CHARACTER HOME PAGE

soul, spirit
Kanji 1280

Thank you for visiting this Character Home Page. Below you'll find a synopsis of the essay. If you wish to read the full text, the PDF of the essay is available for purchase to the right.

Synopsis

As you can see from terms such as 大和魂 (the Japanese spirit), 言霊 (the soul of language), and 士魂商才 (having a samurai’s spirit and a merchant’s business sense), matters of the soul and spirit are important in Japan. Learn to talk about putting your heart and soul into something, plus kanji as the soul of Japan. Also find out how to welcome back dead spirits on o-Bon.

Revision History:

Mar. 22, 2024: p. 5: Corrected the reference to "The Tower of London" as a novel; it's a story. Also improved the translation of the sentence from that story.

Feb. 11, 2022: 

  • p. 2, Etymology Box: Updated the Henshall etymology and the Sears link.
  • p. 14: Added a link to the Kanshudo games.

Jan. 5, 2018: 

  • p. 1: Updated the Character Profile in various ways, including the definitions of the look-alikes.
  • pp. 6, 11, and 12: Fixed broken links.
  • p. 8–10: Made very minor changes to 2 sentences and 1 breakdown to match the way I handled them in other essays.

Mar. 8, 2013: Originally published.

Comments

eve's picture
As it happens, 魂 appeared in a Chinese newscast recently. It was a story about the World Baseball Classic--in particular, a game between Japan and Taiwan. At 1:02 in the video, a young woman holds up a sign that says 台湾魂 (the spirit of Taiwan), as well as 勝 (victory). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ihd28qvrIk
 

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