Playing with Kanji

遊学論

This week, over at 3 Quarks Daily, I wrote an essay called “It’s Hailing Calligraphy” about my early days studying calligraphy in Tokyo.

I didn’t have space to include this below about the great Japanese linguist Shirakawa Shizuka and his favorite kanji. He is really on my mind because I just found out that his legendary kanji dictionary has been translated into English by Christoph Schmitz.

There is also a new bilingual edition of his The Origin of Chinese Characters that comes with a calendar and bag (if you get it at Kinokunya).

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One of Japan's greatest linguistic scholars, Shirakawa Shizuka, also was fascinated by the concept of “play.” After an impressively long career of studying Chinese characters, he famously declared his most beloved character of all was the kanji for “play” (遊).

It turns out, though, that originally in the archaic Chinese script 遊 didn't mean “play” in the sense that we know the word today at all. Way back when, the character conveyed the concept of “journey.” Hence, the title of one of my favorite Chinese Southern Song dynasty paintings, 瀟湘臥遊図巻 (“Dream Journey Over Xiao-Xiang”).

Shirakawa explained that the character originally depicted the image of a man going out on a journey, carrying a tall flag, perhaps not unlike that of China's first great traveler Zhang Qian who was dispatched by the emperor on a secret mission in the 2nd century BC. Luce Boulnois describes his travels:

Zhang Qian led his horse, carrying the insgnia of is imperial mission: a bamboo pole over two meters long, with three tufts of yak-tail hair attached to it. This yak tail hair can reach two meters long and has always been an emblem of power across a large part of continental Asia.

Kidnapped not once but twice by the deadly Ziongnu, Zhang skirted the Tarim basin, traveling south of the Kunlun Mountains, making it as far as Ferghana– place of the heavenly horses. He was gone over 30 years and having lost all of his men except one, he finally made it back to the capital. And, they say that he somehow brought back that flag. In China, Silk Road history begins with his remarkable journey to “open up the West.” I personally have always been astounded by the flag: he lost all his men, was kidnapped twice, married, had children– but somehow despite all that, he kept that flag with him right till the end.

Shirakawa loved the kanji for “play” because of this. Commemorating his life's achievements, the Shirakawa Shizuka Memorial stele displaying the kanji for “play” at left was erected in his hometown in Fukui. He wrote that he loved the idea freedom inherent to the concept of “play”– since he said in ancient times, the idea of “freedom” was thought to be how the gods “played” and lived– in perfect freedom– as an end in itself (like a kiss?).

The stele reads thus:

遊ぶものは神である。神のみが遊ぶことができた。

遊は絶対の自由と、ゆたかな創造の世界である。それは神の世界に外ならない。この神の世界にかかわるとき、人もともに遊ぶことができた。（中略）

遊とは隠れたる神の出遊をいう。

（遊学論）

“Play is something sacred. Only the gods could truly play. Play signifies absolute freedom and a rich world of the imagination that existed only for the gods. When people came to access this world of the gods, they too were able to play. And when they played, the gods would come out and join them”