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Old 02-17-2001, 05:34 PM   #71
Chris Li
 
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[quote]Dan Hover wrote:
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Chris Li wrote:
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His reading of the kanji "budo" as "stopping the spear" is largely metaphorical and is, in the literal sense, just wrong. The character reading "stop" actually meant, originally, "to proceed forward" (which is why that radical is used in so many kanji that refer to feet or actions with the feet). Therefore the original meaning of "bu" would be something more like "advance with a spear" (actually more of a halberd), which sounds like a pretty good description of war to me. If you think about the meaning in that way it makes a lot of sense, as the character was originally created in times where the only instance of "stopping the spear" would be if you stopped it in the belly of your enemy.

Best,

Chris
Okay I thought about this one for awhile, and so I did some checking the character of Bu for those of you who dont know is made up of two Kanji, the character on the inside is TOMERU meaning to prevent, the character on the outside HOKO meaning conflict.
Well, this radical ("hoko") is used in kanji referring to conflicts, but the original meaning is "spear" (actually referring to a very old chinese weapon with a double edged blade).

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This is how Saotome a Native Japanese person has written about it in His "Principles of Aikido" book, in which Chris says is "just wrong" So I checked with another Native Japanese person Masayuki Shimabukuro an iaido teacher who also says the same as above in regards to the two characters. Then I checked with John Stevens, Author, Interpertor/ Translator and budoka, Larry E. Bieri Author, Interpeter/Translator, budoka, Donn F. Draeger, who we all know about, and I also checked an English Japanese Dictionary. Which States that TOMERU the character that you are referring to as SHI which is indeed a pictograph of a foot, means a Planted Foot, as in stopped. Now SHI means stopped and TOMERU means prevent, and HOKO means conflict. So I am at a loss on how two Native Japanese speakers, three interpetors/Translators, all highly regarded budoka in their own right and a english Japanese Kanji Dictionary can all be "just wrong". I have included the link to the Kanji page for those of you who want to check. http://www.joyo96.org/cgi-bin/henshall.pl?hen=129
I haven't been around as long as those guys, but I've been a professional translator for over 5 years, and lived and worked in Japan (and in Japanese) for twice that.

There's a pretty good article covering just this topic in a back issue of Aikido Today Magazine written by Kazuaki Tanahashi - a student of Morihei Ueshiba, calligrapher, and one of the translators of 2-dai doshu's original "Aikido".

To make a long story short, the meaning that you see in the dictionary is the modern usage (another modern usage is "kill", by the way). The original usage (when the character was originally created) was as I stated originally.

"Shi" and "tomeru" are different readings for the same character.

Mitsugi Saotome's translation of the word is "wrong" in that (as I said originally) that it is not a literal transposition of the meaning of the characters. What he (and others) are talking about is an "interpretation" of the characters which is something slightly different, and is something that Japanese people love to do. What I was talking about was the literal meaning of the character, which was created in China and really had nothing to do with resolving conflict (unless it was resolved at the point of a sword).

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Although the character in DO or MICHI has the same deriviative form (ashi) for foot or movement as this is a pictograph of an ankle and foot from the side. The character DO means way or path of, and this would make sense to have the radical for movement inside the character for Way or Path of. Or am I "just Wrong"?
Well, I'm not sure how this is related to the discussion above, but "do" is composed of "shinyo", which means "advance" and "kubi", which means "neck". In this case the character for "kubi" is signifying something that is long and narrow (ie, a road). So, "do" would mean "movement along something long and narrow", which signifies a road.

Best,

Chris


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