Did you know that I don’t know everything there is to know about Japanese? I know, I’m surprised too. They actually let people get PhDs without checking if they know everything there is to know these days, what a world! Here’s another secret: if I don’t write things down, I sometimes forget them. Another unconscionable truth which causes me great embarrassment. Facts are facts though, so here’s the first post in a series where I note five things that surprised me as I do my research, and then put them down on “paper” so I don’t forget. Hopefully, as part of this process, you learn something of interest too!
1. Toganashiten is a word
This year, I finished reading Sasahara Hiroyuki’s “方言漢字 (Dialect kanji)“. Sasahara is an excellent scholar of Japanese script, and some of his books, like “訓読みのはなし (On kunyomi)”, rank in the most important and interesting that I read while reading up on the history of the Japanese writing system for my PhD. So when I found that Sasahara had written a book covering differences in kanji design and use around Japan, I rushed out to buy it immediately. Well, immediately for me. I was three years late from the publication date, but I wasted no personal time in grabbing a copy.
As a research project, 方言漢字 is an incredible accomplishment and piece of scholarship. Throughout the various chapters of the book, Sasahara goes around regions of Japan noting kanji which are only used in specific prefectures or even towns, and catalogues them for inclusion in the JIS standards which dictate which kanji can actually be produced by modern computers. Without this kind of work, kanji that have been used historically for names and places are impossible to input digitally, resulting in a form of language death, or cases where people can’t get the kanji that have been used in their family names for generations to be ratified on legal documents. Sasahara’s work is therefore not just an interesting testament to the diversity of kanji and the creativity of Japanese writers, but an active effort to preserve these elements of written Japanese. Unfortunately, speaking honestly, I found the book itself less than an enthralling reading experience. Unlike most of Sasahara’s work, it’s written in a kind of personal travelogue perspective, featuring long passages about, well, traveling. While the attempt at atmosphere is nice, the discussions of which taxis he took, what conferences he was in the area for, how the weather was, or what buses were available sometimes feel more detailed than the kanji analysis in the same sections. The breakdowns of what’s going on with some kanji also could use improved detail, as there’s a bit of assumed knowledge about what parts are unique or interesting sometimes. Critiques aside though, I’m certainly still extremely glad I read it personally as someone who studies kanji! Indeed, the book turned me on to a lot of new kanji, words, and concepts, one of which is toganashiten.
The word toganashiten translates literally into something like “blameless dots”, and refers to dots added to kanji – usually during calligraphy – that “shouldn’t” be there and have no real purpose except to improve the visual balance of a character. These toganashiten are also, and perhaps more commonly, known as 補空 (ほくう, “void compensators”) or 捨て筆 (すてひつ, “throw-away writing”). I say “perhaps more commonly” very relatively here. To be honest, none of these are common terms. My computer doesn’t even provide 補空 as an option for the sound sequence ほくう, so don’t expect to whip out any of the three words in casual conversation and have Japanese people who aren’t really into kanji follow along. But all three are real words, and they are used by kanji/calligraphy specialists, as in the below description that “hokuu and toganashiten are the names for dots you don’t need to write but can, and help with balance of empty space”.
What surprised me most about toganashiten though was that it seems like literally no one has written about them in English. Usually, when I come across specialist vocabulary relating to Japanese writing or grammar, I can find at least one English language blog or research paper that mentioned it. In contrast though, for a brief time a tweet I made talking about toganashiten was the only English hit available on Google. Some people have copied my tweet as their own, so you can see a few hits if you look up the word now, but I’m certainly hoping that this blog post will serve as the first formal recognition of toganashiten on the English language internet that goes beyond 280 characters. Seems like something I could put on my resume perhaps? Dr. Wes Robertson: first person to write about toganishiten in English.
So next time you’re writing kanji and you accidently add an extra dash or dot and your teacher marks you down wrong, just tell them that, no, it’s actually fine, you’re participating in a long part of Japanese tradition. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to know (because this is the internet I’d like to stress immediately that this is a joke and you shouldn’t do this). At the very least, if you happen to stumble across a manhole cover with some kanji on it that feature extra strokes, you’ll know what to call it.
2. Kanji that repeat elements are called rigiji but maybe shouldn’t be
You know how some kanji are made up of bits of other kanji? Like 品 is a bunch of 口 and 森 is a bunch of 木 and 蠢 is two 虫 and a 春? If you’re like me up until recently, you’ve long found something inherently enjoyable about these kind of kanji but never really knew what to call them. Well, worry no more about the last part! There’s actually a name for this type of character: 理義字 (りぎじ/rigiji)
What is fascinating about 理義字 though isn’t just that they have a name, it’s that the name is a mistake. As Wikipedia notes, the blame for this mistake lies entirely on the shoulders of… Wikipedia. Basically, the text you see below lays out the issue clearly. The problem starts with the existence of a textbook published in 1716 which included a final chapter called the 理義字 collection. This chapter featured 144 kanji, and many did involve repetitions of the same character. However, more than a few others did not, with kanji like 凹 and 孕 also appearing under this (apparently invented by the author) heading of 理義字.
One of the few English language websites talking about 理義字 notes this clearly: while the first few examples in the textbook were all repeated characters, mostly triplets (remember this fact, I’m foreshadowing), the latter kanji in the same chapter involve no repetition of elements. The website’s author therefore goes on to posit that the original meaning of 理義字 was characters (字) whose design’s reason (理) relates to their meaning or purpose (義). The earlier mentioned 孕 first this definition for sure, as it means “become pregnant” and there’s a child, and 凹 is an indent, so, pretty clear there too. Explanations for kanji which no longer exist but also have a “visual – meaning” link can be seen below.
Regardless of what 理義字 was intended to mean though, it’s quite clear that the 理義字 chapter was not a chapter of kanji involving repeated elements. But this didn’t stop someone in 2008 from taking a Wikipedia article on “kanji with multiple characters” and renaming it 理義字, citing the aforementioned textbook as their source. The change went through, as whose going to go dig up an obscure textbook and check? Clearly the anonymous editor knows what they are doing, right? Well, unfortunately not, and it took until 2023 for someone to write an article telling everyone that they were wrong. You can download the long overdue work of scholarship for free here: shoutout to Yamaguchi Shohei of Kansai University for both catching the error and shedding light on the original document that caused it.
To give Wikipedia some credit, they do note that they weren’t the first place to produce this error. There are at least two other historic books which used the “repeated character” definition of 理義字, which were likely part of the sources used to justify the initial claim. However, these books are both written after the 1719 textbook, so they both misrepresent its intent. More importantly, they are both very obscure, so Wikipedia is absolutely the source of the error spreading. Or, in Wikipedia’s own words, “common use of rigiji to refer to a kanji made up of repeated shapes cannot be seen before the 2008 Wikipedia article”. But by 2023 the damage is now done, and the “error” is therefore no longer an error unless we subscribe to the viewpoint that the first use of a term is the only meaning its ever allowed to have. The Wikipedia article has solidified 理義字 as the word for kanji combining two or more other kanji together, and it now appears in dictionaries and online guides.
Oddly though, and this goes back to my mention of foreshadowing, there are now people arguing that rigiji actually only refer to a repetition of two shapes like 林 or 炎. This is clearly “wrong”, as triple kanji are shown in the first ever book we know of using the word rigiji. But it’s also “right”, as the term 品字様 (ひんじよう, hinjiyou) that these people use for a triple repeat kanji like 森 appears in the Shinsen Jikyou, which was written around 900 CE. So, well before the 1716 textbook. Indeed, Wiktionary recognizes 品字様 but not 理義字 as of 2023. Why are triple kanji called 品字様 though? Because 品 itself is a classic 品字様 of course! Just like how 重箱 is a 重箱読み and 湯桶 is a 湯桶読み.
Don’t worry, there isn’t a special name for four+ repeat kanji. But there is one more related phenomenon I should talk about: 畳字. This word, which is unfortunately read as じょうじ rather than たたみじ, refers to when two characters are written next to each other. So, when you write ときどき as 時時 rather than with the odoriji as 時々, that’s 畳字, although 畳字 can confusingly also be used to refer to the 々 mark. The key difference with 畳字 and 理義字 is obviously that the characters aren’t combined into one, they’re just sitting next to each other. But it’s delightful that everything has names, isn’t it? On that note, don’t use these names. Most people won’t understand you. Sorry about that.
3. The word つむじかぜ has a lot of kanji
The word つむじかぜ is one of those odd terms that you don’t think you’ll use much, but keeps popping up here and here. It literally refers to a whirlwind, but can also be something that causes people to freak out a bit or pay attention. As Jisho.org phrases it, a “sensation, commotion, or hullabaloo”. So while it’s somewhat rare to talk about whirlwinds in day-to-day Japanese use, the more metaphorical meaning does pop up time to time, making it a useful word to learn… if you’ve got a bit of extra time. It shouldn’t be a priority for anyone.
The two kanji used to write つむじかぜ are normally 旋風. Obviously, 風 is incredibly useful on its own. The kanji 旋 is rarer, but appears in some common-ish terms like 旋律 (せんりつ, melody) and some cool but less viable terms like 凱旋 (がいせん, triumphant return). Up until recently, that’s where I thought the つむじかぜ story ended. But as it turns out, there’s more than one way to skin the, uh, whirlwind. If you look at the very bottom right of the Jisho.org screenshot above, you’ll see 辻風 written as a variant, albeit with a slightly altered reading. Well it turns out, that’s just one of many possible representations.
Now, to be clear, I’ve never seen any of these つむじかぜ variants out “in the wild”. If you bother memorizing them, they will not help you read any books or pass any JLPT tests. But the variants I’m going to introduce certainly have been used at some point throughout Japanese history, so if you want to use them I suppose you can.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of つむじかぜ variants have the kanji for wind (風) in them somewhere. The main variant below combines 風 with 票. This mixture of “wind” and 票 is likely for the reading, as 票 indicates the kanji’s onyomi of ひょう quite often in Japanese, as in more commonly used characters like 標 or 漂.
If you think it’s odd that the “sound” part of the kanji is on the left, you’re actually very welcome to put 票 on the right. When you do so though, it’s technically the “non-preferred variant” (N1 of the Kanji Kentei includes the kanji above this paragraph, but not the variant below it), and you have to add an extension of the right side of the wind element which obviously isn’t something we see very often. Does look cool though.
And while I’ve stressed that neither of these kanji are very common, they aren’t useless either. Wiktionary does note a few words that include either form. My favorite just repeats the character twice, providing a nice 旋風畳字.
Many of the other versions of つむじかぜ reference one of these two 風 positionings. For instance, we can replace 票 with 具 to create 颶, but this does change the onyomi to ぐ to match 具. What words can you write with this ぐ? I guess this one? But I imagine it’s pretty obscure. Still it kind of explains why the variant exists: the needed a kanji which meant “whirlwind” but was read as ぐ instead of ひょう.
The other four 風-based options for つむじかぜ are then still pronounced ひょう like our original, but replace 票 with three “fire” kanji or “dog” kanji. As in 飈, 飊, 飇, and 飆. Apparently they can all be used to write words like ひょうふう which is, you guessed it, another word for tornado, hurricane, or typhoon that you should never use because no one will understand you.
Why three dogs and three fires though? Well, you can actually also write つむじかぜ as just dog-dog-dog. It’s a great example of – that’s right – rigiji or, if you’re a bit of a stickler, hinjiyou. How do three dogs end up meaning “whirlwind”? Well, it’s pretty cute. The kanji was actually made to represent dogs running in a pack. Note the reading of はしる (to run) below, which isn’t in the other kanji for つむじかぜ that we’ve seen. The description also literally lists “a group of dogs running” as the meaning of 猋 right after, so perhaps at some point in time 犬が猋る was intelligible to at least more than a few Japanese readers. Anyway, at some point in time after 猋 was invented, someone thought that a bunch of dogs chasing each other around in a circle kind of looked like a whirlwind, and bam, the kanji began to be used to represent つむじかぜ. And then, of course, 猋 got applied backwards to the “wind” kanji for つむじかぜ to turn 飄 and 飃 into 飆 and 飇.
So why fire then? Well, I’m proud to say that I was able to guess the right answer here, which really made me feel like a person who maybe knows a little bit about Japanese script. The triple-fire variant is just someone messing with things or misremembering things! Basically someone at some point in time was like “hmm… no, it should be 火”, write it down like that, and now it’s a recorded kanji. You used to be able to do that! Now, I do admit I’ve found only one source claiming this developmental process. But I’ve also found no other sources talking about the history of 飇 and 飆 at all. And not only does this source support my initial guess, they also made this cool image. So how could they be wrong?
There are then four more variants of つむじかぜ which use 风, the simplified Chinese version of 風. This gives us 飓, 飘, 飙, and 飚. I don’t know why 飓 and 飚 use the “left wind” and 飘 and 飙 use the “right wind”, but the alternate versions of each don’t seem to exist. It’s especially odd to me that 飙 and 飚 contrast sides, since it creates a dog/fire split that are inverted versions of each other. But not matter how much I try, I cannot find an example of 风猋 or 焱风. Even in the Wiktionary entry for 風, they only note 飙 and 飚 despite recognizing 飈, 飊, 飇, and 飆.
I close now in stressing that you should never use any of these kanji even though they are pretty cool looking. As this next Japanese person phrases it, “you can use any of the kanji that you want to write tsumujikaze, because I can’t read any of them”. That said, if you want to pass Level 1 of the Kanji Kentei test, it looks like you’ll need to know four of the twelve: 猋, 颶, 飄, and 飆. So all “fire” versions are out, but you do have to know both “wind” styles.
4. 然 represents burning dog meat
I’ve known about the kanji 然 for a long time, as it’s taught pretty early on in Japanese so that beginners can write common words like 全然 and 自然. And I suppose I had a vague understanding that there’s a “dog” in the kanji for some reason, but the rest didn’t make much sense to me. The top left looks like a 夕 with an extra line, and the bottom 灬 I never thought about. Like, I’m aware it can mean “fire” in kanji like 焦がす (to burn). In this case, 灬 is called the ひへん (“fire part”). But 灬 also appears in kanji like 魚 where it does not mean fire, but instead represents the tail of the fish, although as this interesting explanation notes early drawings of the “fish” character did use a 火 shape for the tail. Anyway, long story short I just figured the kanji’s shape didn’t really relate to its meaning, as 然’s current use to mean “so”, “in that case”, “and”, or “but” in Japanese certainly has nothing to do these days with fire, dogs, or fish.
Anyway, all that changed when I posted a meme on Twitter noting that the 月 radicle in kanji like 臓, 腎, 膀, 脂, 肪, or 胱 comes from “肉 (meat)” rather than “月 (moon)”. Well, most of the time. There’s an identical radical called tsukihen which does mean moon, appearing in kanji like 朝 (morning) or 明 (bright), but vastly more kanji use what is known as the nikudzuki or “meat moon”. But one commenter responding to my meme pointed out to me that the top part of 然 is actually “meat” too; that tilted ⺼ bit is actually just 肉 again. So 月犬 is, well, “dog meat”. Indeed, this combination even has its own kanji 肰, although from what I can tell it’s never been used in Japanese and doesn’t see use anymore in Chinese. And finally, and unfortunately, 灬 is indeed “fire”. So the kanji 然 represents cooking dog, specifically for, as this source notes, sacrificial purposes. Certainly a bit more morbid of a history than I ever imagined 然 having.
After being used to mean “burning dog as a sacrifice” for a bit, the kanji 然 just became “to burn”. But it was replaced in this role by 燃 which adds fire to the kanji again on the left. Nowadays, 然 therefore has nothing to do with burning in any language, so I suppose you could say the connection to dogs, fire, and meat is now 全然ない.
5. 行 can be read as あん
I feel embarrassed by this last one a bit, as I bet its the entry readers have the highest chance of knowing. But I only recently learned a new reading of a kanji I’ve known about forever. For over a decade of study, I’ve used 行 for four main purposes: the verbs 行く (which is two readings because it can be iku or yuku, of course) and 行う (おこなう), and the onyomi of こう (as in ぎんこう) or ぎょう (as in 行事). But there’s been a sixth reading hiding in the weeds: あん. So one major reading for each of the kanji’s six strokes.
The reason I’d never stumbled across this reading is twofold. First, I never looked up the readings of 行 in isolation, because… why would I? I don’t really spend time looking up kanji I (thought that) I already know well to check if they have any extra readings I’m unfamiliar with but haven’t encountered in over a decade of reading Japanese regularly. Secondly, as the below Jisho screenshot notes, uses of 行=あん don’t appear in very commonly used vocabulary. The terms which feature this reading all relate to pilgrimages and imperial visits, which aren’t things I’m very involved in. So why bother even memorizing that 行 can be read as あん? It’s not like it’s useful, right?
If only that were the case! There is one incredibly useful word that still exists in contemporary Japanese speech which uses the あん reading of 行: 行灯 (あんどん). An 行灯 is a portable paper lantern which can be seated on the ground, be it archaic and fueled by oil or modern and plugged into a wall. You’ve probably seen them around Japan, and maybe you even own one! And now you know what to call it. The use of 行 here this time has nothing to do with pilgrimage, but you did used to carry these around, hence the “go light” meaning. Lanterns that only hang, of course, are instead ちょうちん.
Even more usefully, you know those light-up signs you see all around Japan? Not the big flashy modern ones with LEDs, but the small ones outside bars and restaurants that light up with the place’s name on it? Those are actually called アクリル行灯 (when made of acrylic) or 行灯看板 (あんどんかんばん). So the only pilgrimage you’ll need to go on, or place you’ll need to invite the emperor to stay, in order to use the あん reading of 行 is actually just your local drinking area.
And there you have it! I didn’t know these things until recently, but now I do, and since I now wrote them down I can save space in my aging brain for other things. And while what I covered here probably won’t help you pass any Japanese tests, I hope that minimally they help you win some pub trivia.
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Scripting Japan 
