觀世音菩薩 manifests on my street.

Recently I've been thinking about compassion and, surprisingly, about boddhisatvas; Buddhism isn't a thing I think about much at all, but it's been on my mind. A 19th-century pulley I have from a musty basement has been whispering dharmachakra. My house is peopled with ancestors and saints—including Budai/Hotei, the "laughing Buddha", a favorite for years, even before our post-COVID similarity in belly—and for a while I've been looking online for a statue of Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion in many forms, to join them.

So today I had to walk across town for this meeting that turned out to be nothing. On the way back, in the rain, I espied in someone's recycling bin this framed treasure:

Of course, task #1 (after hauling it home) was to read it.

From right:

南無観世音菩薩
十三年六月二十五日
And then katakana and one kanji: グリフ、スグリーン芽—glyph, "sugureen" sprout? 芽 me/GA
Or is it a little tsu? Griff's/Griffith's Green?

Carefully lifting to view the back:

謹写—kinsha, copy?

Front again:

南無: namu/namo (kanji are south 南 and nothing 無), but this is a hailing word in Buddhism
観: appearances, observation (KAN カン; variant of 觀?)
世: the world (SE セ, yo よ)
音: sound (ON オン, oto おと)
菩薩: bosatsu ぼさつ, boddhisatva (suffix)

Together, these name the boddhisatva Avalokiteśvara—that is, lotus-bearing Guanyin (观音/觀音)! 

十三年六月二十五日: June 25th (that is, 25th day of the 6th month) of the 13th year. Of what? 本地垂迹? Shinto "manifestation theory"—traces of the homeland, manifested forms of the deity (in this case to save Philadelphians?)—that linked page says honji suijaku was accepted in Japan until the Meiji era; if this is Japanese (given the katakana), then the 13th year might be ~1938 (Shouwa), ~1924 (Taishou), or even ~1880 (Meiji). 

I have a lot more learning to do, so for the moment I'll be happy that the boddhisatva of compassion 觀世音菩薩 has manifested in my home. Wild-goose chase across town well spent!

Translating trivia questions.

A thing to try, in the interest of trying things, is translating questions for this app Trivia Crack. Veamos cómo va:

In The Lion King, why does Scar want to kill Simba?
映画ライオンキングではなぜスカーはシンバを殺したいのか。

He's tired of his attitude—シンバの態度にうんざりしてるから

To become king—王になるために

He doesn't want kids—子供が欲しくないから

He is bored—スカーは退屈だから

Or maybe because Simba's bored. 

No way to know whether that's anywhere near the mark, but I'll submit it because, hey. On to the next ね.  

This next one isn't promising: "What's the definition of ambidextrous?" That works in Eng because the roots are Greek, so you can offer the options "lefthanded" and "righthanded" (although etymologically it's more like "both right", with the ancient connotation that the dexterous right hand is better than the sinister left hand and thus both hands are valid/worthy); but in Japanese the first kanji is literally "both" 両.

Miscellaneous and trashy (雑).

As I now am committed to JLPT N3 and really need kanji work, I'm paying more attention to radicals. (I find that often I know kanji more by their shape/feel, plus context—some parts just sort of blur out, because from the initial visual impression it's pretty obvious. If I were asked to write the kanji from memory, I would have to piece it out and probably would get only the most salient parts right, the parts that have feeling-weight.)

雑 ゾウ; "miscellany (classification of Japanese poetry unrelated to the seasons or to love)". This last raises the question of a hierarchy of genres; there always is one, in the arts, but here zatsu is all that mess/noise that isn't refined poetry. It's fun to think of a magazine as not only a collection 集 of various documents 誌 shi but also a collection of low-culture noise 雑. (Compare a 週刊誌, a 専門誌, a 論文誌—publications that aren't 雑—vs a 漫画雑誌, a manga zasshi.**)

*Phonetically in the sense that phonemes tend to attach to the feels they name—mechakucha for all over the place, out of control—my hair is all mechakucha; or guttural, and other heavy /uh/ sounds, in English. Lithe, a lithe word to name litheness. Meek to name meekness. びっくり, which sounds surprised. Onomatopoeia, of course, like crack. キラキラ, どんどん, くしゅ.
*Having read many, many academic publications, I'd say manga often ranks higher in cultural value. I have a draft around here somewhere about 漫 and its related forms.

英訳は深刻な社会問題だね。

This is why I find studying with translations so unsatisfying. This likes to translate 深刻 shinkoku as “serious”; fine. But the kanji actually are for deep (深い fuka.i) and engraving (刻む kiza.mu)—a deeply engraved problem, an ingrained problem. A problem can be serious but not ingrained—say, having broken a vase—so a facile translation strips nuance.

過労.

Faulty though my memory be, it seems to have no problem recalling 過労 karou, overwork that leads to illness or death. The first kanji generally means excessiveness (すぎる), but visually it says bones in the street; Henshall explains that as flexible movement, but to me it sounds exactly like corporate life—hard work, exhaustion, your bones in the street. 会社員は過労で倒れて死んだけど、年金を与えられなかった。　

彼は年金を与えられなかった。

The “suffering passive”, I gather. The 例文 was “He was not granted a pension”, so I tried 彼には年金が与えられなかった。But, This is not about just the fact, but how he felt about the fact, which feeling presumably was negative. を + what would otherwise be passive, ie, that the pension wasn’t granted, to him—the lack of actor sort of highlighted. I’ve seen it understood as “he suffered that” (someone unspecified) didn’t grant the pension.

茂は春子に年金を与えなかった。

春子には年金が与えられなかった。

春子は誰かが年金を与えなかったので本当に怒った。

春子は年金を与えられなかった。

But who is the が? (I still can’t figure out when to use a particle after か—誰かがりんごを食べたの？誰かりんごを買ったの？) Is there a が, or is the sufferer acting on the object? Is its being not granted something he’s doing to it? Haven’t dealt with this tense, or mood, or whatever, since a mention of it in, I think, Genki I. Or II. Reminds me of the passé simple in French, which my teachers swore I would never need because it’s “a literary tense”, and which I did need, it turned out, when I 専門ed in French literature. 専門、専修、専攻。。。 

Fortunately, Genki II is right here, so I’ll check the chapter in burglary; I recall a lot of suffering in that.

泥棒に入られました。”I had my room broken into.”

Hmm. (1) This seems standard passive; in Eng, at least, you can name he actor. (“It was said, by some, that…”) (2) Why does Genki’s xlation omit the burglar, who clearly is included in the J? 

But maybe に helps. 春子は(財布に、会社に 、雇主 に)年金を与えられなかった？

Is it just that the suffering passive is the English passive that names the actor? But then which に?

His house was broken into. His house was broken into by a burglar. He was broken into by a burglar. He had his house broken into. As for him, entering happened by a burglar. A pension was not granted to him by the cat. 彼には猫に年金が与えられなかった。But を+られ.

Perplexing. “He was not granted” is an anomalous construction in Eng, anyway.

—

OK. Genki doesn’t address を at all, and although it says the sufferer can take は or が it doesn’t give examples of が. But that helps; I’ll think of it as, I was acted upon by a certain person, and the action was this on that. Like being allowed or forced to do something. 母にりんごを食べさせた。りんごは食べられた。母は僕にりんごを食べられた。My mother made/let me eat an apple. The apple was eaten. The apple was eaten upon my mother by me. 母にりんごを食べられなかった。My mother did (someone) the disservice of not eating the apple. 彼は誰かに年金を与えられなかった。Someone unspecified dismayed him by not awarding a pension.

灯籠書道、奏功？

Pilot attempts at lanterns. Got out all my materials; very happy to see my brushes again. First attempt 魂; everything about them off, proportions of the top and bottom (since I'm trying the stacked form), elbows in the strokes from hanging around too long on too-absorbent material (in this case, practice napkins); tried again but on larger drawing paper, rolled, and set into the beaker of a French press; that didn't hold the paper form well; dropped-in tea candle went out, so used tongs and felt ridiculous, but whatever; overall effect in the dark OK but need for improvement obvious. Next: write nearer center of paper, to avoid ugly edge overlap; write better; probably not that brush, because I don't see those bristles giving my a decent 厶; use a Shabbos candle for greater illumination; use tape or rubber band to affix paper to outside of glass structure. (I've lined up a rocks glass and a scrubbed salsa jar.) Concern: given the narrowness of these vessels, I'll have to write pretty small to keep the proportions on one side. Options: I also have a rectangular vase or two the might work; or, I could form the paper into a rectangle or square and house the candle in something protective but smaller in diameter.

Anyway, JLPT. Refreshed the screen all morning until I succeeded in registering for N3, 9AM 太平洋 Time. (I'm sure that's not the word for the time zone, but I'm going to allow myself the satisfaction of knowing how to say the ocean.) I have until December to execute some study strategy. After all these years and books, and an endless streak at the top of the diamond league in Duolingo, I still feel like I can't actually say anything in Japanese, outside the parameters of an exercise. I can't get through half a thought without tearing it all down as wrong. (I can't even settle on the best kanji for "lantern"; I might go with 灯籠, as a basket, but I'm not 流しing them anywhere. I had to read a page on the difference between 成功 and 奏功.) Anxious paralysis. But, hey, it's the journey. Right? 練習道のマスターになっているね。

O-bon lanterns! Let's make some.

I haven't been able to get to the o-Bon festival at 松風荘 this evening, so I think I'll make lanterns for my windows. We need 季語 kigo, seasonal words, appropriate for o-Bon; we consult this kigo site, among many, and choose 魂祭 tamamatsuri, soul festival—what right-thinking ancestor wouldn't be attracted by that? 

Next, we need examples. (I don't mind writing badly if only I and the dead will see it.) Hao86—Chinese site, so I think 书法 shufa, vs 書法 shohou; both vs 書道 shodou, "the way of" calligraphy—has examples of everything, in multiple scripts, attributed—or, at least, it seems to be trying to, as some areas are a bit bare—so we look there. Hao offers five style categories:

行书　(行書　gyousho　semi-cursive/"running" script)

楷书　(楷書　kaisho　standard/regular/"block" script)

草书　(草書　sousho　cursive/"grass" script, very stylized)

隶书　(隷書　reisho　clerical script*)

篆书　(篆書　tensho　seal script, for stamping documents)

*"Clerical script" may be a euphemism, as Jisho defines 隷 as "slave, servant, prisoner, criminal, follower".

Helpful, for picking out forms we find interesting and would like to practice a bit. 例えば:　 

魂　

This one preserves the shape nicely, has the shape I like for the "animal legs" radical (stab left, sweep right!), and sort of casts off the little two-stroke oni 鬼 triangle, into almost a barbed tail:

(about the artist, YU Boqing 徐伯清, current, Shanghai)

...but this one is irresistible—look how it stacks the radicals:

 

(about the artist, ZHANG Ruitu 張瑞圖, 1570–1641 / works) 

Maybe handle the "speech" radical 云 (which I somehow think of as steam/mist/vapor, which certainly works here) with sort of a rightward dot, strong horizontal, elbow, take a moment at the end, launch into the vertical for 田; loop and tie, then into the legs, and the styling final dot that makes your 厶 but also seems a quintessentially 書道 thing to do. I think. Or something. Anyway, it looks fun to try.

 祭はねー。。。

Matsuri is pretty much a prayer/altar (示, 礻) under the "dotted tent" radical (癶); Henshall says the parts are literally a hand placing meat (⺼, with interesting/confounding overlap with 月 moon) onto an altar. Seems to pack in the connotation of sacrifice. Perfect for a soulfest. I'm not finding the right thing on Hao, so on to general search; we don't want to mix styles, but I'm loving this lean one, because it looks a bit like a person releasing 灯籠 tourou paper lanterns:

(about the artist, ZHANG Jizhi 张即之, 1186–1263)

In gyou and sou styles, the altar tends to look a bit like a hiragana ふ fu, which derives from kanji 不.

But it's fun when kanji look like stuff. Maybe there's some room to play with that "meat" radical, since it suggests both the moon (月) and night (夕)—great for a lantern. (I'm thinking of examples of 月 I've seen that recline, almost to a 夕-like angle.)

I have two big windows, so maybe I'll make two lanterns and not worry about matching styles. Next up: ink! And to choose a 筆 that will be kind to me. I have some glasses, so the thought is to write the kanji on whatever (paper or maybe napkins—not good paper, but something with some kind of character) and wrap it around a glass so the candles won't cause a 盆fire. Vamos a ver. イクゾね。

I've been hoarding recyclable egg cartons and an old window screen because one of these years I'm going to make paper, I swear.

Also on the list to explore: shufalife.com.