I’ve found the nearly perfect kanji sandwich! Check this out:

徒競走 (tokyōsō: running race)
     to go on foot + to compete + to run

What a thing of beauty! If you took the first kanji, 徒, and removed 彳 (a radical that Henshall defines as “movement along a road” and that Spahn has as “to walk a short distance, stop, linger”), you would have a completely symmetrical compound! (Well, it would be symmetrical in the ABA or ABBA sense. Sticklers might argue that true symmetry requires the word to start with the mirror image of 走. But such people are not permitted to take a bite out of my kanji-sandwich joy.)

Tokyōsō is also one of those great Japanese words where a vowel repeats down the line. If you insert one more kanji into 徒競走, you keep the same sound effect while introducing even more fun:

徒歩競走 (toho kyōsō: running race)
     to go on foot + to walk + to compete + to run

Together, the first two kanji, 徒歩 (toho), mean “walking.” But whereas 歩 means “to walk,” 徒 can mean either “to walk” or “to run.” Hmm, there’s a big difference between walking and running! Strange to blur the distinction. Maybe this word gives runners a nice “out”; if they get tired and start walking, they can point to the 歩 in 徒歩競走 for confirmation that walking is very much part of a running race.

An Array of Races

But let’s get to the root of the matter:
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I’ve made an exciting discovery! As you may know, I’ve been collecting exceptions to a rule. If there are back-to-back instances of the same kanji, the repetition symbol 々 typically replaces one (as in 時々, tokidoki: sometimes). Thus far, we’ve seen five anomalies:

夜中中 (yonakajū: throughout the night)
     night + middle + middle

中城城 (Nakagusukujō: a castle in Okinawa)
     inside + castle + castle

民主主義 (minshu-shugi: democracy)
     people + to play a central role + to play a central role +
     righteousness

One occasionally sees 民主々義, but it’s not common.

直接接触 (chokusetsu-sesshoku: direct contact)
     straight + contact + contact + contact

東京特許許可局
Tōkyō Tokkyo Kyoka Kyoku
Tokyo Department for Patent Authorization

For the breakdown of this tongue twister, see the link.

In the first two examples, the yomi changes with the duplication (e.g., naka versus JŪ for 中 and gusuku versus JŌ for 城).

Anyway, the big news is that I’ve found a sixth exception, and it, too, involves a yomi change:
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Today’s blog is going to go all over the place. If that makes you so dizzy that you become sick to your stomach, then you’ve come to the right place, because soon you’ll learn a few ways to talk about that!

Take a look at this sentence (unless you’re eating, in which case you might want to wait):

血を見て彼は胸が悪くなった。
Chi o mite kare wa mune ga waruku natta.
The sight of blood turned his stomach.

血 (chi: blood)
見 (mi(ru): to see)
彼 (kare: he)
胸が悪くなる (mune ga waruku naru: to feel sick, to be nauseated)     chest + bad, sick

胸が悪くなる Won’t Always Make You Sick …

There are a few things to notice here. One is the extremely cool repetition of the 目 shape in 血 and 見! I love that 目 makes a 90-degree turn here. We almost see this shape again in 悪, though that’s a stretch. Anyway, it would be fun to see 目 somersault down a sentence, rotating a full 360 degrees (though if you’re worried about nausea, you may want to put aside ideas of rotation).
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Not that many things happen to the chest. Our fingers get papercuts, our toes get stubbed, and I’m forever bruising my thighs. But unless one plays American football, rugby, or the like, our chests don’t get whacked around as our limbs do.

In Japanese, though, any number of things can happen to the chest. Take the issue of being hit:

胸を打つ (mune o utsu: to be emotionally moving)
     chest, heart + to strike

In Japanese, striking the chest can provoke tears, and not of physical pain. We’re a world away from the rough-and-tumble world of macho sports! In fact, we’re actually talking about the heart here.

As we saw last week, expressions about 胸 (KYŌ, mune, muna-: chest, breast, thorax, inmost heart, mind, feelings) can be strictly anatomical on the one hand or figurative and feeling-based on the other. Today’s crop of 胸 words is almost entirely figurative and feeling-based. From this batch of words, we find that the chest/heart can be involved in a wide range of things—so many, in fact, that one wonders what it can’t do. Try to figure that out in the following quiz. (Must be why they call it a “figurative” expression!)
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If you saw the following word, what would you think it meant?

胸像 (kyōzō)

As you may know, 胸 means “chest,” and 像 often means “image,” as in 心像 (shinzō: mental image, heart + image). The chest and heart are fairly interrelated concepts. So if heart + image means “mental image,” what could chest + image be? A chest x-ray? A man’s image of a woman’s chest? A poor self-image, based on a less-than-robust chest? (This brings to mind comedian John Oliver, who says he has a concave chest and isn’t fit for any sports, though he could always serve as a sail.)

No, it’s none of those things. Instead, here’s the deal:

胸像 (kyōzō: bust (statue))     chest + statue

Turns out, 像 can also mean “statue.” And a statue of a chest is a bust!

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You might think that, as an inanimate object, a rod would be incapable of doing much. But 棒 (BŌ: rod, pole, stick) pairs off with several actions, as in the following expressions:

棒読み (bōyomi)     rod + reading
棒を引く (bō o hiku)     rod + to pull
棒立ち (bōdachi)     rod + standing

Any ideas what these might mean? If I were guessing blindly, I might interpret 棒読み as a divining rod, an instrument to detect water or metal. Meanwhile, 棒を引く could refer to pulling a sword from a stone. As for 棒立ち, it could be a telephone pole. Wrong in every case! Let’s take ’em one by one.
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You know the expression “adding insult to injury”? The following term captures that feeling perfectly:

説教泥棒 (sekkyō dorobō: burglar who preaches at the victim about methods of preventing similar crimes)
     to preach + to instruct + thief (last 2 chars.)

First he breaks into your house, ties you up, and robs you. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, he looks at you sternly and launches into a lecture: “You really need to be more careful about security, or else you’ll continue to be the victim of such crimes.” He has redeemed himself for his crime by teaching you a valuable lesson. Why, quite possibly you’re indebted to him!

We could consider him to be a refined burglar. And in today’s blog, we’ll see lots of ways in which thieves have refined their skills by creating thievery specialties. These niches could only exist in Japan, the land of highly specific words, exquisite attention to detail, and unthinkable levels of refinement.

If you’re to head down the road to refined robbery, you’ll need one basic word, which you saw in the latter half of 説教泥棒:

泥棒 (dorobō: thief; theft)     mud + tough guy

Notes on 泥 and 棒 …

As you can see, 泥棒 refers either to the thief or to the theft.

泥棒 as “Thief” or “Theft” …

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I have little interest in anything steely or mechanical, but this word caught my eye and leapt right into my heart:

心棒 (shinbō: shaft, axle)     heart + rod

An axle is a rod at the heart of a car! (Well, an axle may not be the heart in the way that Tokyo is the beating heart of Japan. I guess the car engine performs that function. But the axle is certainly at the center of things.)

If 心棒 is an axle, what happens when you precede this compound with 用 (YŌ, mochiiru: use, service)? The word 用心棒 should refer to the function of an axle or perhaps to rotation itself, shouldn’t it? No, that would be far too logical. Instead, we have this:

用心棒 (yōjinbō: bodyguard)     service + heart + tough guy

If you’ve been reading this blog religiously, including the comments, then you’ve recently seen 用心棒. The last kanji is by far the least common. Here are its vitals:

棒 (BŌ: pole, rod, stick)

The Etymology of 棒

Although this character usually means “pole, rod, stick,” its meaning shifts to “tough guy” in 用心棒.

You may also have seen the following yojijukugo that punkf thoughtfully supplied in a comment:
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It’s officially summer! And on Alberto’s haiku calendar, the July page celebrates the arrival of summer!

Here’s the PDF where he explains the haiku a bit. Don’t be fooled (as I was) into thinking that 来ぬ means “has not arrived.” What we’re seeing is an old, literary, present perfect form of the verb. In other words, summer has come!

I’ve celebrated the arrival of summer with a trip to Spain, where I’ve been for nearly a week. Hope you’ve also rung in the season in a happy way. If not, there’s nothing like kanji to make you happy, so let’s get to it!

If you saw this compound and its breakdown, what would you think arasuji meant?

粗筋 (arasuji)     rough + plot

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If someone planned to serve you the following, how would you respond?

粗煮 (arani: dish consisting of bony fish parts boiled in soy sauce)
     coarse + to boil

Blech! Not one part of that sounds good to me. Bony fish parts and hot soy sauce do the opposite of whetting my appetite.

I would have guessed that you’d make this dish only if the fridge were barren, save for a few bottled sauces and a moldy onion growing new parts. But it’s entirely possible that 粗煮 is a delicacy! As it turns out, the answer isn’t so clear-cut; see the link for more on that.

Native Takes on the Situation …

From the following definitions of the first kanji, you can certainly see how this could be food of the last resort:

粗 (ara)

1. leftovers (after filleting a fish)
2. rice chaff (i.e., worthless husks of grains)
3. flaw (especially of a person)
4. a prefix meaning “rough; roughly”
5. crude; raw; natural; wild

You get all that just when the yomi is ara. And there are two more yomi. Here’s the full story on this kanji:
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