Erick Mead

A point I began my observations with. Your objection is needlessly narrow. Its Chinese antecedent is well attested and has the same pronunciation, moreover, as 和 (another level of connection to the concept of "harmony" held out in Western translations). 入 "ru" means "enter, come into and join," and the orthographic distinction is without difference in the context, in any event, as you say.

That is not in the Chinese etymologies attested that I have reference to. Other attested etymologies of the Chinese is 亼 "ji" + 口 "kou", "gather" + "gate/entrance." Another that holds that 亼 is an inverted mouth joined to another mouth. The character 合 is itself attested by several thousand years back to oracle script, and has no independent development in Japan. 合 is used for musical notes. "Harmony" is not a stretch as translation here, nor should its usage be overly criticized on the grounds of objection you raise.

Josh, your counting coup aside, while all in good fun, the ENTIRE point of post, and that you did not address, was that literary usage is the better guide to meaning for our purposes than disconnected etymological debates. There is no evidence that O Sensei cared much about that aspect of language.

Literary usage requires larger context (your last criticism of me, as I recall). There is lots of evidence of his literary interest in Kojiki and of his phonological interest in kotodama (dare I say, "musical"). The etymological points I raised were expressly in recognition of their problematic limitsand from that mainly to show a consistency of theme, more clearly seen in the usage of his literary sources. More to the point, in translation literary usage develops themes of meaning in relation and allows for the ambiguities to be washed out through several layers of context.