Welcome back to Kanjigations, and congratulations on taking the second step down the scenic route to total Japanese mastery. Now that you have reached level two, training wheels be gone; this segment will henceforth be referred to only as 漢字-gations.

For those who missed the first installment, do not fret. I took comprehensive notes for you, complete with the doodles you would have drawn had you been there. For those who think you’re too good to backtrack because you already have the intro stuff down solid: I understand where you’re coming from, but I should warn you that there is little method to the order and arrangement of material.

Today’s kanji is brought to you by what my friend had for lunch today.

I’ve no doubt you’ve seen these two characters before, and the reason for this is the same as the reason I’ve chosen them. They’re important. Why are they important?

親 is important because:
1. 親子丼 (oyakodon: lit. parent & child rice bowl, where bite-sized chunks of chicken represent the parent and a pulpy layer of egg stands in for the child) is delicious (apparently—I’m vegetarian);
2. Without 親 there would be no 子, and the world would cease to be;
3. It is the finger of 親 (oyayubi) which separates us from animals;

子 is equally important because:
1. The second kanji is in my name, in which it is read ‘ko.’ It is in countless other Japanese lady names as well, capping off ‘Mitsuko,’ ‘Natsuko,’ ‘Yumiko’ and so on with old-fashioned flair;
2. When found after an animal-representative kanji, 子 (as ‘ko’) is synonymous with ‘cute,’ denoting the baby version of whatever it follows;
3. 子 functions as a radical as often as it stars as its own character—perhaps you’ve seen it in 学（the がく of だいがく）、季（the き of きせつ）、教（the おし of おしえる）、or 存（the そん of そんざい）.

The Oyako Digest

Now, to make them as unforgettable as your own parents and children.

In compounds:

親 (したしい ・ したしむ) Behavior

This incident occurred between Hitler and Eva Braun on a base in Darmstadt, Germany. Thus, Darmstadt (pronounced Därmshtät) is our base.

Disclaimer: By no means do I intend to condone the Fuhrer’s iniquitous behavior in casting him as a sympathetic character, but in truth, his (quite volatile) love life makes (and has made) for excellent storytelling. He took many lovers and was, it seems, desperately passionate with every one, not excluding Miss Eva Braun and the ‘Geli’ around whom the mini-comic centers.

Note the bolded words/sounds.

What can be learned from this?

Language lesson: Base + bold = verb forms of 親 ; the shta sound of Darmstadt + she— / she mo = shitashii / shitashimu

Life lesson: A man should be wary of becoming too fond (親しむ) of a girl for whom he is like a parent (親), especially when he is already on intimate (親しい) terms with another. Lacking better sense, Hitler drives Geli to suicide and is inspired to become vegetarian (fact) and recite U2 lyrics (fiction).

From one criminal to the next, to 子 we go

There you have the mnemonics for 親 and 子. For future review, a chart and a reminder that kanji and their readings are more than just shapes and sounds.

Kanji. Japanese language’s fourth alphabet. The most intimidating of all – a baffling arrangement of figures wherein one shape may make two, or three or four, distinct sounds. Purely overwhelming in number. That unconquerable beast we have read about in the lore, seen in foreign picture books – a dragon against which we must train for years, on simpler beasts, before we’ve a chance of tackling it and learning Japanese to any successful degree.

Stop studying in fear. Let me help.

Do you remember those charts your teachers gave you, back when you were learning hiragana and katakana? Mnemonic charts, I think they were called.

For anyone drawing a blank, there are a series of pictures that take something like the hiragana letter く (ku) and represent it as something like this:

“This is a cuckoo! It goes koo! koo!”

What I’d like to know is, why did these extraordinarily helpful devices—however inane and sometimes not-so-intuitive—have to stop at ん (nn)?

(Which is, by the way, this:

“The end!”

Kanji is exponentially more difficult to master than are its linguistic precursors: because there are exponentially more strokes, more ways to read them, more of them, and the regularity of their appearance in every day life, necessary for purposes of memorization, is nil.

And so, I bring you 漢字-gations, or Kanjigations.

Here, I will endeavor to represent kanji in memorable ways, providing multiple readings, compounds, and mnemonics in the form of pictures and phrases. My hope is that the conjugation of them all (and I mean that in the scientific sense—to link, connect) will make these letters hard to forget. I apologize to anyone who has not yet grasped the preceding alphabets, but the readings will be provided in kana only, assuming that those who enter here have dealt with it already.

Following what I’ve found to be the most useful language-learning tip—keep it fun!—even though it may be more natural to start basic, I’m going to begin Kanjigations by introducing two of my favorite (and rather simple) letters.

The two above kanji form a natural pair, and so we shall tackle them together. I love these characters because, firstly, they look more like Tetris pieces than kanji; second, their shapes represent their meaning and are thusly very easy to remember; and lastly, they are a complementary compound, by which I mean they appear to have been made for each other—the puzzle-piece compatibility is undeniable—and are, indeed, linguistically harmonious. Here are the vitals:

While these two characters are memorable enough on their own, as promised, here come the mnemonics:
Two tater tots, one of which is decollating the other.

(**Note: For the purpose of precision and personal enjoyment, some of the English vocabulary featured in these segments, e.g. decollating: to behead, may not be the most commonplace; in such instances, definitions will be provided.)

Trace the tots’ shape, and you have 凸.

Oh no! It’s Robocop!

Outline Robocop’s intimidating body, and you’ll see 凹.

There you have the readings for 凸 and 凹 when found in a compound.
Now for 凹’s verb forms, in the form of a comic: the best way to depict verb-ing.

The Action of 凹 (くぼむ ・ へこむ)

A sad story, and hopefully one you will remember. Language learning principles preach that language is better internalized once the target word and its meaning are united in physical movement; so, rather than depress or be depressed, let the sketches substitute for the uneven ground of 凸 and 凹. And refer to the review chart below to remember that kanji and their readings are more than just shapes and sounds.

Ask any Japanese person about his religion and you’re likely to be told ‘無宗教’ (mushuukyou), or ‘none.’ Now, to anyone who has made a pilgrimage to this nation of islands (the creation story of which is saturated with Shinto practices) to delight in its temple walks, god-worshipping festivals, spiritual rituals—and succeeded, no less—this statement may seem utterly fallacious.

Japan is a country that served as a linchpin of major world religions, a country of temple and shrine-dotted maps—how could it be that its citizens are atheists?

Put simply: Japan is an areligious religious nation.

Put logically: Religion in Japan is so deeply embedded that practitioners, which account for nearly 100% of the population, rarely see themselves as practitioners at all. That is not to say they do not believe; the popularity of Shinto festivals (祭り- matsuri), adherence to Buddhist rites at funerals (葬式 – soushiki) and in the yearly, days-long custom of ancestor worship (お盆 – Obon), in addition to the loyalty of the masses gathered to pray at shrines and temples on New Year’s (お正月 – Oshougatsu) are all clear indicators that that is not the case. Rather, in Japan, religion and culture are bound to each other. Not only that, but so are religions tied to other religions.

As you may have guessed, Buddhism and Shintoism (仏教 – bukkyou and 神道 – shintou) are two of Japan’s most widely practiced religions. Providing exact numbers of who is what would prove tricky, however, as the majority adheres to both, depending on the occasion. This is not entirely unlike the once-favored Shinbutsu Konkou/Shuugou (神仏混交/習合), a mixture of Shinto and Buddhism that was banned during the Meiji period. Although it is less common nowadays to find temples and shrines sitting on the same property as it was then, it is still entirely normal to find both dogmas within one person.

Perhaps a cursory glance at the three phases of life will help explain this balance.

Birth: Following a longstanding tradition, many families are registered with a local temple or shrine, thus assigning a person to the denomination of Buddhism or Shintoism at birth. Newborns are taken to a local place of worship (usually a shrine, but sometimes a temple) on the seventh day after birth (お七夜 – Oshichiya) to make offerings to guardian deities in return for protection.

Marriage: Shinto priests are often solicited for wedding ceremonies to be held at a shrine—or more recently, hotels or wedding halls—though this tradition is falling out of favor to the Christian (or) secular white-dress, rings and cake wedding of Western societies.

Death: Funeral rituals most commonly abide by Buddhist procedures, particularly Pure Land (浄土 – jodo), by which the deceased spirit is carried to a sort of Buddhist Heaven.

Beyond death: The spirits of ancestors visit during the Buddhist Obon season and are greeted with lanterns, flowers and a feast. For other days of the year, many families have Buddhist altars or Shinto shrines in their homes where they chant scriptures (if Buddhist, as Shinto is scripture-less) and offer gifts.

This Shin-butsu blend can also claim a number of offshoots under the broad category of Shinshuukyou (新宗教 – New Religions); among its best-known are Soka-Gakkai and Aum Shinrikyo (also Aleph), the latter of which dwells on apocalyptic fears and may better be termed a cult.

In addition to these, there are also strands of Taoism (道教 – doukyou) and Confucianism (儒教 – jukyou) that have been present in Japan for centuries on a similarly secular level. The first is at the root of many beliefs held today about astrology, fortune-telling and demonology/spiritism, while the latter, less a religion than a philosophy, greatly reformed the structure of government, education and society in Tokugawa Japan (when samurai occupied the top rung of the populace).

Finally, as the Japanese constitution contracts ‘freedom of religion,’ a number of imported minority religions have found niches in Japan. The most established of these is Christianity (キリスト教 – kirisuto-kyou), which is not only visible in wedding ceremonies or holiday decorations, but exists in practice, with followers in the low millions. Its success over other less indigenous religions is much in thanks to the arrival of missionaries to Western Japan who came bearing Roman Catholicism in the 16th century.

Other present religions include Islam (イスラム教 – isuramu-kyou), Hinduism (ヒンズー教 – hinzu-kyou), Judaism (ユダヤ教 – yudaya-kyou), Sikhism (シーク教 – shiiku-kyo), and Bahá’í (バハーイ教 – bahaai-kyou).