Reading Japanese Characters
The greatest
pitfall for all Japanese sword enthusiasts has always been that all of the
crucial information was in Japanese. If you undertook the arduous task of trying
to learn the language, even then Japanese sword terminology is almost another
language in itself, with some of the characters using a completely different
sound far from their ÔeverydayÕ use.
With the specialist publications in English still in the minority, we would all
love to be able to read the captions that accompany the National Treasure
Swords on display at Tokyo National Museum or The Japanese Sword Museum in
Yoyogi, let alone the fantastic exhibition catalogues that come from Japan and
the NBTHK journal sword descriptions. This is without trying to read Ôold
JapaneseÕ character inscriptions on the tang or the Origami from NBTHK and NTHK. If your feeling despondent already,
donÕt! The amount of people in Japan that understand sword terminology and how
to read the ÔoldÕ characters are in the minority too.
I began to think
about all the information I have accumulated just to be able to read the
Japanese language sword captions, oshigata of the various pieces, and of course
the papers one receives from the NBTHK, NTHK and others.
We are often misled by
generalisations made in the beginner books and we tend to take what we read in
books as gospel. If we start by trying to learn the basic characters of that
which we already know the terminology for, then it may be easier as we already
have a frame of reference. I have included two lists of basic terms
with Japanese characters and how they are pronounced with a loose translation. I
have not translated everything as not everything needs it. I have also not put
every variation of characters, because if you stick with it, you will be able to
make the connections for yourself. For example: The character Ô大-Dai or OÕ is an
adjective meaning big or a lot as in Ô大磨上げ-OsuriageÕ and
the characterÕ小-koÕ means small
as in Ô小沸-konieÕ. It is
also handy to know the characters for; Ôshaku-尺(30.3cm),
Sun-寸(3.03cm) and
Bun-分(3.03mm) for the traditional measurements used in
Japanese text regarding swords, as well as the characters for the numbers 1 -
10, 一二三 四五六七八九十. These are used
in units of ten, 1-9 used
solitarily, teen numbers like 14 would be 十四 (10 + 4), 27
would be 二十七 (2 x 10 +7) and
so on and so forth.
This is only
intended as a guide for enthusiasts who would like to attempt to read Japanese
captions etc, for the basic information without having to read a whole book. There are various
web-sites that are excellant to use for aid in reading kanji.
I edited the above article from the original that was written by Paul Martin.