That outer part is symbolic of a gate<\/strong>.<\/p>\nIn its ancient form, when the character was more squiggly and full of detail, the gate depicted a latch on it. This evoked the sense of something being hidden away and unclear (i.e. stuck behind a latched gate).<\/p>\n
The English-Japanese dictionary is a little on the nose with its definition. “Darkness,” “bewilderment,” “hidden place,” “black market.”<\/strong> <\/p>\nBut if we look into the Japanese dictionary, a ton of color comes to this dark word.<\/p>\n
Eleven definitions<\/strong> are provided for the single character 闇 in the online dictionary I looked at, and each one offers a bit of depth to the nuance of the word. Let’s take a look at just a few of these offered meanings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“The condition wherein no light can shine through.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“Things without knowledge, without reason.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“A spirit in such disarray that one becomes unable exact righteous <\/strong>judgement.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“Places unknown to people.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“No hope for the journey ahead.”<\/strong><\/p>\n“A moonless night.”<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Oof. That’s some serious stuff.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Even more of the color of yami<\/i> comes out in the compound words<\/strong> it’s used in. Mu-yami-ni<\/i><\/strong> means “thoughtlessly, recklessly.” Yoi-yami<\/i><\/strong> means “dusk,”<\/strong> or “<\/strong>twilight.”<\/strong><\/p>\nYami-yo-ni-teppou<\/i><\/strong> is literally, “a gun into the dark,” and means, “an aimless attempt; a shot in the dark.”<\/p>\nYami-ichi<\/i><\/strong> is written as “dark city”<\/strong> and means “black market.”<\/strong><\/p>\nKo-no-shita-yami<\/i><\/strong> means “the dark under trees,”<\/strong> or “the obscurity of the forest.”<\/strong><\/p>\nOne I really like is koi-no-yami<\/i><\/strong>, which is literally “heart’s darkness,”<\/strong> but means more specifically, “losing one’s reason due to love.”<\/p>\nOne last interesting compound word is yami-kumo<\/i><\/strong>, written with the characters for “dark” and “cloud.” It means “reckless, at random, haphazard.”<\/strong><\/p>\nCan’t you just picture the interesting connection between “dark cloud” and the idea of something looming overhead that may strike out at any unforeseen moment?<\/p>\n
Neat stuff, if you ask me!<\/p>\n
The potential etymology of the word also leads us to some more interesting places.<\/p>\n
Yami<\/i> is originally from old Japanese and possibly came via two other words that are pronounced the same in certain conjugations<\/strong>.<\/p>\nThe first is “to be ill,”<\/strong> and the other is “to stop.”<\/strong> There’s also some evidence to suggest that it might have come from the word yomi<\/i><\/strong>, meaning “land of the dead.”<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen we look at the word yami<\/i> in its plain, phonetically written form, we write it as やみ<\/strong>. That first character is the YA<\/strong> and the second is the MI<\/strong>.<\/p>\nWhen it’s written to talk about the dark<\/strong> (or any of the adjacent meanings we looked at already), it’s written 闇.<\/p>\nWhen it’s about being ill<\/strong>, it’s 病み<\/strong>.<\/p>\nWhen it’s related to stopping, it’s 止み<\/strong>.<\/p>\nSo, we get words like yami-gatai<\/i>,<\/strong> written 止み難い<\/strong>. This one’s constituent parts mean “difficult to stop,”<\/strong> and the dictionary definition is “irresistible.”<\/strong><\/p>\nWe then get a word like 病みつき, or yami-tsuki<\/i><\/strong> which means “being addicted to.”<\/strong> <\/p>\nThere’s also yami<-houkeru<\/i><\/strong>, written 病み耄ける<\/strong>, which combines “sick”<\/strong> with “senility,”<\/strong> leading to the meaning “to become wasted with illness.”<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Yami in Japanese Media<\/b><\/h2>\n
Probably the most well-known example of yami<\/i> showing up in Japanese media is in the 90’s anime Yu-Gi-Oh!<\/strong><\/p>\nIn it there is the character of Yami Yugi<\/strong>. Yami Yugi is the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Atem, who sealed his soul inside something called the Millennium Puzzle.<\/p>\nWhen the other protagonist of the series, Yugi Muto, solves the Millennium Puzzle, the spirit of Yami Yugi is released.<\/p>\n
Yami Yugi then goes on to inhabit the body of Yugi Muto and together they drive the narrative of this classic anime.<\/p>\n
In Japanese, this name is written out as 闇遊戯<\/strong>. That first character should be familiar to you by now, but the next two are each ways of writing “play.” So, the name means “dark game.”<\/strong><\/p>\nThe name Yami<\/i> also shows up in another anime and manga known as “To Love-Ru.”<\/strong><\/p>\nIn this anime “Golden Darkness”<\/strong> is hired to assassinate the main character, though she doesn’t ever really get around to it.<\/p>\nGolden Darkness is often referred to as Yami<\/i><\/strong>, no doubt due to her name as written in the original Japanese, 金色の闇<\/strong>.<\/p>\nUsually, 金色 is read as kin-iro<\/i><\/strong>, but occasionally (and in this anime) it’s pronounced konjiki<\/i><\/strong>. It means “gold color.”<\/strong> So, konjiki-no-yami<\/i> yields the name, in English, “Golden Darkness,” quite literally.<\/p>\nFor gamers, Yami<\/i> might be a more recognizable name from the game Okami. <\/strong> In the game, Yami<\/i> is the main antagonist and final boss of the game.<\/p>\nYami<\/i> is the ruler of demons and appears in the game as a giant, mechanical sphere covered in strange writings.<\/p>\n
As Yami<\/i> is beaten down throughout the final boss battle, it changes forms, eventually revealing its true shape, that of a small, black fish.<\/p>\n
Yami<\/i>’s full name in Japanese is written 常闇ノ皇<\/strong>, or tokoyami-no-sumeragi<\/i><\/strong>.<\/p>\nThose first two characters combine to mean “everlasting darkness,”<\/strong> and the final character is “emperor.”<\/strong> So, the name is, literally, “Emperor of Everlasting Darkness.”<\/strong><\/p>\nGood name for a villain!<\/p>\n
Yami<\/i> also shows up in the 2008 crossover fighting game, “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars,”<\/strong> where he shows up again as the final boss at the end of the arcade mode.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Yami in the Philippines <\/b><\/h2>\n
Yami<\/i> is the name of the northernmost island in the Philippines.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt is a part of Batanes Islands and province, though it has no population.<\/p>\n
Despite this, it is a frequent destination for fishermen<\/strong>. The island makes up one part of the Luzon Volcanic Arc. The old, native name for the island was Dihami<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The Yami People of Taiwan<\/b><\/h2>\n
The Yami<\/i> people are a part of the Austronesian ethnic group<\/strong> and live on Orchid Island<\/strong>, about 46 miles off the southeast coast of Taiwan.<\/p>\nThe name Yami<\/i> is not native to these people who refer to themselves as Tao. The name Yami<\/i> was given to them by a Japanese ethnologist.<\/p>\n
The Tao (or Yami<\/i>) people are small in number. Just 3,100 remain on Orchid Island alongside 800 Han Chinese<\/strong>. They rely there heavily on fishing<\/strong> for survival.<\/p>\nThe Yami<\/i> language is a Malayo-Polynesian<\/strong> language and part of the Ivatan dialect continuum. If you want to know more about what the heck that means, Wikipedia has a bunch of fantastic information about it.<\/p>\nThe Yami<\/i> language is known to its speakers as “ciriciring no Tao,” or “human speech.” The Yami<\/i> language has many cognates with the Philippine language<\/strong> and also incorporates many Japanese loanwords<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAs of 2006, there were just 3,800 native speakers of the language<\/strong>, though this number may dwindle as more Yami<\/i>\/Tao people move away from Orchid Island to mainland Taiwan for economic opportunities where their ancient culture is often subsumed into the modern one.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
The Hindu Yami<\/b><\/h2>\n
Yami<\/i> is an important deity in the Hindu religion<\/strong>. Yami<\/i> is the daughter of the goddess of clouds, Saranyu, and the god of the sun, Surya. Yami<\/i> has a twin, Yama, who is the god of death.<\/strong><\/p>\nYami<\/i> is also known as Yamuna, being called Yami<\/i> mainly in the Vedas. In later literature her name would be Kalindi.<\/p>\n
Yami<\/i> is the goddess of the main tributary of the holiest river in Hinduism, the Ganges.<\/p>\n
Drinking from the waters of Yami<\/i> is said to remove one’s sins. Yami<\/i> was the first woman and, as a contract to her God-of-Death brother Yama, she is said to be the Lady of Life.<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen Krishna was born, she created a safe passage for him across her waters and would later go on to marry him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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