of any more English words that follow this pattern? Aha! Language Hat adds Cleave : Cleft.

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