A second look at famous Japanese stuff!

Nin.ten.dou.jyou

Recently I went to a gaming expo called Tokaigi, and saw the kanji (Chinese characters that are the bane-cum-boon of Japanese learners) for Nintendo for the first time. That got me thinking about my first encounters in Japan with the companies I've known my whole life.

Let's start with Nintendo: 任天堂　"Trust heaven (to do what you need)." The first character is used for asking someone to do a favor 任せる (maka.se.ru), responsibility 責任 (seki.nin) and your workplace senior 主任 (shu-nin). The second character, heaven, is also used for angel  天使 (ten.shi) and genius 天才 (ten.sai). The last character is used as an honorific for heaven in this case, though lots of people equate 堂 to luck.

Other tech giants: Hitachi 日立 "Rising sun." The first character, sun, is used anywhere and everywhere and has a variety of pronunciations. The second character 立　also means to stand, and if you add water, it means to cry 泣, which I always thought was weird.

Toshiba 東芝 is a merged word of Tokyo Electric 東京電気 and Shibaura Electric 芝浦電気, both of which are place names.

Fujitsu 富士通 "The road to (Mt) Fuji." I'm just guessing here, but the road part could be a reference to the company's many mergers. I used a rather unstable Fujitsu PC at work, and called it a 不実, which can be read the same way, but means "not true."

Mitsubishi三菱 "Three diamonds." Not as clever as we hoped. But the company makes both electronics and cars, which is a great bridge to the subject of car makers!

Modern Toyotaトヨタ is written in Katakana, but the original kanji was an alternate reading of the family name 豊田, "bountiful field." The family name was Toyoda, but the same characters can be read Toyota. This actually brings in a really interesting cultural dynamic.

this man is standing in his toyo-ta

Introductions are particularly important to have your eyes and ears on, as people exchange names, pronunciations and spellings of their names. 黒川 can be read Kurokawa or Kurogawa. "Black river," if you're wondering. In addition to the above example, the ridiculously common bi-gender first name Yuki can be written 有希, 優希, 勇気, or a few dozen other ways.

Back to cars, Subaru スバル refers to the Seven Sisters constellation, though only 6 are visible. I guess the merc sister is busy mercin' fools in the jungles. Mazdaマツダis both a family name, and also credited toward an old Persian god. It's worth noting that a lot of the Japanese car models have way more epic names, like the Corolla Axio, the Ceres and the Regius.

Honda本田 and Suzukiスズキ are also boringly and blatantly named after their founders.

Nissan is written 日産, which is short for 日本産業株式会社 (Japan Industries). A neat secondary meaning is "made by the sun," and we're not talkin just helium, folks!

As a person who's studied enough Japanese to start reading things at first glance, I've done an increasing amount of double takes as I realize THAT'S how they do it in good ol Japan. By the way, I am well aware that I used the word cum in a sentence. What companies did I miss?