The Teahouse Fire

by Ellis Avery

An ordinary speaker of English knows what a conversation is, a literate person can spell the word, an educated person will know it comes from Latin through French, and a specialist will know that con means with and verse means turn. A poet will hear conversation as a turning together. All the layers are there in English too. The Japanese had a few proverbs that broke down kanji—Sumie’s demonstration of the woman and child in the word for to like; men in the bathhouse grumbling about their mates by noting the threefold repetition of the kanji for woman in the kanji for clamorous, kashi-mashi—but mostly I had to learn to see the clues in the kanji myself, my efforts by turns annoying and amusing Yukako. She never gave the matter much thought, except when new words came along, like jinrikisha.