祭 Matsuri
meaning: Festival
The radical at the bottom represents an altar. The radical in the top left represents meat. The radical in the top right represents a hand holding onto something, and therefore the Kanji for festival was originally more about sacrificial rituals.
梟 Fukurou
meaning: Owl
The radical at the top represents a bird. The radical at the bottom is a tree, but it actually represents a wooden stick. Owls were beieved to eat their mother in ancient China and perhaps due to Confucian values which strongly advocates filial piety, owls, upon beign captured, got their heads chopped off and put on a stake to scare pests away from the fields.
There was a form of punishment in the middle-age samurai world called 梟首 (literally, “Owl Head”) which referred to the putting of a human head on a stake 😫😫😫, most likely inspired by the Chinese owl version 😫😫😫.
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The video is incorrect on 祭, it is NOT "festival".
The etymology of 祭 is "sacrifice to god", to bottom symbol signifies god, instead of an altar. The word that the character represents in ancient china has never been "festival". In Japanese, according to 折口信夫（釋迢空）（1887〜1953）, the etymology of まつり is also NOT festival, but "ritual, the act of praying/offering to god/soul".
Of course, in the modern context meaning shifts and expands in both Chinese and Japanese. 祭 come to mean worship (and the act itself) in general, and 祭り refers to the ritual itself, or any celebrations in general, not just gods.
In English, the etymology of festival relates to latin'a festus, meaning "of a feast". It is proposed that it can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European *dʰéh₁s, making it relates to another English word "fair" as in Christmas fair.
In translation, 祭り is usually translated as "festival", but really it is closer to ritual, both meaningly and etymologically. However, festival sounds more natural in English, hence the choice.
As we can see, the etymology of the 3 words, in 3 different languages, are different. It is incorrect to use the English translation of a Japanese word, which is usually denoted with a Kanji character, then assumes the character itself have the same meaning. Remember, Kanji are just another writing system! The characters themselves does NOT necessarily carries any meaning.
The confusion is understandable, but as a channel of culture and history, I think you can do better 💪
References:
Kanji Etymology:
https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=祭
Japanese Etymology
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/祭
English Etymology
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/festival
"China is so bad."
"But Japan too…"
"Tutututut!"
Perfect!
It's unbelievable that you have to memorize all these signs.
This is not likely the origin of the 梟 character. 梟is likely just a compressed form of 鵂 where the left part 休 just indicates the sound of the character: so the tree doesn't indicate any meaning. The sense "hang a severed heads from a tree" came later. Still creepy though.
To be fair some owls do eat their siblings idk about their mothers though
We all have our cultural black spots that we tend to sweep under the carpet when discussing our history. Here in the nordic countries of Europe we tend to be proud of our viking heritage. The vikings where traders and explorers. They where also pirates terrorising costal communities and took slaves.
The irony of killing owls to keep pests like rats at bay.
I new the kanji was a dead owl being used as a scarecrow… but I didn't now about owls eating there own mothers lol
the manchuria incident was just revenge for kanji
What's funny is that in Chinese this 祭character means exactly what you described. And it doesn't mean anything else. So why did japanese change the meaning? Or did they keep the old meaning, while Chinese specified what that means?
to be more accurate, the 示 of 祭 is not "altar" but a symbol made up of 二 which represents "up/the beyond" (the bottom line is the ground and the top line indicates that which is above) and 丨丨丨 (three lines) represents casting, hence 示 depicts "manifestion" and is used to indicate something that has a metaphysical/divine component. Therefore 祭 means handling meat for a divine cause.
Sheep? Yeah the holy sacrifice of Israelites
The way you put it like that it makes me think it wasnt a sheep
"We are not going to 15th – 16th centur-"
Bro is self-aware 💀💀
Freaky but kinda interesting
It’s also happened in France.
China was wild pre Zhou dynasty, all the things you hear about the Mayans? Thats a regular Tuesday in ancient China
I would have not survived ancient China or 15th or 16th century Japan.
Why are sheep always the ones sacrificed? Ancient Israelites also sacraficed sheep.
fantastic. Im new to japanese and really love the explination of kanji.
Haha. If a chinese invites you to a 祭, you are the sacrificial lamb so beware but if a Japanese invites you, you are safe and going to a festival.