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Due to my lack of paracetamol, I've started using sake as a cure for
headaches. Believe me, it's actually far more effective and fast-acting.
Anyway, yes...I've FINALLY got through HALF of all the kanji I have to
learn (at Lesson 60, Kanji number 824), so to celebrate, I thought I'd
show just how bloody sexist kanji is. Really, it's so sexist it's funny.
If there was a feminist revelation in China/Japan, a whole lot of kanji
would have to be changed.
In all fairness, kanji were invented in China about 8000 years ago, when
the world was a far less politically correct. And they were, of course,
invented by men. So you got to give the ancient Chinese some slack.
So, here's the kanji (you'll need to enable Japanese encoding in "View ->
Encoding").
First, the kanji for "woman" and "man."
WOMAN: 女 "onna." It's a pictograph of a woman sitting down. Can you see
the representation of breasts?
MAN: 男 "otoko." As you can see, it's made up of two separate kanji, "rice
field" 田 and "power" 力. So, it literally mean "the one who has power in
the rice fields."
Those aren't too bad actually. But then we get on to family relations.
HUSBAND: 主人 - shujin. The two kanji together literally mean "The person
who is master."
WIFE: 家内 - kanai. These kanji mean "inside the house." So, the wife is the
person who dwells inside the house! The more polite version of wife, 奥さん,
(okusan) literally means "honourable one inside." Yet another kanji that
means "wife" is 婦, ("shu") which depicts a woman 女 holding a broom 帚. It
seems that the husbands of ancient China had pretty low expectations of
their wife.
ELDER BROTHER: 兄 - ani. It represents a mouth on a pair of legs. It
basically suggests that the elder brother is the one who does all the
talking for the family.
FATHER: 父 - chichi. Depicts someone enforcing the rules by beating with a
stick. Really.
MOTHER: 母 - haha. It doesn't take a genius to see it represents a big pair
of breasts.
And then there's just random sexist kanji:
妨 - bou. Means "interfere." It is made up of the kanji for "woman" 女 and
"way" 方. So basically women interfere with the way of things.
規 - ki. Means "standard" or "measure," and is used in words like "rule"
and "regulation." It literally means "the way as seen 見 by the husband 朱."
妖 - you. Means "bewitch," "demon" or "calamity" and is used in words like
"monster." It depicts a woman 女 leaning forward 夭. (actually, 夭 also means
"dying young" so you can argue that it depicts a woman dying young too,
which is not sexist at all and is a calamity).
I'm certain there's plenty more kanji along the same vein! But that's
enough for now.
Kanji can be interesting sometimes...
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