The third word set promised in the overview article is the names of the directions — east, west, south, and north. In the chapter “Tōzai nanboku” of Kokugo no kenkyū (1910), Kanazawa Shōzaburō explores the origins of these four names from several clues.
Three clues
Kanazawa first divides the ways of naming directions into three.
- Those based on the rising and setting of the sun
- Those based on wind directions, seasons, constellations, and the like
- Those arising from the direction in which a people moved
And of these, he says, the weightiest is the one based on the sun’s rising and setting. For that reason, among the four directions, east and west are the principal ones, and south and north seem relatively unimportant.
Clue 1: the sun
Kanazawa first shows that old language has examples of naming directions from the sun’s movement. For instance, west is fixed as hi-no-tate (“sun’s vertical”), south and north as hi-no-yoko (“sun’s horizontal”), the south of a mountain as kagetomo, and the north as sotomo — examples he says appear in songs of the Man’yōshū and elsewhere. It is a naming that takes the line of the sun’s path from east to west as “vertical” and the north-south crossing it as “horizontal.”
He also says the example in the Saimei Tennō-ki where the character 明 is read minami is probably a naming based on the sun.
Clue 2: the wind
Next, the wind. This may be the most interesting part of the chapter.
The “shi” of higashi (east) and nishi (west) is an old word for wind. This is a theory of Motoori Norinaga’s, which Kanazawa follows. In old times wind was called “shi.” As evidence, Kanazawa gives these words.
風の古名がシであることの証は、嵐・旋風・西北風のシ、暴風・東風のチ・テ等に徴しても知られる。
(The proof that the old name of wind was shi can also be known from the shi of arashi [storm], tsumuji [whirlwind], and anashi [northwest wind], and the te and chi of hayate [gale] and kochi [east wind], and so on.)
Indeed, the shi of arashi and tsumuji ordinarily appears at the end of words about wind. The line of thought is that the name of a wind became, as it stood, the name of the direction it blows from.
Kanazawa adds an example from the dialects of the Ryukyus (Okinawa). In Ryukyuan, east is simply figa. If the shi of Japanese higashi is an independent word meaning wind, then Ryukyuan, which expresses east with just “higa,” might be evidence. And in Ryukyuan, south is said hae or pai; this must be the same word, he says, as hae, which the mainland uses for a south wind.
Clue 3: the movement of peoples
Last, Kanazawa raises another clue, the direction in which peoples moved. Here the languages of the Indo-European family appear as examples.
Among the Indo-European peoples, those who advanced toward the east named east “front” and its opposite, west, “back,” and therefore called south “right” and north “left.” In Sanskrit words, Kanazawa shows in a table, it goes like this.
| Direction | Sanskrit | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| East | pūrva | front |
| West | apara | back |
| South | dakshina | right |
| North | savya | left |
Kanazawa thinks that the Ainu words for east and west, the words of the Korean peninsula, and the part before the shi in Japanese higashi and nishi (himuka and ni) may likewise be explained from the direction of movement. For example, if himuka (east) is read as “proceeding toward the sun” and ni (west) as inu, that is, the direction left behind, they would be names expressing the direction in which the Yamato people developed, from west to east.
Kanazawa’s own reservation
At the end of the chapter, Kanazawa states plainly the limits of his argument.
まだ不完全ながらこれを発表して広く識者の教を乞ふのである。
(Though still incomplete, I publish this to ask widely for the instruction of the learned.)
Kanazawa says he cannot yet state a firm view about the etymologies of south and north, and that since the comparison with Ryukyuan dialects deepened his suspicion that the two, east and west, show the direction of a people’s migration, he publishes it.
What is certain here, and what isn’t
What this article introduces are the clues Kanazawa sorted out, and his conjectures. The theory that the shi of higashi and nishi is wind goes back to Motoori Norinaga and is still introduced today as one etymological theory. The part explaining east and west from the direction of a people’s movement, on the other hand, is a conjecture Kanazawa himself called “incomplete.” The forms and meanings of Sanskrit pūrva, apara, and so on are as Kanazawa shows, but tying them to Japanese direction names is Kanazawa’s view, not a theory with firm evidence. We sort that out in the verdict article.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Three clues | The sun’s rising and setting, the wind, the direction of a people’s movement |
| The sun | hi-no-tate, hi-no-yoko, kagetomo, sotomo, etc. East-west principal; north-south seems less important |
| The wind | The shi of higashi and nishi is an old word for wind (Motoori’s theory); Ryukyuan figa and pai as side evidence |
| Movement of peoples | Sanskrit east = front, west = back, south = right, north = left. Applying it to Japanese is Kanazawa’s conjecture |
| Kanazawa’s reservation | “Though still incomplete”; “ask the instruction of the learned” |
In a nutshell — the names east, west, south, and north were explored by three clues: the sun, the wind, and the movement of peoples. Kanazawa Shōzaburō published the conjecture after stating himself that it was “incomplete.”