When I was studying 房 (frame 1078), I found it rather difficult to relate the kanji and its primitives to the keyword, so I made some "research" and found interesting information that I would like to share. As 512 characters was a bit too little space, I thought that a thread about it would be more adequate.

Well, 房 is the character used for 白房 (しろぶさ = white TASSEL), 黒房 (くろぶさ = black TASSEL), 赤房 (あかぶさ = red TASSEL) and 青房 (あおぶさ = green TASSEL), which are the 4 TASSELS placed at each corner of a sort of "shinto temple" style of roof that is placed over every sumo ring.

These TASSELS are always placed in the same order:
白房 (しろぶさ) : southwest corner
黒房 (くろぶさ) : northwest corner
赤房 (あかぶさ) : southeast corner
青房 (あおぶさ) : northeast corner


- So, each 房 (TASSEL: frame 1078) points a different 方 (direction : frame 490) -

As for the 戸 (door : frame 1076), imagine you enter a sumo stadium through the 戸 and see the 4 房 over the ring.

Here you have some pictures:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en...nament.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...yo_all.png

And some info (in japanese)
http://maxblog.mie1.net/e9967.html

Note: No, "青房 = green TASSEL" is not an error, it is just another example of "青 (あお)" meaning "green" instead of "blue" (Remember the traffic lights? It's the same)

Cool, didn't know that. I learned that kanji as 'chamber' and then learned the words 暖房 and 冷房. Recently I learned it as tuft/ふさ while reading about animals.

Both the white and red ones say "southeast". Also, the black one says "northweast". Could we get some clarification?

Cool info, thanks for posting. I had no idea what the tassel connection was. The only word I've actually learned with this was 暖房 (heating) and the 'chamber' meaning makes more sense. This kind of background makes it a lot easier to create an image to remember.

By the way, from that japanese link:

青房 = east associated with the Azure Dragon 青龍 (せいりゅう) and spring
赤房 = south associated with the Vermillion Bird 朱雀 (すざく) and summer
白房 = west associated with the White Tiger 白虎 (びゃっこ) and autumn
黒房 = north associated with the Black Tortoise 玄武 (げんぶ) and winter

These being the Four Symbols of Chinese mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Symbol...llation%29

These mythological terms are in EDICT but don't seem to be in the MS IME which makes them a pain to type. This stuff is neat though. Thanks again!

MethodGT Wrote:Both the white and red ones say "southeast". Also, the black one says "northweast". Could we get some clarification?

Doh!

Thanks for pointing it out, now the original post is corrected.

[ファブリス]

I loved that post btw. It inspired me to add a discussion area to the kanji pages, but well... some day. At least it's in the to-do's somewhere >_<.

Thank you all for your comments.

Fabrice, I have thought about that idea too. I don't know much about web design, but if the study page could have a structure similar to a sort of "blog" it would be great.

I mean, it would be something like this:

Kanji: -insert the respective kanji here-
General comments

Story 1
Comments for story 1

Story 2
Comments for story 2

and so on

The idea is that comments would be displayed only when you click the respective link (simmilar to what happens when you click the "Newest and updated stories" link).

Such a feature would increase feedback on stories and would make it possible for everyone to track their own stories and correct them according to the comments.

WolfErrant Wrote:By the way, from that japanese link:

青房 = east associated with the Azure Dragon 青龍 (せいりゅう) and spring
赤房 = south associated with the Vermillion Bird 朱雀 (すざく) and summer
白房 = west associated with the White Tiger 白虎 (びゃっこ) and autumn
黒房 = north associated with the Black Tortoise 玄武 (げんぶ) and winter

These being the Four Symbols of Chinese mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Symbol...llation%29

These mythological terms are in EDICT but don't seem to be in the MS IME which makes them a pain to type. This stuff is neat though. Thanks again!

You're welcome. =)

BTW, the 4 gods correspond to North, East, South and West,
but the 4 tassels point to

白房 (しろぶさ) : southwest corner
黒房 (くろぶさ) : northwest corner
赤房 (あかぶさ) : southeast corner
青房 (あおぶさ) : northeast corner

I confirmed it with the 大辞林 (だいじりん) from the Yahoo Dictionaries. I suppose that each of the four sides of a sumo ring must correspond to a different cardinal point and the related god.

Transtic Wrote:I confirmed it with the 大辞林 (だいじりん) from the Yahoo Dictionaries. I suppose that each of the four sides of a sumo ring must correspond to a different cardinal point and the related god.

That would make sense. I know very little about Chinese / Japanese mythology but even less about sumo customs...

Most useful, also taught me something about the use and pronunciation of the character, as well as Japanese culture. Favorite++

Great post. This is much better than the retarded tassle story I came up with. Thanks for the info!

Again, thank you.

I loved the 房 explanation. Thank you!!

Thanks a lot. Makes sense and makes things easier.

Thanks for the great info! I'm a fan of sumo so I like to make connections to sumo in my kanji stories wherever I can. Here are a couple others: remainder 残 (frame 808) and dragon 竜 (frame 536)

Nice post! Helped a lot.

Ta! :-)

WolfErrant Wrote:青房 = east associated with the Azure Dragon 青龍 (せいりゅう) and spring
赤房 = south associated with the Vermillion Bird 朱雀 (すざく) and summer
白房 = west associated with the White Tiger 白虎 (びゃっこ) and autumn
黒房 = north associated with the Black Tortoise 玄武 (げんぶ) and winter

Wow that's cool, if anyone else played FFXI these were the 4 bosses in sky.

ファブリス Wrote:I loved that post btw. It inspired me to add a discussion area to the kanji pages, but well... some day. At least it's in the to-do's somewhere >_<.

That would be awesome.

For me, what worked for this kanji was fairly simple. I'll post it here just because it's related to the thread, but the trivia about the sumo rings is pretty cool.

戸 = door/ The Doors (i.e. band with Jim Morrison)
房 = Naked Indian Man from The Doors movie (who Jim Morrison meets in a dream). Think "Hollywood Indian" whose costume goes beyond the point of authenticity and well into absurdity. So inauthentic and "Hollywoody" is his costume that even Naked Indian Man's compass has a tassel on it.


A little linguistic trivia: Not all languages have the same defined boundaries for their colors. If you pointed to a piece of turquoise stone and asked an English speaker what color it was, you'd likely get the answer "blue." However, there's a less common word to describe this color, which is "indigo" (or, of course, the word "turquoise" itself). You could say that in the absence of this less common vocabulary word, though, the English word "blue" describes both BLUE and INDIGO. I'm writing these in CAPS to indicate that I'm referring to inter-lingual concepts and not our English words.

Similarly, in Japanese, 青 actually refers to the concept-colors BLUE and GREEN. There are more specific words in Japanese for the individual colors, as there are in the English example with indigo, but ask a Japanese speaker to look at a spectrum of color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), and mark the boundaries for 青, and they would include both BLUE and GREEN.

In other languages, still weirder things happen, like the native vocabulary consisting of only three fundamental color words to describe anything from white to black (at least what we English speakers consider white and black) to any other color in the spectrum. The bottom line is that if you look at a spectrum of colors (get a prism, put it up to a window...), there actually aren't any sharp boundaries in the light to define each color. We perceive boundaries because we are used to thinking of yellow and green as different (though Crayola certainly has helped blur these boundaries for most of us), but yellow and green are actually choices. They're choices that Indo-Europeans, or their ancestors, made for us, tens of thousands of years ago.

that makes better sense

Wow that definitely solidifies the kanji in my head now, thanks so much for posting this informative information.