Last month, I had the extraordinary privilege of attending this year’s BUNGAKU DAYS at the Kyoto International Conference Center, arranged by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project. As well as attending the awards ceremony for the winners of the 9th JLPP International Translation Competition and the symposium that followed, I was cordially invited to take part in the exclusive social event that concluded the conference. As we toasted, flakes of early Spring snow whirled and cascaded outside the massive glass window looking onto the center’s gardens. It was a fascinating afternoon and a magical evening; a day I will never forget.

I could scarcely believe I was sitting before the giants of the Japanese translation world who offered their advice at the last panel of the symposium – Peter MacMillan, Janine Beichman and Meredith McKinney. I was enthralled by their stories of working with Donald Keene, and the challenges they faced in mastering classical Japanese, at a time when the veritable cornucopia of easy-to-understand resources we have now were not available. It was also fascinating to hear about the current state of the literature industry in Japan from the perspective of the head of rights at Bungei Shunju, Hiroshi Arai. It appears there is considerable potential for translated Japanese works to boom overseas, and Japanese publishers are eager to pursue this course, despite the problems that tend to arise along the way when working with foreign publishers.

The 10th JLPP Translation Competition has already opened. Of course, I intend on submitting to it. Not only will I enter the modern literature category, but I will enter the classical literature category as well, inspired by all of the distinguished guests at BUNGAKU DAYS this year. It will be a considerable challenge, as I have never formally studied classical Japanese. But it will be a fantastic opportunity to expand my repertoire as a translator. In times like these, when we have so much information readily available to us, there’s really no excuse not to try.

And now, for an amusing aside – why does the kanji for “palm”, shō 掌, have two different kun’yomi readings: tenohira てのひら and tanagokoro たなごころ?

This kind of double or even triple kun’yomi reading scenario occurs with fair frequency in Japanese – take the kanji for “behind”, ri 裏, which is typically read as ura うら, as in ie no ura 家の裏 = “behind the house”, but can also be read as sue すえ, and even uchi うち in some cases. Many kanji have multiple kun’yomi readings for verbs, such as rei 捩, which can be used to write 4(!) distinct verbs, including nejiru 捩じる, “to twist or screw (physically)” and mojiru 捩る, “to parody or make a pastiche of”. And of course, there is no end of kanji which have multiple on’yomi readings, as kanji-weary students can well attest to – 行, one of the most commonly used kanji, can be read as both kō and gyō, as in ginkō 銀行 and gyōretsu 行列. Whether they be kun’yomi or on’yomi, this plethora of available readings is the bane of every beginner’s studies, but a delight for me as a kanji enthusiast, lucky as I am to be one. Hence, I would like to illustrate why this variety occurs with just one example – the case of shō 掌. A close colleague of mine recently taught me the phrase shōchū no tama 掌中の珠, or “the apple of one’s eye” – literally, “the jewel in the palm of one’s hand” – and already knowing that it had two different kun’yomi noun readings, I felt compelled to investigate why.

If you look up tenohira and tanagokoro in Kenkyusha’s New Japanese English Dictionary, you’ll find contrastive examples of usage – tenohira is used in phrases or sentences pertaining to physical actions. For example:

Tenohira ni ase o kaku.

掌に汗をかく。

To form sweat on the palms of one’s hands.

Whereas tanagokoro is used in a more abstract sense:

Tanagokoro no uchi ni aru.

掌の内にある。

In the palms of one’s hands = Under one’s complete control.

From this, when tanagokoro occurs, we can gather that the word “palm” is being used in the metaphorical sense; and indeed, this reading tends to occur in literature rather than the spoken word. Tenohira is the current preferred reading, the one you are most likely to encounter, even in the simile tenohira o kaesu yō ni 掌を反すように, “(as easy as) turning your palm to face upwards”. As it turns out, tanagokoro is a relic of Japan’s literary past, one that is quickly fading from modern discourse.

You may notice that tanagokoro sounds suspiciously like tenokokoro 手の心, or literally, “the heart of one’s hand” – a pertinent observation. Ta is an alternative reading of 手, found in other words such as taguru 手繰る, meaning “to reel in”. Na is what’s known as a pre-noun adjectival, which modifies the noun it precedes – in this case, describing the kokoro as belonging to the hand; it serves the same function as no の. And what is this kokoro? It comes from the fact that the kanji shin 心, typically read as kokoro in contemporary Japanese, once shared a common reading and meaning with ri 裏 – ura うら, “behind”. When you put all the pieces together, you have “hand” (ta) + pre-noun adjectival (na) + “behind” (kokoro) = “palm”, tanagokoro.

This distinction between the physical and the abstract is hardly unique to Japanese – after all, we talk in English of having people “eating out of our palms” and of the “heart of the matter” – but the fact that this distinction is made clear by the phonetic pronunciation of a word is an extraordinary feature of the Japanese language, one I find endlessly fascinating. And as Chomsky said, “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition… a whole history that creates what a community is.” For the Japanese – historically speaking, at least – their innermost thoughts, like the palms of their hands, appear to face inward, hidden from sight.