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Delightful Intervals: Part 1 of 3

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From the last blog, you know all about men, particularly (DAN, NAN, otoko: man). And you’ve likely seen in 時間 (jikan: time), which breaks down as hours + interval. So perhaps you’ll be as surprised as I to find that combines with to mean “adultery, adulterer” (間男: maotoko). What does contribute to this word? It’s tricky to figure out, because has quite a few meanings.

I know commonly means “space.” Does 間男 imply that a man commits adultery because he needs space from his wife?!

But can also refer to rooms. So does the in 間男 refer to the room in which an adulterer proves his manhood?

Then again, can mean “timing, situation, occasion,” as in 間違い (machigai: mistake: timing + difference). And as I mentioned, can mean “interval.” Both “timing” and “interval” sound like plausible interpretations of the in 間男, because adultery is a matter of impeccable timing, and people having affairs need to find just the right intervals for their dalliances!

“Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.” —John Barrymore

In today’s blog and the next two, we’ll look at various meanings of (which has five (!) yomi: KAN, KEN, aida, ai, and ma). If it ever feels hopeless to pin down the meaning of , consider this: Its shape actually matches some of its meanings. Here, have a closer look:

I know is supposed to be a pictograph of a sun () at a gate (). But look how the seems to have been inserted between the two sides of the gate. Well, what’s an interval but an insertion between two entities? (Think, for instance, of the intermission between acts of a play.) From another perspective, one can see as a rough layout of a house—a blueprint with two corner rooms and a third room just to the “south.” Three rooms—that would come in handy for an adulterer trying to juggle several women.

 

Rooms for Living and Dying

Flipping through dictionaries to pin down the meaning of in 間男, I made one of the coolest kanji discoveries ever:

居間 (ima: living room)     to exist + room


I learned ima long before I knew any kanji, so I somehow didn’t realize that this word for “living room” even had kanji! Indeed it does, combining , i(ru), a common word meaning “to exist,” and “room” (the real meaning of in this case).

More on the Existence of 居 …

So 居間 is the room where one exists. Same as in English—a living room is a room where one lives (though presumably one doesn’t die upon heading for other rooms). And, if one takes one’s cue from the breakdown of kanji compounds, you can do more than simply exist in a Japanese living room. By definition, you can also drink tea there:

茶の間 (chanoma: living room)     tea + ‘s + room

Drinking tea is one of my favorite things to do—perhaps my second favorite thing after existing. Living rooms seem more appealing by the minute.

You’ll encounter a few more “room” compounds in the first Verbal Logic Quiz.

For Verbal Logic Quiz 1 …

 

The Positive Aspects of Negative Space

The sense of as “room” spun off from the primary meaning of as “space.” By “space” I don’t mean “outer space,” although does play a part in one astronomical word:

惑星間 (wakuseikan: interplanetary)
     planet (1st 2 chars.) + between

On the Breakdown of 惑星

Here, is the space between planets, reflecting the way this character originally represented the negative space between objects. That meaning influences this straightforward word, as well:

間隔 (kankaku: interval, space)     interval + partition

Actually, 間隔 denotes intervals of both space and time—both the space between houses and the interval between arriving trains.

This meaning of as “physical space” also shapes several words that I find charming and intriguing:

狭間 (hazama: interval; valley, ravine)     narrow + space

The first kanji, , is sema(i), “narrow,” although haza, an alternate kun-yomi, comes into play here. I love the logic of 狭間: a valley is a narrow space!

間道 (kandō: secret path, side road, shortcut)
     interval, space + road

The second kanji is (DŌ, michi: road, way), which can have the esoteric sense of a spiritual path, as in 神道 (Shintō: gods + way, or literally, “the way of the gods”). But in 間道, the lends the down-to-earth sense of a paved road. That may sound dull, but the spices things up again, referring perhaps to the space between buildings. Who can resist the idea of a secret path or an alley leading to places one has never been?

三遊間 (sanyūkan: between third base and the shortstop)
     three + to play + space

English lacks a formal word for the all-important space in which the shortstop stands, and there’s certainly no English word for the space between the shortstop and third base. How specific of the Japanese to divide and subdivide that area! I like seeing “play” as the middle kanji here.

行間 (gyōkan: between the lines)     line + space

Both of these kanji are protean, the meanings and yomi shifting from one compound to another, with often drifting off into abstraction. But in 行間, these characters have clear and concrete meanings; refers to lines of text, and denotes a physical space. The equivalent of the typographical word “leading,” 行間 means the blank space between lines of text. But 行間 also has a metaphorical sense; 行間を読む (gyōkan o yomu, in which yomu means to read) is “reading between the lines.”

And here’s perhaps my favorite word in which means “physical space”:

垣間見る (kaimamiru: to take a peep at, catch a glimpse of)
     fence + interval + to look at


You’ll find a few notes about this compound if you click the following link.

For Notes on Fence-Peeping …

Now it’s time for your second Verbal Logic Quiz, a game that asks you to make sense of as an interval. I wish you luck. You’ll need it!

For Verbal Logic Quiz 2 …