Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

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Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby Philip Sneyd » Fri May 14, 2010 7:08 am

Dr Clayton,

I became interested in Kyan Chotoku's name again after reading your e-mail concerning its pronunciation in Japan. It was something I had often been curious about but never got around to researching. Since I'd only seen his name in print in English articles as usually Chotoku Kyan or his nickname Chan Migwa, I had no way of knowing if 'Chan' and 'Kyan' were actually the same word, that is, two alternative pronunciations or readings of the same name written with the same kanji. However, seeing the nickname occasionally written as 'Migwa Chan' lead me to believe it mightn't be the same word at all...

As you know, there are many special titles for high-ranking personages such as Shihan, Kyoshi, etc., and there are many more everyday titles like Sensei (used for teachers, doctors [like my friend Cho Sensei] or, curiously enough, lawyers!) and of course San, which means Mr, Miss or Mrs. It seems the Japanese actually went one step better towards equality than the western 'Ms' with a completely gender-free title for everyone!

Anyway, you might know that there is also a kind of 'pet title' used for children, youthful actresses, pop stars etc.: "chan". Presumably it is supposed to be a 'cute' version of 'san'. For example, the Minnie Mouse character is referred to as "Minnie chan", and a child might refer to a cat as "neko-chan".

This 'Chan', like all other titles, always goes at the end of a name (recall the way that Mr Miyagi famously called his protege Daniel-san, never San Daniel!)

Therefore I had suspected it possible that 'Migwa-chan' was one such jokey nickname, and that it had been automatically reversed to 'Chan Migwa' by a translator (in the same way that Funakoshi Gichin's name becomes Gichin Funakoshi in the west, etc.) who mistakenly thought it was his actual name?

Rather than simply relying on English text, with the same old romanizations of the name, I decided to check out wikipedia's Japanese site, and I found out some very interesting things.

You remember how in my last e-mail I mentioned that a Japanese colleague was sure the name was pronounced "Kiyan"? Well, of course I am aware that wikipedia is hardly the ultimate authority on everything. Nevertheless, it appears my friend may have been mistaken. It is actually an easy mistake to make, even for a native Japanese, as can be seen in my attachment "kyanA.jpg".

When a hiragana character is written a little smaller than the preceding character (how small depends largely on the font or handwriting) it modifies the sound of the preceding character while keeping it as one syllable (as is the case for "kya"), as opposed to being written at normal size where it will be a separate second syllable (as is the case with "ki-ya").

The "ya" hiragana is evidently small on the wikipedia page (see "kyanB.jpg"), therefore, at least according to wikipedia, the name is pronounced "Kyan", not "Kiyan".

The other interesting discovery was that the Kanji for the surname "Kyan" in the article title, and the kanji for "Chan" in his nickname are exactly the same, so my theory of the diminutive "-chan" was wrong.

The reason the pronunciation of the nickname is written in katakana rather than hiragana indicates that it is not Japanese pronunciation. This is obvious to me because the kanji for "Mi" and "Gwa" mean "eyes" and "small" respectively (both first grade kanji!), which would normally be pronounced something like "Mesho" in Japanese. Therefore "Chan Migwa" is most likely informal 'Uchinaguchi' (Okinawan language).

However, my Japanese friends assure me that "Kyan" is also a highly unusual reading of the three kanji making up his surname in Japanese, so it seems it must be formal native Okinawan. Perhaps it is written in hiragana because it is a proper noun, and understandably he would have pronounced his own name the same way wherever he went: "Kyan Chotoku".


As a sidenote, Dr Clayton brought my attention to a book by Master Kanazawa, recently published in English, which uses the word "Kiyatake" instead of "Kyan".

It is true that the kanji making up "Kyan" could be read any number of ways using combinations of Japanese 'kun' and 'on' readings, including "Kiyamu", "Yokoroyamu" or indeed "Kiyatake". If a Japanese person with no knowledge of the original Okinawan pronunciation read the kanji of his name they would indeed guess it was something like one of the above combinations. However, I have never read or heard any of these combinations in use before.

There is a remote possibility that Master Kanazawa himself only ever read the kanji in print and presumed the reading to be "Kiyatake". However, as he is a karate master I find it very hard to believe that he never heard Kyan's name spoken aloud, or at the very least read a (kana) phonetic guide of the correct pronunciation somewhere over the years.

Assuming that this is an English translation of a book Master Kanazawa's actually wrote in Japanese, I have a theory which might explain its use therein. I suspect that Kanazawa is well aware of the correct Okinawan pronunciation of Kyan's name, but he simply wrote it in its kanji form in the Japanese manuscript, and it was a Japanese translator of the book who was unaware of the original Okinawan and transcribed it with a Japanese reading, "Kiyatake".

I feel this is an entirely plausible explanation. Suppose you or I wrote a book which proved to be very popular and our publisher informed us that it was to be published in Portuguese. I can't imagine we would sit down with an English-Portuguese dictionary and check through every word with a fine-toothed comb. Most writers would pretty much trust the translator to have done a good job. I guess such is the price of worldwide popularity: inevitably certain parts will get lost in the translation - which is clearly true in the world of martial arts. Unfortunately, this latest mistranslation simply adds to the growing obfuscation. Which is why no-nonsense books like Shotokan's Secret are a godsend to martial artists!

An alternative explanation to the above is that Master Kanazawa wrote the English version of the book himself, and intentionally chose an unorthodox reading of a famous karateka's name to deliberately create confusion, but personally I find this explanation the hardest to swallow of all.

Bottom line: there are any number of ways to "read" the kanji of his name in Japanese, just as there would be any number of (completely different) - ways to "read" the same kanji in Chinese, but none of these matter. If the serious karateka wishes to mention this karate master using the correct original pronunciation, that is, the way he would have pronounced his own name himself, the Okinawan is "Kyan Chotoku".

So, in this instance at least, it appears western romanization was right all along. :)
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Philip is an Irishman based in Japan, where he has been living and training in Kyokushinkai Karate for almost 10 years. He holds a shodan 1st degree black belt and opened a small branch dojo in Tokyo in 2009. He is a big fan of the book Shotokan's Secret.
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby HanshiClayton » Sat May 15, 2010 5:18 am

Thanks, Philip. That was educational in multiple ways.

In my research I had encountered Okinawan schools/styles/web sites where the practitioners were scathingly sarcastic about people who pronounce Kyan as "Ki-yan." Those witnesses insisted, rather stridently, on "Chan" as the only correct voicing.

I went back looking for those web sites, but as "Chan" is the third most-common name in Chinese, it pretty much defeats Google. Note that the Chinese character for "Chan" (as in Chan Kong-sang, better known as Jackie Chan) is not used in Chotoku's name.
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby Philip Sneyd » Sat May 15, 2010 11:04 am

It's a pity those websites couldn't be located... Would have been fun to turn the tables on them.

WIthout needing to resort to scathing sarcasm, they might be humbled by a polite lesson in logic: if indeed "Chan" was the one-and-only correct voicing of the spelling "Kyan", then why romanize his full name as "Kyan Chotoku"? Why not "Kyan Kyotoku"??
Is "Ky" really synonymous with "Ch" or are they two different sounds?
;)
Philip is an Irishman based in Japan, where he has been living and training in Kyokushinkai Karate for almost 10 years. He holds a shodan 1st degree black belt and opened a small branch dojo in Tokyo in 2009. He is a big fan of the book Shotokan's Secret.
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby HanshiClayton » Sat May 15, 2010 2:05 pm

Here's a thought, Philip. Assume for a moment that his name really was "Chan," and that his family spelled it the traditional way, using the Chan ideogram ( Image ) that is used all over China and adjacent countries.

Recall (no assumption necessary) that Chotoku Kyan was a bitter iconoclast, and somewhat full of himself. What if he decided to spell "Chan" a new way?

Image KI joyful (3p9.1)
Image ya house (3r6.3)
Image MU military (4n5.3)

I can't picture his family as a "joyful house," but there might have been a different meaning in Uchinaguchi. The fact that "Kyan" ends in Image BU (MU), the symbol for "military" (as in "budo") makes me suspicious that this was a re-imagining of his original name. If he re-imagined his name, he would have gone in a martial direction.

I am sensitive to this possibility because Eri Takase, much to my astonishment, re-imagined my name (Bruce) into BU RU SU, "martial spirit swiftly flowing." It is a game people can play with a few thousand kanji characters to choose from. Maybe Chotoku Kyan had the same impulse.
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby Philip Sneyd » Wed May 19, 2010 10:06 am

You raised some very interesting points in the last post, so I decided to check with sources outside of wikipedia to see if I could come up with any extra information. I found a few sites (which may include some of the pages you referred to before), offering somewhat conflicting 'facts'. Unfortunately the individual webpages often seemed to be a mishmash of potentially interesting 'facts' interspersed with patent mistakes, rendering the whole page dubious.

Below is an example:

http://www.sakuratakekan.org/escuelas/s ... ingles.htm

Kyan Sensei was nicked named as CHAN MIN (1870 - 1945) (translators note: Also pronounced Chan Migwa.  Chan - the Chinese pronunciation of Kyan.  Migwa - this means "Monkey Chan", referring to his abilities). He told me that Kyan Sensei was very skilled at climbing trees and jumping from one to another, hanging by his feet with his head downward so he could defend himself against potential enemies. These techniques Eizo Sensei mastered to perfection as photos of him show.

I have seen the kanji that the Japanese wikipedia site used for 'Kyan Chotoku' in print and on the web on numerous occasions by now, so I'm pretty confident they are reliable.

I don't know yet if the kanji wikipedia used for "Chan Migwa" are accurate, but assuming they are, they certainly do not mean anything like "Chan the Monkey"! Although apparently he did learn "tree-fighting", the kanji for "Chan" are, as discussed in the original post, the exact same as those for "Kyan", and the kanji for "Migwa" mean "small-eyed" (literally "eyes small", in that order).

While Japanese and Chinese languages have very different pronunciations of kanji, in many cases they have completely different meanings too. However, when it comes to the simpler kanji, that is, the ones children will be expected to learn first in school, the readings will of course be different but the meanings are the same. For example, the kanji for numbers, colors, animals, parts of the face, etc. share the same meanings throughout Asia.

Those kanji for "Migwa" will mean 'small eyes' in any Asian language.

Obviously I don't believe the writer of the webpage set out to deliberately confuse people, but I think he may himself have been confusing Kyan with that other Okinawan master, Motobu Choki, who was known as "Motobu the Monkey" ("Motobu zaru"). It might just be a case of two facts, which were stored together in the 'karate' folder of his brain, getting a bit mixed up.

But it did contain an interesting idea, "Chan = the Chinese pronunciation of Kyan". If true, it might explain why neither of the two readings (Kyan and Chan) are standard Japanese readings: could one be Okinawan, while the other is Chinese?

I decided to go straight to the horse's mouth and ask my Chinese colleague, Cho Sensei. By the way, that is the reason for my delayed reply: I wanted to ask her advice first, rather than post some temporary speculation ("I suspect X, but I'll get back to you when I find out!).

Anyway, Dr Cho's answer was most interesting. Those kanji, which Japanese might read as "Kiyatake" or "Kiyaabu" etc., are pronounced nothing like "Kyan" or "Chan" in Chinese either! In Mandarin (Pekingese) they are pronounced "Xi wo wu" (the way she pronounced 'Xi' sounds like the english word 'she', if you draw your tongue a little further back behind your teeth). I asked if the Cantonese reading might be different, but she assured me that although Mandarin and Cantonese are different enough to be classified as distinct languages, when it comes to people's names there may be slight differences here and there, but they are basically the same.

So if neither "Kyan" nor "Chan" are Japanese readings, and neither "Kyan" nor "Chan" are Chinese readings, I can only conclude that both are Okinawan. As I theorized before, perhaps Kyan is the formal Okinawan pronunciation, and Chan is informal. I'm not entirely satisfied with that theory myself, but in light of the available evidence, it seems most plausible so far.

Again, the japanese wikipedia page could be wrong about the kanji for "Chan Migwa" (stranger things have happened), but I would find wikipedia, with it's required cross-referencing and checks and balances, far more reliable than the third hand, half-remembered facts we see on some other webpages.

About your suggestion he may have changed his name or its spelling, I concede that it is possible, but there are a few things to bear in mind.

Firstly, although BU does indeed refer to all things martial, it appears surprisingly commonly in Japanese names. For example, just offhand I can think of two people I know personally with the surnames "Mu-to" (the first kanji is BU), and "O-take" (here the second kanji is BU).

This is possibly due to the samurai culture. A great samurai at some time in history may have had a name utilizing the BU kanji bestowed upon him, whereupon every subsequent generation will inherit the same surname with it's associated kanji, regardless of whether they become soldiers, poets or priests. (Perhaps one can see a parallel in the British surname 'Knightley')

It also appears sometimes in boy's given names, for example "Take-ru", and the very popular boy's name "Takeshi" is actually usually written with just the BU kanji alone.

My own son's name is "Musashi" which literally means 'Martial Arsenal/Armoury'. I have to admit the use of BU was not coincidental here - my wife is a shodan in kendo, and she chose the same kanji as those used by Miyamoto Musashi. I did not object, of course, although to this day everyone still seems to think that I chose the name, not she. :)

Despite the kanji's popularity, I also have to admit that when I saw it in Kyan's name it did raise an eyebrow with me - is that really a coincidence? - so your theory that he may have bestowed it upon himself did ring true with me. Not least because the popularity I noted is within mainland "Samurai country" Japan - I can't really say for sure if it is true for Okinawan names.

Then yesterday evening something interesting happened.

I met a Korean friend, and knowing that Koreans sometimes use kanji for people's names, it occurred to me to ask him. Korean surnames are one syllable and thus one kanji (e.g. Kim, Park, Song) so I knew "Kyan" with its 3 kanji couldn't be Korean, but I was curious to check how those kanji might be pronounced in Korea. On a whim showed him the photo of Kyan with the kanji beneath (keeping the hiragana pronunciation hidden). He looked at them carefully and said "I think it says... Kyan?". I was so surprised. Of all the Japanese people and one Chinese I had asked, no-one could read those kanji as "Kyan", and the first person who could was Korean!

"How did you know?" I asked, "Do you know him?". He said no, but he knew someone who had the same kanji name, and it was pronounced 'Kyan'. He even wrote it down in roman alphabet for me: K-y-a-n.

"Who?" I asked, perhaps a little too excitedly.

It turns out - to my further surprise - it was an attractive young lady, a "pin-up idol", called Chiaki Kyan. http://animebox.com.ua/japan-girls/1936 ... -kyan.html

I told him that Kyan is not a normal Japanese reading, and asked if she was from Okinawa. He said she might be, or maybe her father or grandfather was Okinawan.

It would be an amazing coincidence if it turned out that she was the great-granddaughter of Chotoku himself! But if so, judging by the pictures on the above link, she didn't get much of his DNA from a physical point of view ;)

Although we now know that the 'Kyan' name, with those kanji, is an established family name, it doesn't prove that Chotoku didn't adopt it for himself.

Today I found one more website, which may be the final nail in the coffin:

http://alljapankarate.com/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=27

It seems reliable. It is a very well-designed and presented site, and I could only spot one minor error in it (They wrote "Mig-wa" instead of "Mi-gwa", although in fairness the hyphen might be just for ease of pronunciation rather than a kanji separator). On the Kyan biography page they say:

Chotoku Kyan was born in Shuri, Okinawa in December 1870 and was the first son of Chofu Kyan. Chofu Kyan had been a descendant of the fourth Ryukyuan king, Shoshi.

If indeed his father's name was Chofu Kyan it seems he didn't make it up himself. But what if the Kyan of his father's name was the Chinese 'Chan' as you suggest, and Chotoku just changed the kanji? I don't know... as a descendant of the King, one would probably be proud of one's name and heritage, more so than a commoner.

Finally, just a note on the Chinese name 'Chan'. In Japan, the katakana for Jackie Chan's surname is always spelled and pronounced "Chen". But the katakana for Chan Migwa is spelled and pronounced "Chan". So from a Japanese perspective, Chotoku's "Chan" and the Chinese "Chen" (as in Jackie) would be presumed different names.

I asked Cho sensei if "Chan" or "Chen" sounds closer to the way the actor's name should be said, but she said she is not sure because he is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese. She said to American ears his name sounds like Chan, but to Japanese ears it sounds more like Chen, but she was unsure which sounds closer.

Bottom line? If no-one in Japan or China reads those kanji as 'Kyan', where did the pronunciation come from, and why do people still officially go by that name and pronunciation today? It simply MUST be the original Okinawan.

Deepest apologies to the "Kyan is wrong" camp. B)
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby HanshiClayton » Wed May 19, 2010 11:31 am

Philip Sneyd wrote:I found a few sites (which may include some of the pages you referred to before), offering somewhat conflicting 'facts'. Unfortunately the individual webpages often seemed to be a mishmash of potentially interesting 'facts' interspersed with patent mistakes, rendering the whole page dubious.


Some people seem disappointed that I didn't spend a year in Okinawa interviewing local senseis for their secret knowledge about karate history. They are in no position to know, because of both historical and cultural obstacles, but they would have told me stories anyway. I would have had to debunk those stories in print. I thought that would turn out to be embarrassing for everyone, so I gently side-stepped the issue.

Philip Sneyd wrote:I have seen the kanji that the Japanese wikipedia site used for 'Kyan Chotoku' in print and on the web on numerous occasions by now, so I'm pretty confident they are reliable.


All we know is that the kanji are widespread. The image I sent you (separate email) was scanned from Karate Do Dai Kan, an anthology of Okinawan karate by Gichin Funakoshi, Genwa Nakasone, Hiroki Otsuka, Hanashiro Nagashige, Shimpan Gusukuma, Choshin Chibana, Kenwa Mabuni, and Shinken Taira, published in Tokyo by Tosho, Inc., in 1938. The "Kyan" kanji in that book are the earliest I have seen, and were written by Okinawans, even if the book is in Japanese. Those are, in fact, the same as in the Wikipedia, so I guess we're as authentic as we are likely to get.

Philip Sneyd wrote:Despite the kanji's popularity, I also have to admit that when I saw it in Kyan's name it did raise an eyebrow with me - is that really a coincidence? - so your theory that he may have bestowed it upon himself did ring true with me.


I should clarify: Maybe "someone" re-imagined the Kyan family name at some point. I focused too narrowly on Chotoku.

Philip Sneyd wrote:It turns out - to my further surprise - it was an attractive young lady, a "pin-up idol", called Chiaki Kyan. ... It would be an amazing coincidence if it turned out that she was the great-granddaughter of Chotoku himself! But if so, judging by the pictures on the above link, she didn't get much of his DNA from a physical point of view ;)


The required response is, "And it's a good thing, too." On the other hand, petite size and emaciation might be a family trait.

Philip Sneyd wrote:Bottom line? If no-one in Japan or China reads those kanji as 'Kyan', where did the pronunciation come from, and why do people still officially go by that name and pronunciation today? It simply MUST be the original Okinawan.

Deepest apologies to the "Kyan is wrong" camp. B)


You will be amused to see what I said about it in the new edition of Shotokan's Secret. People who read it will start reading "Kyan" as "Chan." At least, I tell myself, they won't be saying "Ky-an," like in "coyote."
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby Philip Sneyd » Wed May 19, 2010 8:35 pm

:0 I'm sorry! I didn't realise. I had thought you sounded skeptical about the "scathingly sarcastic" proponents of the "Kyan is always pronounced Chan" idea, so I guess I went all out.

Not to worry. Despite the length of this thread, the pronunciation of one person's name is a trivial matter, and obviously not necessary for understanding or application of karate.

It is a totally forgiveable and insignificant oversight, given the wealth of knowledge and information presented in the book.

The "Kyan footnote" can wait for the third edition :)
Philip is an Irishman based in Japan, where he has been living and training in Kyokushinkai Karate for almost 10 years. He holds a shodan 1st degree black belt and opened a small branch dojo in Tokyo in 2009. He is a big fan of the book Shotokan's Secret.
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Re: Pronunciation of Kyan Chotoku

Postby Philip Sneyd » Tue Jun 07, 2011 7:11 am

Just looking back over the old posts to see if there were any new replies, and I spotted something I hadn't seen before.

You mentioned that it's a good thing people won't be pronouncing "Ky-an" like "coyote".

That pronunciation had honestly never occurred to me! I had only been imagining 'Kyan' versus 'Ki-yan', but never once imagined people might actually be saying "Kai-yan" or "Kai-an"...

I guess pronunciation of romanized Asian words is much easier for us westerners when we grasp that, unlike English where there are multiple ways to pronounce all five written vowels on a case-by-case basis, in Japanese there are only 5 vowel sounds and they are always pronounced the same way every time they are written.

The romanized 'a' is the 'a' as in 'Africa', not the 'a' as in 'all'. So, for example, in Japan 'karate' is 'KAH-RAH-TE', not 'KAH-RAW-TY'.

Similarly, if one went to Okinawa and pronounced 'Kyan' as 'KAI-YAWN', even Okinawans would be utterly bewildered. "Who...?" :?:
Philip is an Irishman based in Japan, where he has been living and training in Kyokushinkai Karate for almost 10 years. He holds a shodan 1st degree black belt and opened a small branch dojo in Tokyo in 2009. He is a big fan of the book Shotokan's Secret.
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