Learning Kanji From Movies

One of my favorite things about studying kanji (the written characters that come from Chinese) is learning a character that I've seen in movie titles. So much of the kanji I learn is without context. Until I'm living in Japan, it's just characters that I forget after taking the test. But to see it in the context of a film title, or in credits, well, then it sticks.

So here are some characters you may see watching Japanese films, starting with the basics.

映画
Pronounced "eiga," this means movie.

作品
You see this one in credits a lot. It's pronounced "sakuhin" and means, essentially, a work of art, or more simply, a production. As in a Toho production.

七人の侍
"Shichi nin no samurai," means, in English, Seven Samurai. The last character is the one for "samurai." "Shichi" is the first, meaning seven, and "nin" (sometimes read "hito") is the second, signifying that it's seven people.

生きる
Another Kurosawa title, this one is "Ikiru," which means, "to live." You may have noticed (if you're at all familiar with how Japanese is written) that not all of the characters are kanji. The second two (as well as the third one in "Shichi nin no samurai") are hiragana, phonetic characters unique to Japanese. In the case of 生きる, the hiragana changes as the verb conjugates. The の (pronounced "no") in the above title denotes a possessive, essentially (seven people that are samurai).

風林火山
The Japanese title for Samurai Banners, "Fuu rin ka zan," actually means, "wind, woods, fire, mountain."

やくざの墓場
The title for Kinji Fukasaku's Yakuza Graveyard is written in kanji and hiragana. The first three characters are "yakuza," then the "no," and then "hakaba," which means graveyard. It's made up of the characters for "grave" 墓 and "place" 場.

下妻物語
This is "Shimotsuma monogatari," better known as Kamikaze Girls. The English title has nothing to do with the Japanese title, which means "Shimotsuma Story." Shimotsuma is a city in a rural area a few hours north of Tokyo. But what is useful to know is the word "monogatari." You've seen it tons of times in Japanese movie titles. "Zatoichi monogatari," "Tokyo monogatari," "Hachiko monogatari."

武士の一分
This is another with an alternate English title. In English it's Love and Honor, Yoji Yamada's latest samurai film, but in Japanese it's "Bushi no ichibun," or "one part of bushi." "Bushi" is, of course, the warrior spirit, or "bushidou" 武士道.

妖怪大戦争
Any guesses? "Youkai dai sensou," which means Great Yokai War. The first two make up "yokai," which is like a spook or goblin. Next up is "dai," or "great," then "sensou," which means "war." I saw a poster for the Takashi Miike film when I was last in Japan, before the movie had come out here on DVD, but I couldn't read the characters yet. After learning "sensou" in kanji class, I looked up "yokai" to make it complete.

And my personal favorite:

怪獣
"Kaiju," as in rubber monster movie kaiju! The characters mean "strange beast." Hey, I just noticed that the first character, "kai" 怪 (strange) is the same as in "yokai" 妖怪. Wow, I just learned a new character.

I love Japanese.