480531170

correctness: while Western schools typically
try to keep students’ grades private, many juku
not only ignore this, after a test they put on the
blackboard not only the top few performers,
but also the the worst few performers. Note:
‘cook’ was later borrowed as a convenient way
of writing a homophone/ near-homophone
meaning ‘who?’. For further details, see 905
‘ripe, mature’. TA1965:179-84; OT1968:223,269;
GY2008:1745; AS2007:471,457. We suggest taking
the elements as lid/cover , 22 ‘hole’,
27 ‘child’, 64 ‘ground’, and 101 ‘round’.
Mnemonic: PRIVATE SCHOOL CHILD PUTS
ROUND COVER ON HOLE IN GROUND
1470
L1
俊
SHUN
excellence, genius
9 strokes
SHUNSAIgenius
SHUNKETSUhero
SHUNDŌ prodigy
Seal ; a late graph (Shuowen). Has 41
‘person’, and CO (see Note below) as phonetic
with associated sense ‘break out, emerge’, giving
‘outstanding person’. One commentator (Ogawa)
takes ‘outstanding person’ as an extended sense
based on ‘tall person’. Note: is taken in one
view as consisting of ‘tall slim person’, plus
‘foot’ (see Appendix), giving ‘stand tall with both
feet in one spot’ (Tōdō). Alternatively, analysed
as ‘foot’, ‘go slowly’, plus as phonetic with
associated sense ‘advance slowly’, thus ‘drag foot
and hardly move’ or ‘stand still’ (Katō). See too
715 and 1367. As with 715 and 1367, we suggest
taking the right hand part as ‘crossed legs’
and an indelicate ‘runny nose’ . OT1968:63;
TA1965:693; KJ1970:59-60.
Mnemonic: PERSON WITH RUNNY NOSE
AND CROSSED LEGS IS A GENIUS!
1471
L1
瞬
18
SHUN, matataku
flash, twinkle, blink,
wink
strokes
SHUNKANmoment, instant
ISSHUNKAN niin a flash
matatakuma niquick as a blink
OBI ( 䀢 ). Has 76 ‘eye’, and a second element
which changed several times across different
stages of the script. OBI has 145 ‘arrow’ as
semantic and phonetic, indicating rapid movement
and combining with ‘eye’ to give ‘blink’; the
sixth century dictionary Yupian lists 䀢 as being
equivalent to , which has CO (see Note
below) just in a phonetic role with associated
sense ‘rapid’ (Ogawa). Note: The seal predecessor
of is felt to be ( ), which is taken to mean
‘red blossoms which appear together but wither
straightaway’ (noted in Mizukami), or ‘Shun,
name of a mythical king in antiquity’ (Qiu). Gu
is in general agreement with Qiu. KJ1970:527-8;
OT1968:704; MS1995:v2:1098-9; GY2008:1468-9;
ZY2009:v3:814. We suggest taking (see 336,
1278, meaning feet pointing both ways) as46
‘evening’ and variant ‘well’ 1575, and as
hand holding cover.
Mnemonic: IN THE EVENING, PUT A COVER
ON THE WELL IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE
1472
旬
JUN
ten day period
L1
6 strokes
JŌJUN1 st third of month
CHUJŪN2 nd third of month
GEJUN3 rd third of month
OBI () ; seal . The OBI form, widely
considered to be the ancestral form of , is
given different interpretations (e.g. ‘coiled snake’
[Katō], ‘dragon with curled tail’ [Shirakawa]), but
these have a common semantic theme of ‘coil’ or
‘go round’; context shows that in OBI texts the
graph clearly had the sense ‘ten-day cycle’, re-
436 The Remaining 1130 Characters