Start

In this my first post, I found interesting to upload an appropriate image to the occasion, and among the many possibilities, I chose the word 始め (hajime, “start”), that has only one kanji. However, I suffered a little to draw it, as this character  始 (haji-meru, haji-maru; shi) has one of the radicals I regard as most difficult, the onnahen, which origin is the kanji that means "woman" (女, onna, sometimes written as on'na, read as “on” followed by “na”, and not “ona”). As all the radicals suffixed in -hen, the onnahen is posted in the kanji's left side, occupying it completely. In the right of 始 we have another kanji, the 台 (utena; dai, tai), which general idea is "support" as in "pedestal", and that is why it names the flower's calyx (utena). But its most common use is as a counter for machines and vehicles (dai, like in "one car":  車の1台, kuruma no ichidai). 

Yes; I, too, must push hard my imagination in order to create a link between one and another idea. Whoever studies japanese or kanji soon realizes that these apparently absurd correlations happens quite often. Nevertheless, let us remember that kanji have undergone several variations throughout the eras, and they have been adapted and readapted in many fashions, as so the connection among its meanings might be hidden under this long history. And this is so just if we suppose that utena and dai/tai  originally did have shared the same kanji, what did not necessarily happenned. It could be that in the beggining of language's devisal, these words were associated to different kanji. Because they suffered many transformations, there is the possibility that through the course of time, the stilysation of such ideograms resulted in the same character that currently goes by 台, but even that the written form of these words have been unified, the same did not happen to its meanings, that remained then distinct. Yeah, this sort of thing might happen. By the way, the onnahen itself does not seem to me something fairly intuitive to the idea of "start", and as the dictionary offers at least two more variations of 始 that does not show the onnahen, this radical also seems to be the result of a posterior mutation. And let us speak straightforwardly here: how come "woman" + "support" or "counter for machines" suggests the idea of "start", huh?

Whatever way, I do not know the explanation for this case, nor for the apparent polysemy of 台. What I can say in addition regarding this 台 is that the dictionaries account that it itself is a kanji compound of two more radicals, ム (mu) and 口 (kuchi; ku, kou). ム alone does not make any kanji, though it is a homophone character from katakana. As a radical, it conveys the idea of "I" or "me", "myself". Kuchi, in the other hand, is not only a radical but also a kanji in its own right, and means "mouth". Maybe 台 could be then "support" in a broader sense, as the mouth that by its eloquence keeps the speaker? I hope one day I can learn what archeologists and philologists say about it.

But, back to 始, it is worth remembering that it can gives us two verbs, haji-meru (始める) and haji-maru (始まる), both meaning "to start", but with a subtle difference in syntax. The first verb is what we can normally call in English as a transitive verb, for it is something someone starts. It is not merely "to start", but "to start something" (it needs therefore an object). The second verb, however, is an intransitive verb, it does not need an object, and it is something that begins by itself, without the occurrence of a subject and an object. Clarifying example:

"The teacher has started the lesson" (先生は授業を始めました, sensei wa jugyou wo hajimemashita). 

"The lesson has started" (授業が始まりました, jugyou ga hajimarimashita).

In the first case, we can se the use of the particles は (in this case not read as “ha” but “wa”) and を (also in this case not read as “wo”, but “o”) shedding light on subject and object. In the second case, only the particle  が (ga) shows up to determine the subject that does not need an object.

Who would say that a simple ideogram could give us so much to say. In fact, it is a lot to study, and I did not even picked the topics of aesthetics or techniques of the shodou's piece, and did not make any less superficial reflection neither. But this is okay; shodou has this special quality, weakened in romanized languages, that combines art and language itself in a pratically magic way. And I could not let some topic of the grammar out, as this is convenient to someone like me that studies japanese as well. In any case, I believe that this slowly and easy pace gives us a good start.

I only would have liked to have written better the date and sign at the left side... but as I have already said, it was difficult enough to draw out a minimally acceptable hajime (there are still many errors), and so I did not want to discard it for such slip. It serves as a lesson to be considered the next time.