Singularity on the Plane

Pay attention to these kanji:

• 猫 (ねこ, cat)
• 獄 (used in 地獄 (じごく), hell)
• 狗 (used in 天狗 (てんぐ), a long-nosed demon)
• 狂う (くるう, to go crazy)

All those kanji have the same shape on its left side. I call that shape “devil’s hand”. Here’s the illustration.

Imagine a devil wanting to kidnap a baby. First, he opens a portal that goes to the baby’s cradle:

After that, he can take the baby using his hand through the magical portal:

Notice the shape similarity. Here’s the superimposed image:

Thus, the mnemonic for that shape is “devil’s hand”, or alternatively just “devil”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm by Agro Rachmatullah and is filed under Japanese, Study, Works. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.