Kanji Cabinet hanzi bonanza

丼

丼 ショウ、タン、セイ どんぶり a large bowl for serving rice with meat and vegetables, or the meal served in such a bowl

丼 is an interesting character. Generally regarded as a distinctly Japanese character and visible all over the place in any Japanese city, it’s only now being added to the Joyo kanji list.

It turns out this character has a history of use in China as well, and though its recent popularity there may be thanks to Japanese influence, the use of this character for a popular rice dish may have its roots in Cantonese.

The above ad shows the character in use in China, borrowed from Japanese.

The character originated as 井, meaning “well”, with the inner “丶” stroke added to represent something fallen into a well. The character is not considered to be a standard Mandarin character, but in Cantonese, it can be pronounced dön and means “the sound of something falling down a well”.

Let’s leave that for a moment and look at the Japanese word donburi. During the Edo Period, this food was served at a type of restaurant called a kendonya (慳貪屋). The dish it was served in was called a kendonburi-bachi (慳貪振り鉢), or donburi-bachi for short. Hachi, of course, means “bowl”. During the same period, coincidentally, there were cotton or satin bags called donburi, which, thanks to homophony, suggested the idea of a casual dish into which any food item could be thrown. On top of that, giongo words like どぶん and どぼん suggested the sound of something plunking into water.

At some point, it seemed a natural fit to borrow the character 丼, which had a similar pronunciation in certain Chinese dialects and meant “the sound of something thrown into a well”, and apply it to “donburi”.

Or so it seems, anyway. I’ll revise this article if I uncover more information about 丼.

俳

俳 ハイ unorthodox; actor; haiku

The 俳 in 俳句 (haiku) originally meant “unorthodox”. How did it come to be used for Japan’s most famous form of poetry?

Haiku were originally called hokka (発句). They were simply the starting verse of a renga, a collaborative poem written by two or more participants. Over the centuries, a more comical, down-to-earth, less aristocratic form of renga called haikai (俳諧) emerged, and heavily influenced haiku as it grew as an independent poetry form. At the end of the 19th century, the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki proposed calling hokka “haikai no ku”, or “haiku” for short — and thus its modern name.

不許葷酒入門 • No Smelly Vegetables or Alcohol Beyond This Point

Apparently you will sometimes see stone markers (石碑) at temples with the following phrase engraved: 不許葷酒入門 (ふきょくんしゅにゅうもん). Literally, it means “No Onions or Alcohol on Temple Grounds”.

葷 refers to smelly vegetables, particularly of the onion family. There are five traditional ones in particular, the go-kun (五葷) — garlic, onions, leeks, rakkyo, and nobiru, although the list seems to vary a bit by source — that are apparently forbidden in temples by some Buddhist sects. Why? Because eating them gives you bad breath, and strong odors were thought to excite the senses and interfere with the mind. Alcohol was banned in the same temples for its effect on the mind. *Photo credit: Kamakiri

虫 and 蟲

蟲 むし ジュウ、チュウ bug, worm

Everyone knows the character 虫, but what about its rare cousin 蟲? The two have sort of a tangled relationship.

虫 was originally pronounced キ used to represent the mamushi (pitviper), as well as being more broadly applied to reptiles. 蟲 was derived from 虫, pronounced チュウ, and used to represent bugs and insects. However, 虫 also became a common abbreviation or variation of 蟲 as well as replacing it in simplified Chinese writing.

蟲 still shows up in a few places, such as in 鳥蟲書 (ちょうちゅうしょ), a rare and particularly ornamental variant of seal script, sometimes called “bird-and-worm script” in English. Another place you might have seen it is in the title of a manga series called 蟲師.

Example of Bird-and-Worm Script
Photo Credit: 三上勝生 (Masao Mikami)