Kanji and the Hymnal and 以心伝心

There's something I want to see in the new Japanese Hymnal.

The current (and previous) Japanese Hymnal has what I consider a problem. When you're singing a song you are not very familiar with, it can sometimes be hard to tell what the words mean. It can often be difficult to tell what you are supposed to be singing. 

The Japanese printed with the musical parts is only written in 仮名 (かな/kana -- the pronunciation alphabets). No punctuation is included. 

The 漢字 (かんじ/kanji) lyrics, with punctuation, are shown below the parts for reference. In the physical Hymnal, that's often on a separate page, often on the page before or after. Sometimes you have to turn a page to read it.

It's difficult to focus on both the tune and the meaning when the Kanji are separate. Why?

Japanese has four primary scripts, or sets of letters/characters, used in writing the language:

• Kanji  (漢字 -- the logographic/ideographic symbols somewhat shared with Chinese), 
• hiragana (ひらがな -- the cursive phonetic script),  
• katakana (カタカナ -- the block phonetic script often used for foreign words or emphasis), 
• and Romaji (the phonetic script borrowed from Latin-based languages).
  

Three of those are phonetic scripts. They are useful for reading the (standard) pronunciation of Japanese words and phrases, but they aren't as useful for carrying the meaning.

There are two primary reasons:

• Japanese contains a lot of homophones (words that sound the same), and it often isn't easy to tell which meaning is meant without more clues than pronunciation. 
• This is compounded by the fact that Japanese does not use space to delimit words. It is often hard to tell where one word ends and the next begins.

(I have been meaning to write about this for more than twenty-five years, but I keep getting home after church and forgetting, or something else takes priority. But I think it's important, and becoming more important the later it gets.)

I have no time now to dig the more problematic examples back up, so I'll just use one of the hymns we sang today, "'Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love, #176 in the English Hymnal, 「たぐいなき愛を」 ("Tagui-naki Ai wo") #101 in the Japanese. (I sang it at home while attending via the Line chat/meeting app on my cell phone.)

The first phrase of the first verse goes like this in the kana:

ひとのためてんをくだりてしにたもう
 Hitonotameten'wo kudariteshinitamou

The Kanji looks like this:

人のため天を降りて、死にたもう
Hito no tame Ten wo kudarite, shini tamou

If you are familiar with the doctrine of Jesus descending (kudarite) from Heaven (Ten) to die (shini-tamou) for man (hito no tame), that's an easy read. 

If you are a new or young member of the Church (or a foreigner), the word "die" can get swallowed in the inflectional ambiguities (kudariteshi) in the unfamiliar archaic Japanese.

The next phrase includes the archaic word "kusushiki" (in archaic inflection). With the Kanji form, 「奇すしき」, I'm inclined to believe that people will still recognize it (from 「奇跡」、 "kiseki", or miracle). Without the Kanji, again, for new/young members and foreigners, not so much.

The first phrase of the second verse goes like this:

あんそくびにあいはてししゅのしるし
Ansokubiniaihateshishunoshirushi

With the Kanji:

安息日に会い、果てし主のしるし
Ansokubi ni ai, hateshi shu no shirushi

With the Kanji and the comma, 「果てし」 ("hateshi") (going to extremity, or completing) is clearly modifying 「主」  (shu) (Lord). Without, 「あいは」 (ai ha => ai wa) can easily be misread as "concerning love". 

(The hiragana "ha" in certain positions changes to read as the topical particle, "wa".)

In the first phrase of the third verse, the phrase 

こもしもともも
komoshimotomomo
子も師も友も
ko mo shi mo tomo mo

occurs. 「師」 (shi) means "teacher" here, but is not a vocabulary word in the ordinary vernacular. It could be considered an abbreviation of 「教師」, which is common, but young children and foreigners will be distracted by it. Without the Kanji they may confuse it for 「死」 (death, pronounced "shi" in the ordinary vernacular).

One more from this song, in the second phrase of the last verse, we have

しゅのみなにホザナ
shunominanihozana
主の御名にホザナ
Shu no Mi-na ni hozana

Here, "Mi-na" is 「御名」, or "revered name", thus "Hosanna to the name of the Lord". But "mina" in the ordinary vernacular is 「皆」, "all", or "everyone", so that can easily be read "Hosanna to all of the Lord's people!"

The sincere, mature member will not be distracted by any of this. In fact, it may become an excuse to study the words of the hymns. The principle of 以心伝心 (ishin denshin, mutual understanding) will motivate the necessary seeking.

But many new members, children, and investigators won't have that mutual understanding, and will never find the motivation to study the lyrics.

And they will lose an important source of meaning and strength.

(As near as I can tell, demanding mutual understanding is not the path the Lord took in His teaching.)

Well, I've run out of time to do this the right way, showing my suggested approach piece-by-piece, so I'm going to risk copyright offense and post here something that sort-of shows my suggested approach -- mixing the Kanji with the kana:

If I'd had more time, I could have pasted in punctuation.

It's not ideal. Perhaps the 漢字 should be enclosed in parenthesis or something. But I think we need something to help us find the connection to the meaning when we're singing.