A Japanese friend wrote a tongue-twister and presented it to me in rōmaji, challenging me to convert the words into kanji and hiragana. I did fine until I encountered this line:

Kono bin itsu kara kara, kinō kara kara, ototoi kara kara?

I associate kara with “from” and “because,” so I thought the repeated kara kara phrases might have meant “because it’s from.” Wrong! For every kara that appeared before a punctuation mark, I should have written 空, meaning “empty” in this case.

For The Answer to
the Kara Kara Puzzle …

Just as kara has multiple personalities, so does 空. Look at all its yomi!

KŪ: sky, empty
a(keru): to empty, leave blank
kara, kara(ppo): empty
muna(shii): empty, vain, futile
sora: sky
su(ku), a(ku): to be empty, unoccupied
utsuke: empty-headed
utsu(ro): hollow, blank

The kun-yomi sora sounds like “to soar” (and sora is even an anagram of “soar”), so it’s easy to remember sora as “sky.” Despite that, I frequently fail to recognize 空, perhaps because its meanings don’t seem to match its shape.

On the Shape of 空 …

Because 空 can mean both “empty” (for instance, with the kun-yomi kara) and “sky” (with the kun-yomi sora), we can concoct the fun phrase 空の空, kara no sora, “the empty sky.”

On Repetition Compulsion …

Air and Space

The most common words containing 空 involve the concepts of air:

空気 (kūki: air, atmosphere)            air + atmosphere
空港 (kūkō: airport)                         air + harbor
航空 (kōkū: aviation)                       to navigate + air

For More Fun in the Sky…

In both Japanese and English, “air” gives rise to useful idioms. The English expression “thin air” (as in pulling something out of thin air) refers to a void, a place that doesn’t quite exist. Japanese has the equivalent expression in 空で (sora de: off the top of one’s head, from thin air, from memory), as in these phrases:

空で歌う (sora de utau: to sing from memory)            air + to sing
空で覚える (sora de oboeru: to memorize)        air + to memorize
空で読む (sora de yomu: recite from memory)            air + to read

In 空で読む, it’s as if reciting involved reading letters etched in the air. When we think of how a word is spelled or how particular kanji look, don’t we in fact see them “written” in the air, hovering before our eyes?

Then there’s the matter of “space.” Not “space” in the sense of the universe or cosmos. That’s written as 宇宙 (uchū: space) or 外宇宙 (gaiuchū: outer space).

On the Sky as a Roof …

I mean “space” in the sense of “area.” In these extremely specific compounds, 空 has that meaning:

満空情報 (mankūjōhō: info. on space availability in a parking lot)                                                 full + empty + info. (last 2 chars.)

Note how the first two characters combine opposite meanings, “full” and “empty.”

親水空間 (shinsuikūkan: space or area for water-lovers)
                                                intimate + water + empty + space

It’s surprising to see “lover” surface in the definition. But somehow the first two kanji combine to mean “hydrophilic,” referring to a love of water.

Empty Stomach, Empty Plate

The way to say “hungry” in Japanese is to say that the stomach is empty!

お腹が空いた (onaka ga suita: hungry)            stomach + empty

Suita is the past tense of su(ku), a 空 kun-yomi that means “to be empty” or “to be unoccupied.”

If a hungry woman hoped to fill up on kara-age (foods such as chicken or potatoes that are fried without batter), she might be alarmed by its kanji:

空揚げ (kara-age: unbattered fried food)            empty + to fry in
                                                                                           deep fat

What’s “empty” doing here? Does kara-age leave you feeling empty? Back when people coined this compound, did they already have the concept of “empty” calories?! I suspect that this compound might be ateji. An alternate way of writing kara-age is 唐揚げ.

For More on Kara-Age
and Its Origins …

In her fright she might turn to tea for solace. But even there she might encounter an empty culinary offering:

空茶 (karacha: tea served without cakes)            empty + tea

Tea served without cakes? What’s the world coming to? And they’ve coined a term for this travesty, so it must have occurred more than once!

If the hungry woman experienced this acute disappointment while traveling, she might feel the hollow ache that comes from being away from home:

旅の空 (tabi no sora: away from home)            journey + empty

When we’re homesick (or “devoid” of home), we have an empty feeling. And at that point, the journey can feel meaningless (that is, empty of meaning).

Arriving Empty-Handed

It’s usually a bad idea to arrive somewhere empty-handed, but that’s a desirable situation in karate:

空手 (karate)                                                          empty + hands

The hands are “empty” of weapons. According to Wikipedia, “The name can be interpreted literally or as a philosophical reference to the concept of the Void (Tao).”

If we invert 空手, here’s what we find:

手空 (tea(ki): leisure, spare/idle time)                      hands + empty

The dedicated karate student has little spare time, so one meaning is indeed the inverse of the other!

When you add a few more kanji to 手空, suddenly you’re talking about the opposite of leisure again! Take a look:

赤手空拳 (sekishukūken: barehanded, having no wealth or position to rely on (aside from one’s own resourcefulness) when embarking on something)                                          red + hand + empty + fist

Now, why is the hand red here? Is it raw or bloody with hard work? Is it the redness of a baby (赤ちゃん, akachan), meaning that one has started life with no money? Is this a yojijukugo, a four-character compound from China that represents a compressed story? I don’t know!

徒手空拳 (toshukūken: empty-handed; with nothing to start with; without capital                              emptiness + hand + empty + fist

In this compound, only the first kanji has changed, and now the concept of emptiness has been reinforced, yielding a similar meaning for the whole word.

When I consider the breakdowns of these compounds, I imagine a hand-
to-mouth existence. But does the fist contribute a sense of violence? Apparently, the last two characters simply combine to mean more of the same:

空拳 (kūken: with bare hands, with or from nothing, empty-handed)
                                                                                  empty + fist

And, unexpectedly, the on-yomi of the “fist” kanji 拳 (KEN, GEN, kobushi) also means “respectful”! So I’ll have to assume that this hardscrabble life has nothing to do with violence (or even a rags-to-riches boxing tale).

But could the empty hands mean a turn toward dishonesty? Quite possibly. Look at this compound:

空手形 (karategata: bad check; empty promise)     empty + hand +
                                                                                                 shape

This can also be pronounced kūtegata. But any way you read it, this is bad news for the recipient!

As you’ll see next week, 空 can indeed have this seamy side. For now, let’s cast away negative thoughts and enjoy two games.

For Answers to
Verbal Logic Quiz 1 …

For Answers to
Verbal Logic Quiz 2 …