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With autumn in the air, the “leaf” kanji 葉 beckons, just asking to be explored. Its shape might look rather daunting, but if you break 葉 into three pieces, it’s much less intimidating. Let’s put that leaf under a microscope:
葉
At the top, we find the grass radical 
. Under that, we see 世, which means “world” (as in 世界, sekai: world, world + world). And at the bottom lies 木 (ki: tree). A leafy world consists of grass and trees! Under ordinary circumstances, the tree would be above the grass, but never mind.
Autumn Passage, Wasatch Mountains, Utah
Photo credit: Elizabeth Carmel
Yomi, Yomi, Yomi,
I Got Leaves in My Tummy
The yomi for 葉 are quite simple: YŌ and ha, as this pair of words illustrates:
落ち葉 (ochiba: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
Here, ha has turned into ba through voicing.
落葉 (rakuyō: fallen leaves) to fall + leaf
In these compounds, the same characters appear in the same order, and the words have identical meanings. And yet ochiba and rakuyō sound nothing alike! Ochiba combines two kun-yomi, whereas rakuyō contains two on-yomi. And that alone accounts for the slipsiding sounds. No matter how many times I encounter such pairs, they blow my mind. (Therefore, we could consider these particular compounds to be leaf-blowers.)
On the subject of yomi surprises, I’m always thrown off when I find kun-yomi as short as ha. Kun-yomi tend to be mouthfuls, such as atarashii (新しい: new) and kanarazu (必ず: without fail). When I learned that ha was the kun-yomi for 葉, I wondered which other kanji had ha as their kun-yomi. You’ll find my answer at the next link.
Leaves of Poetry
Perhaps less surprisingly, the meanings of some 葉 compounds come across as sheer poetry:
露を宿した葉 (tsuyu o yadoshita ha: leaf heavy with dew)
dew + to dwell + leaf葉陰 (hakage: under the (shadow) of the leaves (of a tree))
leaf + shadow
This brings to mind languorous titles, such as Desire Under the Elms. It also makes me think of Shady Maple syrup. Either way, very pleasant connotations.
葉越し (hagoshi: seen through the leaves)
leaf + across, beyondA leaf-filtered view sounds lovely, though perhaps this word has a touch of the perverse!
For Even Stranger
Behavior Involving Foliage …
飛花落葉 (hika-rakuyō: Blossoms fall and leaves scatter; the impermanence of worldly things) to fly + flower + to fall + leaf
We’ve already seen the on-on combination rakuyō. When you preface that with the first kanji in 飛行機 (hikōki: airplane, to fly + to go + machine) and the kanji for “flower,” 花, you produce a compound with a quintessential bit of Japanese philosophy.
