#kokuji

A fun name today! 勝俣 is read Katsumata. Breaking it down, 勝 (ka.tsu, masa.ru, sugu.reru, or shō) means to win, prevail, or excel, but the real exciting thing here is 俣 mata, because it's a Japanese-made kanji (国字 kokuji), which is not that common. It's also exciting because it means crotch...... or junction or fork.

JLPT Level: N1

This kanji is a kokuji. Kokuji (国字) are kanji that were created by the Japanese. There are only a handful of them, but they are interesting and their radicals tend to provide a clear meaning of the character. 

Let’s break down this kanji by its radicals.

山 = mountain

上 = top

下 = bottom

The end of Chapter 5 of Shiranai has a quiz on 国事 (kokuji). Most kanji that the Japanese use came from China, but kokuji are kanji that originated in Japan. The quiz shows four of them. The third one is very interesting, as it’s a kanji for milligram (瓱).

Sooo I want to do my whole tumblr on Kanji, but I don't want to just reitterate crap that you can EASILY learn on another site, so I decided to do some interesting lil' articles first, and then move on to the other ones.  If you don't know any Japanese, then this shouldn't really interest you, unless you either WANT to know Japanese and are too scared because of all the scary kanji, or are Chinese and think you own the Japanese alphabet. Which is NOT TRUE. There ARE characters that the Japanese created, that many people DON'T know about. I only post this because a couple of years ago I had to sit through a presentation in my Japanese class of some idiot who didn't do their research, and said that ALL Japanese characters WITHOUT EXCEPTION are from China. This gross misinformation has somehow spread everywhere like an infectious STD, so I want to clear this up with the list below of JAPANESE CREATED characters (called 国字). 

働く（はたらく）： to do WORK (like studying and KNOWING THIS)

込む（こむ）：to be crowded

匂い（におい）：(to) smell

畑（はたけ）：field of crops

腺（せん）：gland (the reading for this kanji comes from the right radical, which is pretty easy to figure out if you know the kanji 線, which means line (and pronounced the same way); you can look at my earlier post on kanji and it'll describe how the readings sometimes work)

峠（とうげ）：mountain pass (I love this kanji because the radicals making it brain-dead easy to understand it!! Them Asians so clever -o-)

枠（わく）：frame (like a border)

塀（へい）：wall (the more common kanji for this though is probably 壁（かべ）)

搾る（しぼる）：to squeeze

Thankfully there are only 9 of these (in the Joyo list), so it's pretty easy to memorize and show off to Japanese people/friends how much you know and look like a smart ass. If you want to be a REAL prude, you can learn the 国訓（こっくん）kanji below, which are kanji whose origin are from Chinese, but whose meanings have changed.  

藤（ふじ）：Chinese "cane," Japanese "wisteria"

沖（おじ）：Chinese "rinse/minor river," Japanese "offing/offshore"

椿（つばき）：Chinese "Aelanthus," Japanese "Camellia japonica"

Most kanji come from China. It's right there in the name; "kan" = China, "ji" = character, so "kanji" = Chinese characters. Most come from China, but not all.