Discussion on Goshuin and Japanese Characters
February 7, 2025
Episode Notes
Hey,
hey, good morning there.
Good morning, Les. How you doing?
Me? I'm doing much better than last week.
Excellent. Good to hear.
Yeah. How are you How are you doing this week?
I'm doing actually very well. It's uh Yeah, we were a little bit down. We had a little bit of sickness in the house earlier in the year and then that got over and then it's birthday birthday weeks here and that's over. So, now it's just sort of Happy and chill and mellow.
Yeah, my birthday's come and gone and I'm just as happy as can be. Hey, what do you want to talk about today?
Um, I want to talk about Goshin.
Okay. Now, could you give me a translation of that into a rough translation into English?
Um, I'm not going to try and actually translate it because I don't know what the actual kanji means, but guin is a a type of we'll call it a signature, an autograph, but it's not a person's, it's a locations. Uh, shrines and temples offer them um as a service, I guess. And they they they do this beautiful signature like calligraphy signature of the shrine or temple's name with
stamp
stamp is usually red and then
probably they also put the date and so on. But it's this beautiful like postcard sized autograph representing the shriner.
I was I was a tour conductor.
Oh yeah.
Not a tour conductor. I was a tour conductor at one point.
Okay.
I did the tour conductor. I I was conducting tours for a special religious tour called the 88 temples tour
in Shikoku.
That's right. You know. Well, and I on on on the bus, the tour guide would talk, but then I would get up and I'd go from customer to customer and I'd take their money and a special book.
Yeah.
So, I'd get 30 of these books and I I had to wrap them up in a special blanket to take good care of them and I went to the temple uh priest and I paid him the money and he write would write a beautiful calligraphy.
Yeah.
But they told me it wasn't Japanese. They told me it was Sanskrit.
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
I suppose Buddhist culture comes from India. So some of the traditional aspects of it are are Middle Eastern or Indian.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is this the same thing as goin?
Um I'm not sure exactly. Uh but my son's quite interested in them and he gets them whenever we go somewhere and it's sort of like a record of where he's gone. This this collection and his booklet unfolds accordion style so he can make a long line of them. You can
Okay. Yes.
Um, and yeah, I would say some of them the script is unreadable to me, which means it might not be a traditional Japanese character.
Um, yeah,
but they definitely have this very beautiful flow to them that that's really lovely.
It they're very beautiful, very flowing, but they don't look like kanji to me. I I when I first came to I spent my first two years studying the kanji
and kanji has parts. It has distinct repeatable parts.
And those parts aren't in these ones in the book that I was uh getting signed.
Yeah. Um Okay. How do you translate kanji into English? How do you describe kanji in English?
Describe it or translate it,
whichever. I mean, when you tell somebody Japanese people use kanji and People say what's kanji? What do you say?
I'd say it's it's a it's a character that has meaning. So for instance, I I I have to explain the the letters in English don't have any particular meaning in themselves, but the kanji characters which is a Japanese character, it has a meaning in the character itself and it has more than one way to say it.
Agreed. The the key word there to me is character versus letter. A lot of people say they might say Japanese letter But I'd say Japanese letters is hiragana and katakana. Whereas kanji is Japanese characters. They have as you said meaning.
Yeah. And then if people still don't get I'd say it's kind of like hieroglyphs.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Very good. All right. That's it for today.
Oh, really? Wow. Time flies. I guess I better get back to work here. Okay. Thanks a lot.
hey, good morning there.
Good morning, Les. How you doing?
Me? I'm doing much better than last week.
Excellent. Good to hear.
Yeah. How are you How are you doing this week?
I'm doing actually very well. It's uh Yeah, we were a little bit down. We had a little bit of sickness in the house earlier in the year and then that got over and then it's birthday birthday weeks here and that's over. So, now it's just sort of Happy and chill and mellow.
Yeah, my birthday's come and gone and I'm just as happy as can be. Hey, what do you want to talk about today?
Um, I want to talk about Goshin.
Okay. Now, could you give me a translation of that into a rough translation into English?
Um, I'm not going to try and actually translate it because I don't know what the actual kanji means, but guin is a a type of we'll call it a signature, an autograph, but it's not a person's, it's a locations. Uh, shrines and temples offer them um as a service, I guess. And they they they do this beautiful signature like calligraphy signature of the shrine or temple's name with
stamp
stamp is usually red and then
probably they also put the date and so on. But it's this beautiful like postcard sized autograph representing the shriner.
I was I was a tour conductor.
Oh yeah.
Not a tour conductor. I was a tour conductor at one point.
Okay.
I did the tour conductor. I I was conducting tours for a special religious tour called the 88 temples tour
in Shikoku.
That's right. You know. Well, and I on on on the bus, the tour guide would talk, but then I would get up and I'd go from customer to customer and I'd take their money and a special book.
Yeah.
So, I'd get 30 of these books and I I had to wrap them up in a special blanket to take good care of them and I went to the temple uh priest and I paid him the money and he write would write a beautiful calligraphy.
Yeah.
But they told me it wasn't Japanese. They told me it was Sanskrit.
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
I suppose Buddhist culture comes from India. So some of the traditional aspects of it are are Middle Eastern or Indian.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is this the same thing as goin?
Um I'm not sure exactly. Uh but my son's quite interested in them and he gets them whenever we go somewhere and it's sort of like a record of where he's gone. This this collection and his booklet unfolds accordion style so he can make a long line of them. You can
Okay. Yes.
Um, and yeah, I would say some of them the script is unreadable to me, which means it might not be a traditional Japanese character.
Um, yeah,
but they definitely have this very beautiful flow to them that that's really lovely.
It they're very beautiful, very flowing, but they don't look like kanji to me. I I when I first came to I spent my first two years studying the kanji
and kanji has parts. It has distinct repeatable parts.
And those parts aren't in these ones in the book that I was uh getting signed.
Yeah. Um Okay. How do you translate kanji into English? How do you describe kanji in English?
Describe it or translate it,
whichever. I mean, when you tell somebody Japanese people use kanji and People say what's kanji? What do you say?
I'd say it's it's a it's a character that has meaning. So for instance, I I I have to explain the the letters in English don't have any particular meaning in themselves, but the kanji characters which is a Japanese character, it has a meaning in the character itself and it has more than one way to say it.
Agreed. The the key word there to me is character versus letter. A lot of people say they might say Japanese letter But I'd say Japanese letters is hiragana and katakana. Whereas kanji is Japanese characters. They have as you said meaning.
Yeah. And then if people still don't get I'd say it's kind of like hieroglyphs.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Very good. All right. That's it for today.
Oh, really? Wow. Time flies. I guess I better get back to work here. Okay. Thanks a lot.