Fun-facts about Japanese words/grammar

Japanese
#1

Hey guys!

I bet a lot of you have heard some pretty interesting facts about where certain Japanese words (or grammar) came from, including any hidden meanings they may have. I would love to hear about some of them! If you can think of any, let us know!

One of my favorites is くノ一（くのいち）, the word for ‘female ninja’. Apparently the name came from くノ一 being the three brush strokes required for the kanji 女.

Note - If you are including any hidden meanings that are 18+, please use the ‘hide details’ feature :rofl:

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#2

If you split 君 in to three parts you get コロナ.

石鹸 the second kanji looks like a hand wash despenser.

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#3

I like it when I randomly find some old grammar that explains words that I didn’t even really need an explanation for because they’re just words. For example, here are some words that come from expressions of the form “A-genitive-B” with particles that have been used in a similar way as の is used in modern Japanese:

Particle Word Explanation
が 我が... personal pronouns predominantly used to use が
嵐が丘 (and many other place names) Translated name of Wuthering Heights
な みなと From 水な戸
みなもと
だ けだもの Furry thing
つ まつ毛 eye fur, ま is 目
自ら みずから, from 身つ柄
ろ おろち をろち、with を referring to a peak in Classical Japanese, and ち apparently used to refer to a powerful creature
かむろき、かむろみ かむ being 神 and き/み referring to male/female
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#4

These ones are always cool, I remember thinking the same when finding out わがまま was from 我が儘. Especially considering that deictically speaking it literally means thinking you’re the centre of the universe :rofl:

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#5
Delicate personal medical details contained

I’ve had covid all week. I’m fine but my doctor phoned me on Thursday and told me not to leave my flat until the following Saturday (in four days). So I phoned my workplace and invented the new word 暇中毒.

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#6

くノ一 likely came from the kanji 女, but does not and never meant “female ninja”. It was co-opted by the OG ninja boom in late Edo period and then later again by ninja pop culture and anime. くノ一 was first used in the 萬川集海 (ばんせんしゅうかい: a compilation of shinobi tactics and tools) in 1676 to refer to the use of a female agent, termed くノ一の術. A くノ一 was thought to be dimwitted and untrustworthy, and only used to assist an actual shinobi to infiltrate a property or pass on a message. No historical document ever refers to it to mean ‘female ninja’. It just slowly changed and was re-interpreted to mean that to suit the fanciful stories being written more and more about ‘ninja’

Adult only speculative meaning

Later more vulger descriotions have くノ一 as ‘9 holes plus 1’, refering to the famale anatomy vs male anatomy in overall number of orifices. Of course this was just to try to hop on the band-wagon of the ‘sexy kunoichi’ image that developed in the modern ninja boom

@Asher I dont meant to sound critical of your post, just trying to shed some light on common misconceptions

#7

Any source on this?

忍法書の『万川集海』巻八には「くノ一の術」が載っている[1][5]。これは男では潜入しにくい場合、代わりに女を潜入させるというものである

また「くノ一の術」の次に載っている「隠蓑の術」は「くノ一」が木櫃を取り寄せるという口実を奥方に述べる事により、二重底の木櫃を使って人を潜入させる術である[6]。

どちらも「女を使った術」という趣旨である[6]。これを女の忍びとみなすか[8]、女の忍びは存在しないとみなすか[6]は論者によって分かれる。

Seems like it’s had the meaning of female ninja since the mid 1600’s :thinking:. Or at least ninja techniques used by women.

#8

That text is from the JP Wikipedia page, so following those references: number 6 refers to a lecture at Mie University (which has a fairly new Ninja research program going) and states くノ一の術 is the use of a female, and female ninjas likely didn’t even exist. Number 8 refers to a book (I can’t read it fully without buying) but seems to be speculation on behalf of the author that it’s a female ninja. The main text they are referring to is the one I mentioned before, the 萬川集海, which is the earliest known use of the word (1670’s) and refers to the use of a female. I would be interested if you had any other sources from that period that say ‘female ninja’?

I wouldn’t say any of that supports the definitive meaning of ‘female ninja’. That meaing seams to be so ingrained into people that its just assumed to be correct, though Yuji Yamada at his team at Mie University are doing good work to clear that up. It seems nitpicky, but its a technique used by shinobi, that uses a female (くノ一) , the くノ一 is just part of the technique, not a shinobi themselves. Particularly as elsewhere in the book it stresses about loyalty, trustworthiness, training etc, which its seems a くノ一 does not have or cant be trusted. There is also another word in there referring to a male ‘agent’ (similar in concept to くノ一), further making the distinction between actual shinobi and people just being used as part of a strategy.

For direct reference, this is some of the pages in the 萬川集海 referring to くノ一, from the Iga city digital museum. A few historians have made translations of the text, and its also thought that the black dots covering the text were ‘censoring’ derogatory comments (nobody alive has seen the original documents and its assumed to have been destroyed at some point in history, the next best thing is 2nd gen copies)

https://trc-adeac.trc.co.jp/WJ11E0/WJJS06U/2421605100/2421605100100020/ht200100

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#9

Interesting! I would like to read more about this for sure! It does seem a bit strange that they were referenced as being untrustworthy if it was purely in reference to women. Sure women have had a lower general status throughout the history of Japan, but I have never got the impression that it has anything to do with trust/loyalty.

It would be interesting to know if there is any distinction between womens techniques, and techniques using women. Speculatively speaking it seems a bit counterintuitive to use someone that supposedly cannot be trusted to do a job such as infiltration.

#10

Its not that they were untrustworthy specifically because they were a woman (or I see no information to specifically think this besides the general lower status they had, particularly in military affairs), it’s just that they were not trained for the role, or part of a military unit or samurai (or jizamurai) family, or just not trusted in general as they chose a simple person for a simple job. The 萬川集海 also refers to basically the male equivalent as a “tachikara”(田 +力: similar ‘word play’ asくノ一, but for a male: 男), who could perform a similar role, or a kunoichi used when this fails. Therefore, it also wasn’t them doing the infiltration. It states that くノ一の術 is used when it is difficult to infiltrate (for a shinobi), therefore this technique is used. The Kunoichi is not doing the infiltrating, they are just planted to later unlock a door etc. or, as the technique briefly described on the museum page I linked: to send for a box without arousing suspicion, which would then have the shinobi hiding inside.

The distinction between women’s techniques and techniques using women, is clear as this technique is literally just “using” the women for the shinobi to achieve their aims of infiltration. There are many other methods a women could use herself when working in the broad category of secret or espionage work, but that’s outside of what we are discussing here.

#11

Cool topic ! The most puzzling word for me currently is 人参 made from 人 (person) and 参 (participate) it means… carrot :sweat_smile:.

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#12

Apparently 人参 originally referred to ginseng only, because the roots sometimes have the same shape as a person. So 人 for the person part and maybe 参 in the sense of coming and going.
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Then when carrots were introduced people called them things like 芹人参 or 菜人参 because it resembled ginseng until people just started calling it 人参.

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#13

Ohhhh, that definitely makes more sense, thanks!

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