紅一点 (kōitten: lone woman (e.g., bright flower) in a group)
red + one + point
佐藤は新内閣の紅一点だ。
Satō wa shinnaikaku no kōitten da.
Satō is the only female minister in the new cabinet.
Without knowing the meaning of 紅一点, I might think Satō-san was the lone red dot (or blot) on the new cabinet! This expression enables us to write about women with nary an 女 (onna: woman) in sight! The word for “minister,” 大臣 (daijin: important + vassal), also doesn’t appear in the sentence.
Here’s the breakdown of words:
佐藤 (Satō: surname) to assist + wisteria
The kanji 佐 (SA: to assist) is new to me. It combines the “person” radical
with 左 (SA, hidari: left), so we have a person on the left who offers assistance. Also new to me: the idea that 左 originally had the connotation of “support,” as did 右 (migi: right). But the type of support differed; 右 involved verbal support (hence the 口, “mouth,” in 右), whereas 左 represented support to someone at work (エ). In the name 佐藤, one could construe “wisteria support” as a trellis or arbor! But a native speaker says, “My understanding is that 藤 comes from the 藤原 (Fujiwara) clan, which was very influential in northeastern Japan.”
新内閣 (shinnaikaku: cabinet)
new + (government) cabinet (last 2 chars.)The last two kanji, 内閣 (naikaku: cabinet), break down as inside + cabinet. As for the etymology of 閣, Henshall says that 門 (door, gate) has the extended meaning of “place sealed off for privacy.” And the component 各, which usually means “each,” has the sense here of “visit by a dignitary.” (I’ll never understand such leaps!) So all together, we have a “private place that dignitaries visit,” such as a cabinet.
