38. The "Woman" Radical: 女

A Japanese teacher of mine once lamented that all the kanji containing the "woman" radical 女 had horrible meanings. The more she thought about it, the more upset she became. She wasn't exactly angry in the way an activist would be. Her tone was closer to whiny or pouty with a large dose of woundedness.

To keep her from sliding into an even deeper emotional morass, the students shifted into the role of caretakers, calling out 女 kanji with positive meanings, such as these:

始 (288: beginning)
好 (859: to like; good)
婚 (1278: marriage; wedding)

If we had known all the Joyo kanji, we might have mentioned this extremely positive one:

娯 (1238: amusement, enjoyment)

Two more can be quite positive, but not always:

妙 (1841: marvelous; strange)
妖 (2125: weird; enchanting)

Still, I don't think it would have helped to mention kanji with cheerful meanings, as our teacher was determined to feel bad. Now, what exactly was she obsessing about that day? I can't quite recall (if she ever even shared her thoughts), but the non-Joyo 姦 may have been on her mind. It can mean "noisy," "rape," and "wicked," among other things. She might also have been contemplating any of these kanji:

嫌 (1218: to dislike; aversion)
妨 (1808: to obstruct, interfere with, disturb)
嫉 (2027: jealous)
妬 (2076: jealous)

I certainly understand her annoyance; one can only assume that ancient people associated women with such negative personality traits, and the etymologies of these characters in Henshall's newer edition generally support that.

However, one can't always be too literal about such things. For instance, two kanji contain the "woman" radical but can refer to men:

婿 (1477: husband; groom; son-in-law)
奴 (1638: guy; third-person pronoun; slave)

 

The Names of the "Woman" Radical

I've somehow neglected to introduce the basics of the three-stroke 女 radical. There aren't many, though. The English name is simply the "woman" radical. The Japanese call this radical おんな. The following kanji qualify as having an おんな radical:

女 (35: woman, female)
姿 (877: appearance)

If the radical is on the left side of a character, you could refer to it more specifically as おんなへん. That's the case with most kanji, as in these examples:

如 (1383: as; to be like; suffix expressing a state)
姓 (1471: surname)

First Comes Marriage ...

The 女 radical appears in a great number of kanji concerning marriage, reproduction, and female roles. You've already encountered 婚 (1278: marriage; wedding). Here are two more characters involving marriage:

姻 (1012: marriage)
嫁 (1049: wife, bride; daughter-in-law; to marry a man)

Just as 嫁 can mean "wife," so can these two kanji:

妻 (681: wife)
婦 (779: woman; wife; working woman)

Nowadays the latter one primarily means "adult woman," as in 婦人 (ふじん: woman), but it originally meant "married woman, wife." We see traces of that in the words 夫婦 (ふうふ: husband and wife; married couple) and 新婦 (しんぷ: bride).

Reproduction and Family Roles

You know how the old rhyme goes. After marriage comes the baby carriage. We find the 女 radical in two kanji representing pregnancy:

娠 (1436: pregnancy; conception)
妊 (1676: pregnant)

After birth, the 女 radical still comes in handy in kanji such as these:

嬢 (1422: young woman; daughter; unmarried woman)
娘 (1846: daughter; young woman; girl)

You might expect to find the 女 radical in characters meaning "daughter" but not "son." That's generally correct; people tend to call sons 息子 (むすこ). However, a legitimate child or heir could be of either gender, and the kanji for that concept contains 女:

嫡 (1582: legitimate child; heir)

We also find 女 in characters for "sister":

妹 (207: younger sister)
姉 (498: elder sister)

By contrast, there's no component meaning "man" in characters for "brother," as you can see from 兄 (elder brother) and 弟 (younger brother).

Other Female Roles and Identities

We also spot 女 in various characters for "princess":

妃 (1724: nobleman's wife), a kanji that often means "princess"
姫 (1738: princess; small)
媛 (1965: princess; highly regarded woman)

Wow, three kanji can mean "princess"?! Perhaps there were three princesses, and each demanded her own character!

Our radical also sits at the bottom of a more down-to-earth character:

婆 (1684: elderly woman)

And it heads off a kanji that may not have a down-to-earth meaning at all:

媒 (1692: mediation; medium)

As you can see from the second definition, this character can mean "spiritual medium," one who communicates between those in this world and those in another. What power such a person has! This 女-powered kanji strikes me as eminently positive!