How Kanji Changed My Easter

I've started learning Japanese. As a beginning point I'm following a mildly controversial method in which one first learns the English meanings of the Kanji—written Japanese characters—after which one then learns to speak and read the Kanji. I posses a nascent and faint glimmer of hope in attaining Japanese literacy. Will this flicker of vision be snuffed by harsh reality? I don't know. Maybe. I hope not. I hope my naiveté hasn't outstripped my enthusiasm.

For the time being it's rather exciting being granted new found admittance into the heretofore mysterious world of Japanese characters.

The particular method I'm using espouses stories. One doesn't look at the characters as pictures of things. One builds concrete pictures in imagined stories and the Kanji characters come to represent those stories. One of the reasons I naively believe literacy attainable is my brain already works in a similar fashion.

Of the early characters one learns, this is near the beginning: 日 Sun, or day. The sun rises every day. 日 is followed by 月. Moon, or month. The moon follows a monthly cycle.

Another early character is 口. Mouth. This character is an exception to the pictograph rule and is a clear picture of the thing it represents, an open mouth.

Much later one learns the Kanji for evening. 夕 The story given is of a romantic notion of night-time with the moon partially obscured by clouds, a picture I quite like. When I see this character, I can see the scene I have built in my imagination and I know the meaning of the word. Magical really.

Now on to Easter. There is Kanji for the word Easter. 復活祭. Potentially translated as "return to living celebration." That in itself is a nice little gift. But it isn't how Kanji changed my Easter. It was simply the character for name. 名 A combination of evening and mouth.

In order to remember the Kanji, my study text gives this story:

"Perhaps you have heard of the custom, still preserved in certain African tribes, of a father creeping into the tent or hut of his new born child on the night of the child’s birth, to whisper into its ear the name he has chosen for it, before making his choice public. It is an impressive naming custom and fits in tidily with the way this character is constructed: evening. . . mouth. At evening time, a mouth pronounces the name that will accompany one throughout life." (Heisig, James W. "Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1," pg.61)

Isn't that beautiful? I shall never forget the Kanji for name. I can see the scene, the stillness of evening, the muted tones of moonlight. The hut. The proud and trembling father, his features burdened with the importance of his task. The darkened intimate interior. The child, sleeping. The father bending low. Father and son; faces bathed by the gentle African moon slipping through an opening in the roof. He whispers his son's name. All the father is, his life to this point, his experience, dreams, passions, pain, disillusionment, fears, the ineffable, the transcendent, the humanity that makes him more than skin and bones—all that the father is—pulls possibility from the eternal and creates ex nihilo, language spoken. The insubstantial and eternal is brought into here and now, history. A voice. A sound. A name. Possibility uttered. Breath, warm air, moving, physically moving. Breath received as sound. This is who you are. Identity, belonging, purpose, destiny, comfort, hope, all carried in warm moving air. A voice. A sound. A name.

In my literacy, sometimes words start dying slow deaths, trapped in black and white on a page. If I go no further in studying Kanji I have already received this gift, some words have come back to life, they are human again, they are stories.

名

Under an evening moon a father's mouth whispers warm breath in his son's ear. This is your name.

Fix the image in your mind.

A NAME. God defines himself by stories. "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." By this he doesn't mean he is the God that belongs to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He means he is the God in the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the God who broke through eternity and acted in history, caring for, loving, protecting Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. While speaking to Moses from the burning bush God puts it even more simply; I am a verb. I Am That I Am.

A VOICE. In Exodus God appears not as an image, for the eyes, but as a voice, for the ears. He speaks. In the semiotics of presence, breath on breath, he speaks. I am the God who pulls eternal possibility into the here and now. Real life. Blood and guts and sweat and tears. In the heat of the sun and cool of the moon, I AM is here, in history, speaking.

NAMED BY THE VOICE of I AM. This voice of stories speaks. "You are my child," says God to me. "Your are my child," says God to you. Identity, belonging, purpose, destiny, comfort, hope. I am named. I am part of The Story. The Loving One who bent low, incarnate, to breathe breath in my ear. You are my son, he says to me. Your are my child, he says to you.

名

John 20:10-18
Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"
"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."
Jesus said to her, "Mary."

Mary sees, but doesn't understand. Then a voice. Her name. She hears her name spoken by The Loving One, and she understands.


A father whispers in his child's ear.

Mary

名

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!