On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Michila Caldera <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Paper Dragon <[email protected]> pointed > to a Japanese publication regarding three paper-related ideas. The article > noted that "kami" can mean "paper" or "deity". News to me, and very > interesting as well.
Well... careful with this. Japanese positively abounds in homophones (words that sound the same but are written differently.) Such words are not necessarily at all linguistically related. For instance, there are at least three unrelated words that have the sound "hashi" (bridge, end/edge and chopstick) that are written with entirely different kanji characters. (Obviously if you write the word in one of the phonetic scripts, it will look the same, since they're, well, phonetic. This wikipedia article describes the writing system, if you care and/or are unfamiliar with how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system ) In the case of kami (paper) and kami (the "spirits or phenomena that are worshipped in the religion of Shinto" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kami ) the kanji characters are also unrelated. (Just to keep things interesting, there's a word that means "hair" that's also pronounced "kami.") I'm not a good enough reader of Japanese to be able to research word origins, but given the number of such occurrences in Japanese, one should be careful about assuming that there's some special cultural relation between divinity and paper just because the words sound alike. That said, the Japanese love puns, and often make use of all the homophones, or similarities in the kanji characters for words, and similar tricks. in wordplay. And in the sense that it's mentioned in the article Mark linked to: "As the designs suggest, Kami Men are for the custom of giving money as good luck and congratulatory gifts. “Kami,” after all, can mean “paper” or “deity.”" you're dealing with superstitions about *luck*, and then all sorts of things are possible. Consider the practice of avoiding the number 4, one of the pronunciations of which sounds like the root of words related to death. This extends to things like never giving a gift of a set of 4 things (teacups and stuff all come in 5's in Japan!) and the like... Fours of all sorts are avoided just the way 13 is avoided in the West. Anne
