A Kanji Conspiracy

Imagine encountering this sentence:

業者と結託して私腹を肥やす。

Wow, it has a lot of tough vocabulary! Actually, the first word is logical enough:

業者 (ぎょうしゃ: trader)

After all, it breaks down as trade + person.

Aside from that, what's really going on in this sentence? The radicals and the odd character may be familiar, but ... I'll give you a moment to ponder it all before I reveal the answer.

Photo Credit: Eve Kushner

I knew Snoopy was popular in Japan (as this Kobe shop makes obvious), but I didn't realize until yesterday that Charles Schulz had a connection to Japan.

Let's return to the sentence, looking at the term that follows 業者:

結託 (けったく: conspiracy; collusion)

Oh, what an interesting word! You probably recognize the first kanji from 結婚 (けっこん: marriage). This character means “to tie, unite.” And you might know the second kanji from essay 1555 on 託 (to entrust). Anyway, a conspiracy involves people endowed with money, power, or both, and they’re all tied (結) together in a web of lies, secrecy, and influence, trying somehow to overlook the seamy nature of the operation and to trust (託) each other.

After that we come to 私腹. The ultra-common 私 (わたし: I) and 腹 (はら: belly) may look familiar to you.

As for the final kanji in the sentence, the yomi is こやす, and Denshi Jisho provides these meanings:

fertile; fertilizer; get fat; manure; pamper

What an assortment! 

The information on all the individual kanji has come in, but how do you assemble the parts? What happens when they unite (結)? Hard to say. It's almost as if there's a kanji conspiracy (結託) to make sure that you feel lost! 

Nevertheless, let's take a stab at translation:

Conspiring with a trader, one fertilizes one's belly.

What?! One gets pregnant?!

No, let's try again:

Conspiring with a trader, one fattens one's belly.

A trader and another person are doing Weight Watchers, but they sneak off together and have an ice cream sundae? 

No.

Conspiring with a trader, one spreads manure on one's belly.

Disgusting!

Conspiring with a trader, one pampers one's belly.

Conception ... manure ... pampers ... Is this about rearing an infant?!

Clearly, it's not enough to see the meanings of 私, 腹, and 肥 in isolation. You need to grasp their roles in these words:

私腹 (しふく: for one's profit)
肥やす (こやす: to enrich)

So 肥 can mean not only "manure" but also "to enrich" ... Ah, that makes sense. With manure we enrich the soil. But what does the belly (腹) have to do with profits or enrichment?

Okay, here's the real translation at long last:

He lined his own pockets in a conspiracy with his traders.

Aha. Getting fat is a sign of wealth (or it used to be), so 私腹を肥やす literally means "to fatten the belly" and metaphorically means "to fatten one's own wallet" or "to line one's own pockets."

So what's my point?! That Japanese is hard and confusing? Well, that goes without saying.

That nothing is as it seems in the kanji world? Also goes without saying.

That it's not enough to learn the first five definitions of a kanji because you'll be lost if you don't absorb every obscure meaning? Well, yes, but I said that last week, and I don't want to bore you by repeating myself.

That you can miss the forest for the trees by focusing on tiny pieces (such as the meanings of radicals and of individual kanji) without considering the whole? Yes, getting warmer.

Actually, I want to say something a bit harsher than that. I've needed to say it for about seven years, ever since I started writing Crazy for Kanji. That's a really, really long time to hold something in, especially for me!

So here it is. Whenever I come across examples such as the one above, the same thing runs through my mind: It's obviously not enough to know the meanings of kanji such as 私, 腹, and 肥 when they're standing by themselves. If you don't look at them in context (in a whole word, at the very least), you'll understand next to nothing. In spite of this reality, there's a group of passionate people crusading online with the opposite message.

They have studied kanji by way of James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. First published in 1977, this book teaches the primary meanings of each Joyo kanji. The listing for every character may or may not include a discussion of etymology, but Heisig often disregards the true derivation. For 肥 (the last kanji I explored above), he provides "fertilizer" as the definition, as well as "flesh" and "mosaic" as the component breakdown. "Mosaic" is his fantasy of what the right side of 肥 could represent. The 肥 listing contains nothing else whatsoever. The book contains nary a compound nor even a yomi. As Heisig explains in the introduction, "Remembering the meaning and the writing of the kanji—perhaps the single most difficult barrier to learning Japanese—can be greatly simplified if the two are isolated and studied apart from everything else."

I don't mean to critique Heisig. Not at all. I believe in isolating "muscles," and I admire how he has devised an original approach to kanji, thereby bucking the establishment. I love iconoclasm! I also like the way he trusts in human imagination, both his own and other people's, as he challenges readers to develop their own associations with certain shapes. His method helped one of my kanji heroes, Japan Times columnist Mary Sisk Noguchi, learn all the Joyo kanji.

My issue is with his oddly cultish devotees, many of whom assume that his approach is the end-all and be-all to kanji study. Some act like trolls on websites, trashing any other kanji books or methods and leaving comments like, "Heisig is best! Heisig is the only thing that works. Everything else sucks!"

I have no idea what motivates people to write such things. What's in it for them?! And how have these people become so toxic? They've strayed far from the spirit of Heisig's book—and of kanji study as I know it. 

My biggest gripe is that their narrow devotion to one limited approach reveals a remarkable lack of awareness. As Heisig would agree, his book may be a helpful entry into kanji study, but it's merely a starting point. I ask again: If you know 肥 only as "fertilize," what would you do with the sentence I examined above?

It's important to study the small pieces, which is why I think it's quite valuable to learn radicals. But after that comes the process—and the joy—of putting the pieces together, of seeing how individual notes join to form the lovely and mysterious music of Japanese. Oh, yes, and apparently you also need to feel really confused much of the time!