苦 - Suffering, sort of.

苦

This is a tricky kanji, because as far as I can tell this kanji is only used in compounds and never alone. In Japanese suffering is actually written 苦悩 and is actually part of a kanji compound. Well maybe, things are complicated. There are a few different English words that could be used for that compound (“anguish” for example), and there are several compounds that could be translated as “suffering” (苦しみ for example). Well those are subtleties that can only be figured out by wrestling with the language. I've chosen this kanji today however to highlight an occasional problem I've discovered with the Heisig method.

This particular kanji is made up of the element identified yesterday as flower, and the kanji for old (古). At any rate, my problem with this kanji isn't remembering it, quite the contrary, I am very good at remembering it because I have a very clear visual image associated with it. The problem is the story of that image isn't the same as the one Heisig gives, and could be a bit confusing. The story Heisig gives is one of a withering flower but I've found the image of Theodin in Lord of the Rings suffering as the site of his son's flower covered grave to be much more compelling. After all the kanji for old looks like a grave, and once a person gets old enough they end up in a grave. Only problem, grave has a kanji of it's own, 墓. I don't want to risk getting the kanji for grave mixed up with the one for old. Unfortunately I think the story of Theodin is firmly lodged in my head so I think for this instance I am just going to have to make sure I keep things straight.

I've found that the stories and images that Heisig uses stick much better though when they are pop-culture reference or stories well ingrained in western civilization. So the Lord of the Rings story I've adopted is really good for keeping the kanji in mind but comes with risks.