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From the last blog, you know all about men, particularly 男 (DAN, NAN, otoko: man). And you’ve likely seen 間 in 時間 (jikan: time), which breaks down as hours + interval. So perhaps you’ll be as surprised as I to find that 間 combines with 男 to mean “adultery, adulterer” (間男: maotoko). What does 間 contribute to this word? It’s tricky to figure out, because 間 has quite a few meanings.
I know 間 commonly means “space.” Does 間男 imply that a man commits adultery because he needs space from his wife?!
But 間 can also refer to rooms. So does the 間 in 間男 refer to the room in which an adulterer proves his manhood?
Then again, 間 can mean “timing, situation, occasion,” as in 間違い (machigai: mistake: timing + difference). And as I mentioned, 間 can mean “interval.” Both “timing” and “interval” sound like plausible interpretations of the 間 in 間男, because adultery is a matter of impeccable timing, and people having affairs need to find just the right intervals for their dalliances!
| “Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.” —John Barrymore |
In today’s blog and the next two, we’ll look at various meanings of 間 (which has five (!) yomi: KAN, KEN, aida, ai, and ma). If it ever feels hopeless to pin down the meaning of 間, consider this: Its shape actually matches some of its meanings. Here, have a closer look:
間
I know 間 is supposed to be a pictograph of a sun (日) at a gate (門). But look how the 日 seems to have been inserted between the two sides of the gate. Well, what’s an interval but an insertion between two entities? (Think, for instance, of the intermission between acts of a play.) From another perspective, one can see 間 as a rough layout of a house—a blueprint with two corner rooms and a third room just to the “south.” Three rooms—that would come in handy for an adulterer trying to juggle several women.
Rooms for Living and Dying
Flipping through dictionaries to pin down the meaning of 間 in 間男, I made one of the coolest kanji discoveries ever:
居間 (ima: living room) to exist + room
I learned ima long before I knew any kanji, so I somehow didn’t realize that this word for “living room” even had kanji! Indeed it does, combining 居, i(ru), a common word meaning “to exist,” and “room” (the real meaning of 間 in this case).
So 居間 is the room where one exists. Same as in English—a living room is a room where one lives (though presumably one doesn’t die upon heading for other rooms). And, if one takes one’s cue from the breakdown of kanji compounds, you can do more than simply exist in a Japanese living room. By definition, you can also drink tea there:
茶の間 (chanoma: living room) tea + ‘s + room
Drinking tea is one of my favorite things to do—perhaps my second favorite thing after existing. Living rooms seem more appealing by the minute.
You’ll encounter a few more “room” compounds in the first Verbal Logic Quiz.
The Positive Aspects of Negative Space
The sense of 間 as “room” spun off from the primary meaning of 間 as “space.” By “space” I don’t mean “outer space,” although 間 does play a part in one astronomical word:
惑星間 (wakuseikan: interplanetary)
planet (1st 2 chars.) + between
Here, 間 is the space between planets, reflecting the way this character originally represented the negative space between objects. That meaning influences this straightforward word, as well:
間隔 (kankaku: interval, space) interval + partition
Actually, 間隔 denotes intervals of both space and time—both the space between houses and the interval between arriving trains.
This meaning of 間 as “physical space” also shapes several words that I find charming and intriguing:
狭間 (hazama: interval; valley, ravine) narrow + space
The first kanji, 狭, is sema(i), “narrow,” although haza, an alternate kun-yomi, comes into play here. I love the logic of 狭間: a valley is a narrow space!
間道 (kandō: secret path, side road, shortcut)
interval, space + roadThe second kanji is 道 (DŌ, michi: road, way), which can have the esoteric sense of a spiritual path, as in 神道 (Shintō: gods + way, or literally, “the way of the gods”). But in 間道, the 道 lends the down-to-earth sense of a paved road. That may sound dull, but the 間 spices things up again, referring perhaps to the space between buildings. Who can resist the idea of a secret path or an alley leading to places one has never been?
三遊間 (sanyūkan: between third base and the shortstop)
three + to play + space
English lacks a formal word for the all-important space in which the shortstop stands, and there’s certainly no English word for the space between the shortstop and third base. How specific of the Japanese to divide and subdivide that area! I like seeing “play” as the middle kanji here.
行間 (gyōkan: between the lines) line + space
Both of these kanji are protean, the meanings and yomi shifting from one compound to another, with 間 often drifting off into abstraction. But in 行間, these characters have clear and concrete meanings; 行 refers to lines of text, and 間 denotes a physical space. The equivalent of the typographical word “leading,” 行間 means the blank space between lines of text. But 行間 also has a metaphorical sense; 行間を読む (gyōkan o yomu, in which yomu means to read) is “reading between the lines.”
And here’s perhaps my favorite word in which 間 means “physical space”:
垣間見る (kaimamiru: to take a peep at, catch a glimpse of)
fence + interval + to look at
You’ll find a few notes about this compound if you click the following link.
Now it’s time for your second Verbal Logic Quiz, a game that asks you to make sense of 間 as an interval. I wish you luck. You’ll need it!
