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Could it be a stylized "3"?
Maybe the Californian wanted to indicate that it was a 3 shaku.
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Isn't that the mark of the Artist Formerly Known as Prince?
Nice utaguchi cap!
Perry
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This is one character of my name.
It is read "masa" in Japanese.
It is pronounced something like "chang" in Chinese.
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Gishin wrote:
The problem on my side wanting stuff to be clean cut and non sloppy stems from the stuff that made me go to Japan at first. I used to collect and sell antique Japanese swords so on any swords if we saw such crappy carvings of this type either on the blade or tang this almost automatically indicates a poorly made sword or one that has been tampered with by some incompetent. Now that being said I always aplied this gut feeling to other Japanese crafts and antiques and was usually on the ball with the value,age. quality etc. Since usually Japanese craftsmen that will finish a product that should bear their name will have at least a good hanko or if carving it will make sure it is a nice and clean job. Which leads me to think that put aside the meaning of the writing that this carving must have been made by the owner.
You're right Gishin, usually this kind of carving is found on amateur-made shakuhachi, or carved on by the owner of the shakuhachi. However, in Myoan schools amateur makers are common, people making for their friends or themselves. It seems quite possible to me that whomever carved the kanji (?) into this shakuhachi made it for himself or a friend.
One other possibility is that it may be a kaou? Monks (and various other people more so in the Edo period) have kaou (all monks?), a special kind of signature. If anyone has seen my hanko, the bottom symbol is my kaou. Whether this one is or not though I wouldn't know. Those kanji did seem likely.
Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/
Last edited by Justin (2008-08-31 08:52:45)
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Justin wrote:
One other possibility is that it may be a kaou? Monks (and various other people more so in the Edo period) have kaou (all monks?), a special kind of signature. If anyone has seen my hanko, the bottom symbol is my kaou. Whether this one is or not though I wouldn't know. Those kanji did seem likely.
Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/
Yes I had felt that theory at some point but ruled it out since usually a Kao does look quite different than this. Now when it comes to Kao it was usually officials or High ranked person in each of their fields being monks artisits etc that would own a Kao.
Here is more info for readers about what is a Kao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka%C5%8D
Now your info on the the Myoan style flutes and amateur makers does seem to point in the right directions and gives us clearer info on the flutes and its life.
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changjc wrote:
This is one character of my name.
It is read "masa" in Japanese.
It is pronounced something like "chang" in Chinese.
Humm how can you be so sure. It does not seem anymore near than what No-Sword has posted
Chang/Masa: 昌
As far as I can see it can be like any other possibility that was offered here. The only plus point I see is that Masa could be a very commonly used Kanji/sound in Japanese so this part could be possible but I still find the strokes , structure etc to be too different and sloppy. My wife looked into it and still finds it quite a far fetch to write it this way and if it was it looks too sloppy to even be presented as this kanji.
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It looks like a grass style 易 eki, "divination/fortune telling" (yi, "change," as in the Yijing Book of Changes in Chinese).
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Peter Kororo wrote:
It looks like a grass style 易 eki, "divination/fortune telling" (yi, "change," as in the Yijing Book of Changes in Chinese).
Thanks Peter. Have you ever seen a 3.0 or longer Myoan from this kind of vintage?
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I see someone else already suggested "eki," so in fact I'm seconding that, but frankly it's obviously that kanji. Not a great grass style carving of it, but not bad either, I've seen better but also much worse. The two strokes in the middle of the bottom part can be represented by the line curving in. It's not a detraction from the flute in terms of workmanship IMO.
I've seen other myoan flutes with kanji carved on them, but none that I recall of that vintage, especially longer ones.
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I'll add, should it become relevant at some point, that I'd love to acquire a nice jinashi flute of sanjaku or so length :-).
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Peter Kororo wrote:
but frankly it's obviously that kanji.
Ok so for educational purpose how should we recognize that it is this kanji and that it is obviously it? I already had my wife and her father as well look into it and both being calligraphy teachers were not able to see the obvious as you are saying. So not to put you down at all but it would be nice to get some finer points on how you can recognize it as Eki/易 100% so that this can educate some of us in Kanji recognition.
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I had a feeling when I said that.....I didn't mean to impugn others' kanji reading skills, but to me it jumped out as "Yi," change. I've probably seen that particular character in grass style more than most people, perhaps that's why, or it's a Chinese/Japanese difference; the two are mixed (or maybe mixed up) in my head.
As to the meaning, I suspect he meant the Chinese meaning of change, as well as referencing the Yijing. rather than the Japanese, as that meaning derives from the use of the Yijing rather than the philosophy itself, added to which is the conext, definitely in the period it was made, of the kanji 易 being seen in the aforementioned word, ekisha, and written on the rice paper shades of fortune tellers' table lamps.
The paleography of it is very nice. It's a relatively rare huiyi character, using two pictographs to depict a concept. The top is sun, of course, the bottom is a variation of 月 moon, and those are themselves such basic symbols that it's in that sense a kind of high-powered character. And really a nice way to express the concept.
This spurred me to look it up in my main reference for this, and I wasn't able to find it, which was surprising, as the book, known as Weiger's, is very comprehensive, but it's also very badly cross-referenced, so it may turn up. I'd be surprised if he didn't have something interesting to say about it.
In any case, it's a deep character to carve on your flute!
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Peter Kororo wrote:
I had a feeling when I said that.....I didn't mean to impugn others' kanji reading skills, but to me it jumped out as "Yi," change. I've probably seen that particular character in grass style more than most people, perhaps that's why, or it's a Chinese/Japanese difference; the two are mixed (or maybe mixed up) in my head.
As to the meaning, I suspect he meant the Chinese meaning of change, as well as referencing the Yijing. rather than the Japanese, as that meaning derives from the use of the Yijing rather than the philosophy itself, added to which is the conext, definitely in the period it was made, of the kanji 易 being seen in the aforementioned word, ekisha, and written on the rice paper shades of fortune tellers' table lamps.
The paleography of it is very nice. It's a relatively rare huiyi character, using two pictographs to depict a concept. The top is sun, of course, the bottom is a variation of 月 moon, and those are themselves such basic symbols that it's in that sense a kind of high-powered character. And really a nice way to express the concept.
This spurred me to look it up in my main reference for this, and I wasn't able to find it, which was surprising, as the book, known as Weiger's, is very comprehensive, but it's also very badly cross-referenced, so it may turn up. I'd be surprised if he didn't have something interesting to say about it.
In any case, it's a deep character to carve on your flute!
Wow thanks for the reply in this Kanji explanation. It does clarify how you were able to reach the certainty stage for this Kanji on that flute. I greatly appreciate the info!
Thanks!
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Okay, this thread is filling up with misinformation real fast. There is no reason for this to happen in the internet age.
Peter Kororo wrote:
The top is sun, of course, the bottom is a variation of 月 moon, and those are themselves such basic symbols that it's in that sense a kind of high-powered character. And really a nice way to express the concept.
Sorry to be so blunt, but this is not true. There are old sources that claim it's 日+月, but no serious scholar believes that any more.
The most common theory is that is simply a picture of a chameleon-like lizard that changed in the sun (same as 馬 is a picture of a horse). The bottom part is said to be either the lizard's legs, or the pattern on the lizard's skin. Shirokawa Shizuka, though, one of Japan's foremost kanji experts, rejects this theory and thinks it's a sun-jewel plus rays.
But this has absolutely nothing to do with identifying which kanji this actually is. So let's consider that aspect.
You say it's obviously 易 because you've seen that character written in cursive a lot and you know it when you see it. OK. changjc says it's 昌, noting that it's one of the characters in his name. At best, that's a stalemate as far as argument from authority (without evidence) goes.
So let's consider: how would we recognize this kanji? First take the top part. It has a vertical stroke on the left, then it curls around right and back down, like an english "n". That's a box (口). Then it loops, indicating that there's something inside the box (so maybe 日, 田, etc.), before it proceeds down and left. Sharp turn back up and right, then another curl back down and in. That could be a lot of things, but discarding the wildly unlikely stuff, it's probably something with a horizontal-ish line across the top, a vertical line on the right, and something on the left (hence the point before the last big curl).
This is the point at which you need intuition and experience. changjc and I said it was 昌. Peter and Justin's wife said it was 易. Unless someone can present some evidence, we have to just agree to disagree.
But this is 2008. We have the internet, we have scanners. We can look at evidence and learn something new.
So here are some pictures, courtesy of Tokyo University's cursive-character database (interface is Japanese-only).
First, 易 (eki, "change"):
There are other images there but this is the closest one. What I mean by expecting an extra stroke is that it's more common to curl up into the bottom half and then go back down, even when abbreviated this far. There are two strokes, after all, inside the bottom half of 易.
Next, a couple of 昌:
And actually I have a new candidate for y'all to consider: 則, pronounced "soku" or "nori", meaning "rule" and in some cases actually meaning "the teachings (rules) of Buddhism".
(I know what you're thinking: "how does that square with you seeing a top half and a bottom half?" Well, top and bottom and left and right are fluid to an extent in some characters, taking a sort of diagonal pattern instead, and this is one of them. Note that the right half of 則, in cursive, is り, which has the "top horizontal line, right vertical line, left vertical something" we were after. This stuff can turn on you.)
Now here is a secret: to a certain extent, some characters cannot be distinguished from others without context. If we had a bunch of samples of this guy's handwriting, or we had this character as one of several on a page, we would have a much better chance of figuring out what it was. But we don't, and to an extent, unless we can come up with a good reason for someone to have written "X" on a shakuhachi, we aren't ever going to know the answer. That's the humbling thing about scholarship in this area, and that's what makes it so exhilarating when you suddenly see all the pieces fall naturally into place.
Sorry to drone on and on like this, but I do this stuff for fun and profit, and it drives me crazy to see it wrapped up in mystical mumbo-jumbo and unhelpful noise when it is really just a case of buckling down and learning.
Last edited by No-sword (2008-09-01 06:26:05)
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No-sword wrote:
And actually I have a new candidate for y'all to consider: 則, pronounced "soku" or "nori", meaning "rule" and in some cases actually meaning "the teachings (rules) of Buddhism".
http://no-sword.jp/images/misc/soku.gif
And now as far as I am concerned the closest winner would be soku/則 . Especially considering the history of the flute as Tairaku said that this flute and the Kanji on it was linked with some priest in Kyoto.
Plus other should also refrain in a case like this especially for grass script to say (THIS IS IT)! And why? because we should not missinform others or lead others in believing or seeing stuff based only on asumptions.
Thank you for your time and educating us with clear and relevant information pointing how to look for the stuff.
Last edited by Gishin (2008-09-01 10:32:12)
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Ah, kanji wars.
Almost as enlightening and enjoyable as Zen wars....
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edosan wrote:
Ah, kanji wars.
Almost as enlightening and enjoyable as Zen wars....
Why are you butting in and just try to bring conflict or make reference to past stuff ?
This is not kanji wars. people were not able to reach a clear 100% conclusion and we have the opinions and explanation of some members that do have higher kanji education in helping us learn and see some of the clearer possibilites connected to this Kanji. Nobody is fighting or arguing to the death all that I see so far is some info that was in some way misleading by corrected with relevant information.
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<tips hat to no-sword>
The etymology of 易 is as a pictograph of a lizard (now using 蜴 in modern Chinese). It's a head resembling the sun (日) and legs (勿). 日 still connotes sun in modern Chinese whereas 勿 now means "don't".
Zak
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edosan wrote:
Gishin wrote:
edosan wrote:
Ah, kanji wars.
Almost as enlightening and enjoyable as Zen wars....Why are you butting in and just try to bring conflict or make reference to past stuff ?
This is a forum, and I'm a member, so I can, by definition, 'butt in' whenever I please.
If you don't like it, boyo, you can go pound sand.
eB
Yes indeed but the point is that your smart ass comment can only bring the thread away from its course and open the door to useless other comments of the type. Why not try and limit comments of that type. The thread was still very interesting and activated with good info from all sides. Some was a bit biased but was corrected or commented by well educated members so hat readers can have the chance to study on their own and have the chance to see how wide the world of Kanji is.
So your comment had no values and added no element of relevance or positiveness to this thread only attracting more comments of that style later on. The Zen forums were closed and the directive of the Admins was now to post relevant stuff only. I dont see your comments as relevant or positive in any way.
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Folks, let's make a turn back to the center and keep further posts related to the original topic.
Many thanks,
Ken
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Thanks everybody for your erudite contributions. I'll go with "Soku" for now, "Buddhist Law". Thanks No-Sword!
So is that the guy's name (unlikely I suppose), the name of the flute itself or possibly just a statement the maker wanted to put on the flute? Anybody care to speculate?
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Since we have the best and the brightest (on some of the most contentious) in the room, anyone care to look at this?
More mystery kanji written in red urushi a couple of inches below the utaguchi on the front of the flute (shown a bit larger in scale than in the flesh):
Any similarity between these and the kanji on Brian's?
Last edited by Chris Moran (2008-09-01 23:19:25)
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Before this thread takes another turn, I'd like to reply to no-sword's and Gishin's responses to my posts.
First, right, I shouldn't have said I'm sure it was 易 or obvious that's it, but rather should simply have said "it sure looks like 易 to me." It just looks like the best possibility, and I do have a trained eye, even if, having focused on this stuff much more before I took up shakuhachi, my scholarship is behind the times and my eye not as sharp as before. So I'm chastised about posting about such things with certainty and should be more circumspect. I will certainly try to avoid stirring up heated discussions.....unless it's about playing shakuhachi.
However, no-sword's dismissal of my post as "misinformation" is itself not accurate, and not helpful IMO to the discussion. His post reads with as much certainty as mine, and repeats my mistake of declaring with certainty what it is. I am less confident it's 易 now, but I'm even less convinced it's 則.
Here's why: while it's true the line curving back is the barest possible hint of the two downstrokes in the middle of the moon/serpent/sun rays part of the character, if it is 易, the grass form of 則, like the example no-sword provides has no curving line whatsoever, and can't. That's because in the grass form the bottom is actually the right side, so it's a form of 刀, where the left, "inner" downward stroke is the upper stroke of the bottom part. The carved, inward-curving line simply won't appear in rendering that kanji, certainly not as far as it curves in the carving in question. In my opinion.
As to it being 昌, again I was certain, but shouldn't have been, that there would have to be more of a downstroke before the horizontal stroke of the bottom half, in order to represent the left vertical stroke. Your examples showed that not to be the case, so I remembered incorrectly. So actually I think it's more likely to be that, than 則.
So, maybe not 易, and maybe 昌, but IMO not likely 則.
So there you have it, Brian: dissension, dispute, debate, no clear answer, a perfect shakuhachi topic!
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Thanks, Peter, that's exactly the kind of discussion I was after. I agree that for the reason you give, related to the リ, it would have to be an extremely stylized 則 -- like an English "R" with an extra curl on the tail. Not impossible, but not a good choice for your default assumption. I mostly threw it in for comparison, to demonstrate how many different kanji can look similar in cursive, and because of the very tenuous connection to Buddhism.
I apologize if I came off too harsh in my last post. I have a thing about the idea that Chinese characters are some mystical pursuit that you either "get" or not. It can be learned and discussed logically like any other area of knowledge as you have graciously demonstrated here.
Personally I think that this question will not be resolved until someone pops up and says "My dad was in Kyoto in the 50s and he said there were lots of people there with shakuhachi with 易 carved on them, busking on the street near the fortune-tellers" -- something unexpected like that.
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Chris, as for yours, the bottom one is 月 ("moon", probably pronounced "getsu" or "gatsu" in a 2-character compound). Check out the stroke order: left vertical stroke, top and down for the right vertical stroke, then back up for the zig-zag to write the two horizontal strokes inside (first top, then bottom).
The top one, I don't know. The two little dots on the left look like the 口 radical, which made me think it might be 唱 (chant, "sho"), 吹 (blow, "sui"), 鳴 (ring, "mei"), or something, but I can't square any of those with the bottom part. Something like 留 (stop, "ryu" or "ru") is also a theoretical possibility, I guess... where the two dots would be part of the "top half" and just placed out there on the left for effect.
I'll try to look at some reference books and get back to this thread if the question remains unanswered.
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