E-Kanji

Many of you know that I study Japanese sometimes in my spare time. My first year in Japan, I studied at least an hour every night - but lately I haven't been studying as much. I have been reading a few interesting things, though. One is a sports magazine from the 1980s I bought used. It's titled "The Truth about Rikidozan", and it has a big article on his life.

The other is a book about the histories and etymologies of various kanji, the Chinese ideographs which are supposed to make learning Japanese so difficult. I actually enjoy them more than many other parts of Japanese, though. For example, the character 妾 originally symbolized a woman with a tattoo needle. According to the book, in ancient China, a person who committed a crime had to get a tattoo, and a woman who had such a tattoo would probably become a servant. A lot of kanji are related to religion and war - two things that are rather taboo in modern Japan. To me, that just makes them even more interesting!