480531170

513
L3
札
SATSU, fuda
tag, bill, note
5 strokes
SATSUirebillfold
nafudaname tag
SEN’ENSATSU1000 yen note
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has 73 ‘wood’,
and 1072 (‘knife tool for carving’), usually
taken as phonetic only, with associated meaning
‘shave off, reduce’, but may also be regarded
as semantic. Thus ‘thinly shaved piece of wood’,
514
刷
SATSU, suru
print, rub
L3
8 strokes
INSATSUprinting
SASSHINreform
KŌSEIzuriprinter’s proofs
Seal ; late graph (Shuowen). Has 198 ‘knife/
cut’, and (listed in Kangxi zidian as an old way
of writing 89 ‘wild boar, pig’) as phonetic
with associated sense ‘scrape, shave off’, to give
‘scrape with knife’ (Katō, Yamada). Katō also links
to 1385 ‘scrape, pare, cut’, while Schuessler
considers it to be probably related to NJK
‘scrape’, which comprises 198 ‘knife’, with
755 (‘tongue’) as phonetic with associated sense
‘create space’, giving original meaning ‘scraping
tool’. Tōdō and Ogawa, alternatively, take the
associated sense as ‘rub’, which is the meaning of
another graph of similar shape, i.e. , which has
2003 ‘hand’ as determinative and originally
referred to wiping one’s bottom (Katō). It is
generally considered that printing – on wooden
blocks – was invented in China; the earliest surviving
printed book dates from 868AD, though
515
L3
殺
SATSU, korosu
kill
10 strokes
SATSUJINmurder
JISATSUsuicide
koroshiya‘hit man’
OBI ; seal . Has 170 ‘strike with weapon’,
and 89 (‘wild boar, pig’) (here, later distorted
to tree and cross shape) as phonetic with
i.e. a wooden tag. In modern usage, has a range
of meanings such as ‘receipt, coupon, [paper
currency] note’. Tags or thin tablets made of
wood were in common use in early Japan –
when paper was an expensive writing medium
– as labels attached to goods, for letters and
other documents, and for writing practice.
Though typically quite short, they are a valuable
source of information regarding aspects of
early Japanese history. KJ1970:439; OT1968:486.
Mnemonic: TAGS AND NOTES ARE MADE BY
WOOD-CUT BY CURVED KNIFE
earlier shorter printed texts or images do exist.
Rubbing was part of the process of printing texts
on wooden blocks, but it was a lesser task: the
more demanding main work involved the actual
engraving, i.e. the cutting out of text and/or
images on the blocks, in reverse; a sheet of paper
was then applied to the surface of the inked
block and rubbed to produce the text or image.
The earliest printing technology dates from later
than the emergence of seal script, so it would be
wrong to connect the etymological origins of
to considerations of printing. Nevertheless, use
of the ‘knife’ determinative is supportive of interpretation
of as ‘scrape’ rather than ‘rub, wipe’,
as Katō points out. ZY2009:v1:254; KJ1970:439;
YK1976:204; TA1965:572-3,624-9; OT1968:115;
AS2007:474,264; KJ1985:69. Regarding a mnemonic
we suggest taking as itself, namely
1232 ‘cloth’, and the NJK 256 , the so-called
‘corpse’determinative, which often refers to a
slumped figure with buttocks stuck out, and occurs
with a meaning of ‘buttocks’ in a number of
characters, such as 1888 ‘tail’.
Mnemonic: ‘BUTTOCK CLOTH’ HAS FINELY
CUT PRINT
associated sense ‘corpse’ or ‘kill’, to give ‘turn
(someone) into a corpse by striking’, and then
more generalized sense ‘kill’. MS1995:v1:714-5;
KJ1970:439-40; YK1976:204-5. We suggest taking
the left-hand part of the modern graph as
a combination of 73 ‘tree/wood(en)’, with
as a cross.
Mnemonic: KILL BY STRIKING WITH WOODEN
CROSS
174 The 200 Fourth Grade Characters