111-842: Masami Pronunciation (Mah-sah-mee) Gender Unisex Origin Word/name Japanese Meaning It can have many different meanings depending on the kanji used Region of origin Japan Other names Related names Masako Masumi Masami ( まさみ,マサミ,雅美 ) is a common Japanese given name and can be given to either sex. Possible writings [ edit ] 惟美, meaning "Considerate beauty" 真己, meaning "True self" 真巳, meaning "Truth, Snake" 昌美, meaning "Prosperous beauty" 雅美, meaning "Gracious beauty" 成美, meaning "Become beautiful" マサミ in ( katakana ) まさみ in ( hiragana ) People with
222-413: A kun -reading) ; kun -only are common for Japanese-coined kanji ( kokuji ). Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is 生 , which is read as sei , shō , nama , ki , o-u , i-kiru , i-kasu , i-keru , u-mu , u-mareru , ha-eru , and ha-yasu , totaling eight basic readings (the first two are on , while
333-536: A ⟨g⟩ element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji. The g stands for gaiji . There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten , which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The Zhonghua Zihai , published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but
444-717: A complex game of hide-and-seek unfolds between the "Knights of the Eastern Calculus" (based on the Knights of the Lambda Calculus ), hackers whom Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a God in the Wired", and Tachibana General Laboratories, who try to regain control of Protocol Seven. In the end, Lain realizes, after much introspection , that she has control over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself shows how she feels shunned from
555-737: A label for its sound), kanji are also called mana ( 真名 , literally "true name", in reference to the character being used as a label for its meaning). In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns , adjective stems , and verb stems ), while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings ( okurigana ), particles , and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia , non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese ),
666-449: A link were created, the network would become equivalent to reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge, and the increasingly thin line between what is real and what is virtual would fracture. Masami Eiri is the project director on Protocol Seven, the next-generation Internet protocol, for major IT company Tachibana General Laboratories. He had secretly included code of his very own creation to give himself control of
777-454: A long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi —see single character gairaigo , below)—the character 糎 has the seven kana reading センチメートル senchimētoru "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading パーセント pāsento . There are many kanji compounds that use
888-614: A mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi , known as jūbako ( 重箱 , multi-layered food box) or yutō ( 湯桶 , hot liquid pail) words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words ): the first character of jūbako is read using on'yomi , the second kun'yomi ( on-kun , Japanese : 重箱読み ). It is the other way around with yu-tō ( kun-on , Japanese : 湯桶読み ). Formally, these are referred to as jūbako-yomi ( 重箱読み , jūbako reading) and yutō-yomi ( 湯桶読み , yutō reading) . In both these words,
999-430: A new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word 相撲 ( sumō , “ sumo ”) is originally from the verb 争う ( sumau , “to vie, to compete”), while 今日 ( kyō , “today”) is fusional (from older ke , “this” + fu , “day”). In rare cases, jukujikun
1110-520: A number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana (literally "fluttering kana " in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or onna-de , that is, "ladies' hand", a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education ). Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana . Katakana (literally "partial kana ", in reference to
1221-474: A number of ways: from classical dialogue to image-only introspection, passing by direct interrogation of imaginary characters. Communication , in its wider sense, is one of the main themes of the series, not only as opposed to loneliness, but also as a subject in itself. Writer Konaka said he wanted to directly "communicate human feelings". Director Nakamura wanted to show the audience — and particularly viewers between 14 and 15—"the multidimensional wavelength of
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#17330945052651332-559: A previous production from Konaka, Alice in Cyberland [ ja ] , which in turn was largely influenced by Alice in Wonderland . As the series developed, Konaka was "surprised" by how close Alice's character became to the original Wonderland character. Vannevar Bush (and memex ), John C. Lilly , Timothy Leary and his eight-circuit model of consciousness , Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu are cited as precursors to
1443-531: A problem for information interchange, as the code point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another. Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940. JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji , making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved to Unicode negating
1554-494: A second mixed-mode data and audio disc, containing a clock program and a game, as well as an extended version of the first disc – nearly double the length – across 57 tracks in 128 kbit/s MP3 format, and sound effects from the series in WAV format. Because the word bootleg appears in its title, it is easily confused with the Sonmay counterfeit edition of itself, which only contains
1665-517: A set of values he viewed as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. When Ueda discovered that the American audience held most of the same views on the series as the Japanese did, he was disappointed. The Lain franchise
1776-524: A short time, while the Whisper voice says it. This was an unsolicited insertion from the graphic team, also Mac-enthusiasts. Other subtle allusions can be found: "Close the world, Open the nExt" is the slogan for the Serial Experiments Lain video game. NeXT was the company that produced NeXTSTEP , which later evolved into Mac OS X after Apple bought NeXT. Another example is "To Be Continued." at
1887-613: A single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is hototogisu ( lesser cuckoo ) , which may be spelt in many ways, including 杜鵑 , 時鳥 , 子規 , 不如帰 , 霍公鳥 , 蜀魂 , 沓手鳥 , 杜宇 , 田鵑 , 沓直鳥 , and 郭公 —many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems. Masami Eiri Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda , written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura . Animated by Triangle Staff and featuring original character designs by Yoshitoshi Abe ,
1998-450: A surname). This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when 黄金虫 , normally read as koganemushi , is shortened to kogane in 黒黄金虫 kurokogane , although zoological names are commonly spelled with katakana rather than with kanji. Outside zoology, this type of shortening only occurs on a handful of words, for example 大元帥 daigen(sui) , or
2109-617: A total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society. In 1946, after World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan , the Japanese government, guided by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers , instituted a series of orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals. The number of characters in circulation
2220-600: A video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation . It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story. The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware", and it has been described as being a kind of visual novel : the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock. Lain distances itself even more from classical games by
2331-689: A world fraught with paranoia, social alienation, and reliance on technology considered insightful of 21st century life. It received the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 1998. Lain Iwakura, a girl in her junior year of high school, lives in Setagaya City , Tokyo, Japan with her middle-class family, consisting of her inexpressive older sister Mika, emotionally distant mother Miho, and computer-obsessed father Yasuo; Lain herself
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#17330945052652442-427: Is jukujikun for tonakai , from Ainu, but the on'yomi reading of junroku is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese , such as 鮟鱇 ( ankō , “ monkfish ”). The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji ) or for which
2553-467: Is a key element of the design of the shy "real world" Lain (see "mental illness" under Themes ). When she first goes to the Cyberia nightclub , she wears a bear hat for similar reasons. Retrospectively, Konaka said that Lain's pajamas became a major factor in drawing fans of moe characterization to the series, and remarked that "such items may also be important when making anime". Abe's original design
2664-450: Is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamato kotoba , that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. As with on'yomi , there can be multiple kun'yomi for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all. Ateji ( 当て字 ) are characters used only for their sounds. In this case, pronunciation
2775-445: Is alive deep within the virtual realm of the Wired itself, where she claims she has found "God". From this point, Lain is caught in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality. "The Wired" is a virtual realm that contains and supports the sum of humanity's communication networks, created with
2886-534: Is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective 可愛い ( kawai-i , “cute”), originally kawafayu-i ; the word ( 可愛 ) is used in Chinese , but the corresponding on'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either 相応しい ( fusawa-shii , as jukujikun ) or 相応 ( sōō , as on'yomi ). Which reading to use can be discerned by
2997-476: Is an Instrumentality of Man story featuring virtual persons projected as real ones in people's minds); and his saying that " madeleines would be good with the tea" in the last episode makes Lain "one of the only cartoons ever to allude to Proust". Yoshitoshi Abe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was "off-limits" in his household. His major influences are "nature and everything around him". Specifically speaking about Lain's character, Abe
3108-567: Is determined by contextual cues (such as whether the character represents part of a compound word versus an independent word), the exact intended meaning of the word, and its position within the sentence. For example, 今日 is mostly read kyō , meaning "today", but in formal writing it is instead read konnichi , meaning "nowadays", which is understood from context. Furigana is used to specify ambiguous readings, such as rare, literary, or otherwise non-standard readings. This ambiguity may arise due to more than one reading becoming activated in
3219-597: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Kanji Kanji ( 漢字 , Japanese pronunciation: [kaɲdʑi] ) are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in the writing of Japanese . They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana . The characters have Japanese pronunciations ; most have two, with one based on
3330-405: Is extremely introverted and socially isolated. The status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that take place after girls from her school receive an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her via email that she is not dead but has merely "abandoned her physical self" and
3441-953: Is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of ateji , narrowly jukujikun ). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are also special cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading. The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese varieties , where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters —borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi , reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese. Longer readings exist for non- Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where
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3552-516: The Nihon Shoki and Kojiki , a semi-legendary scholar called Wani was dispatched to Japan by the (Korean) Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters. The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example,
3663-406: The kyōiku kanji, plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana . The jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the tōyō kanji ( 当用漢字 , general-use kanji) , introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the jōyō kanji list
3774-474: The on'yomi has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally are derived from sound changes common to loans from Chinese, hence distinctive of on'yomi . These are the Japanese form of hybrid words . Other examples include basho ( 場所 , "place", kun-on , 湯桶読み ) , kin'iro ( 金色 , "golden", on-kun , 重箱読み ) and aikidō ( 合気道 , the martial art Aikido ", kun-on-on , 湯桶読み ) . Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance,
3885-812: The Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II Masami Kubota , Japanese former gymnast who competed in the 1956 Summer Olympics Masami Kurumada (車田 正美), Japanese writer and manga artist known for his works such as Ring ni Kakero , Fūma no Kojirō , Saint Seiya , and B't X Masami Kuwashima (桑島 正美), Japanese former racecar driver Masami Mitsuoka (光岡昌美), Japanese pop singer Masami Nagasawa (長澤 まさみ), Japanese TV drama and movie actress Masami Ōbari (大張正己), Japanese anime character designer and director Masami Odate (大館 昌美), Japanese professional wrestler Masami Okui (奥井 雅美), Japanese pop musician Masami Shiratama (白玉 雅己), Japanese musical composer and former bass guitarist for
3996-651: The Latin alphabet , Cyrillic script , Greek alphabet , Arabic numerals , etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are: Gaiji ( 外字 , literally "external characters") are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems . These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well. Gaiji can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products. Both are
4107-521: The Roswell UFO incident are used as examples of how a hoax might still affect history, even after having been exposed as such, by creating sub-cultures. This links again to Vannevar Bush, the alleged "brains" of MJ12. Two of the literary references in Lain are quoted through Lain's father: he first logs onto a website with the password "Think Bule Count One Tow" [ sic ] (" Think Blue, Count Two "
4218-455: The existential self : the relationship between self and the world". Loneliness , if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent through Lain . Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time". Friendships turn on
4329-638: The iMac G3 respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect of Lisp ; the Newton also used a Lisp dialect ( NewtonScript ). The program being typed by Lain can be found in the CMU AI repository; it is a simple implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Common Lisp . During a series of disconnected images, an iMac and the Think Different advertising slogan appears for
4440-417: The random order in which information is collected. The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of informations that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand. As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her". A guidebook to
4551-601: The tachibana orange is a Japanese variety of mandarin orange. NAVI is the abbreviation of Knowledge Navigator , and the HandiNAVI is based on the Apple Newton , one of the world's first PDAs . The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference to Copland was an initiative of Konaka , a declared Apple fan), and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and
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4662-416: The "limited field of vision" of the world of Lain . Theology plays its part in the development of the story too. Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body. From self-realization as a goddess to deicide , religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part of Lain 's background. Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as
4773-509: The "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series, saying that " Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime." Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5, and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on all criteria for volume 1 and 2, and a mix of A and A+ for volume 3 and 4. Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about
4884-572: The 1,026 first kanji characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, from first grade to sixth grade. The grade-level breakdown is known as the gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō ( 学年別漢字配当表 ) , or the gakushū kanji ( 学習漢字 ) . This list of kanji is maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade. The jōyō kanji ( 常用漢字 , regular-use kanji) are 2,136 characters consisting of all
4995-597: The 1990s, alongside the much better known contemporaries Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop . Professor Susan J. Napier , in her 2003 reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation (published 2005), compared Serial Experiments Lain to Ghost in the Shell and Hayao Miyazaki 's Spirited Away . According to her, the main characters of
5106-493: The 5th century AD and has since had a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records. Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier Yayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters. Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or
5217-481: The 7th century, a record of trading for cloth and salt. The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (794–1185), a system known as kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on
5328-610: The Chinese pronunciation but was not the Chinese pronunciation or reading itself, similar to the English pronunciation of Latin loanwords. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given an on'yomi reading despite not being a Chinese-derived or a Chinese-originating character. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi , and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan ( kokuji ) would not normally be expected to have on'yomi , but there are exceptions, such as
5439-539: The Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration , Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai , by a process similar to China 's simplification efforts , with the intention to increase literacy among the general public. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct
5550-419: The Japanese court. In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called mokkan ( 木簡 ). These wooden boards were used for communication between government offices, tags for goods transported between various countries, and the practice of writing. The oldest written kanji in Japan discovered so far were written in ink on wood as a wooden strip dated to
5661-553: The Wired. Douglas Rushkoff and his book Cyberia were originally to be cited as such, and in Serial Experiments: Lain , Cyberia became the name of a nightclub populated with hackers and techno-punk teenagers. Likewise, the series' deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of the Schumann resonances and Jung 's collective unconscious (the authors chose this term over Kabbalah and Akashic Record ). Majestic 12 and
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#17330945052655772-503: The Wired. He then transferred his own consciousness into the Wired, leaving his body in the physical world to die. Masami explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and he needs her to go into the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, romantic seduction and charm, and finally threats and force. Meanwhile,
5883-582: The anime Serial Experiments Lain Masami Kaida, a character in the air combat video game The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces Masami Oyamada (小山田雅美), from the manga and anime Someday's Dreamers Masami Saotome (早乙女正美), from the live action film: Boogiepop and Others Masami Yamada (山田 正臣), teacher from the anime Onegai Teacher Masami Aomame, the full name of the lead female protagonist in Haruki Murakami's novel, 1Q84 Masami Yoshida
5994-666: The band Porno Graffitti Masami Suzuki (鈴木 真仁), voice actress from Japan Masami Taki ( 滝 雅美 , born 1972) , Japanese football manager Masami Tanaka (田中 雅美), Olympic bronze medalist Masami Teraoka , Japanese-American watercolor artist who mimics the style of traditional Japanese wood-block prints Masami Tsuchiya , Japanese singer-songwriter and musician Masami Tsuda (津田 雅美), Japanese manga artist; creator of Kare Kano Masami Yoshida (disambiguation) , multiple people Masami Yūki (ゆうきまさみ), Japanese manga artist; creator of Patlabor Fictional characters [ edit ] Masami Eiri (英利 政美), villain from
6105-417: The brain. Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi ( 音読み , literally "sound reading" ) , from Chinese, or kun'yomi ( 訓読み , literally "meaning reading" ) , native Japanese, and most characters have at least two readings—at least one of each. However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku ( 菊 , "chrysanthemum", an on -reading) or iwashi ( 鰯 , "sardine",
6216-522: The brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team. As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk , using the voice "Whisper" , e.g. say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one" . Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers:
6327-687: The broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as 今日的 ("present-day"), although in the phrase konnichi wa ("good day"), konnichi is typically spelled wholly with hiragana rather than with the kanji 今日 . Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as Yamato ( 大和 or 倭 , the name of the dominant ethnic group of Japan, a former Japanese province as well as ancient name for Japan), and for some old borrowings, such as 柳葉魚 ( shishamo , literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu, 煙草 ( tabako , literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or 麦酒 ( bīru , literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if
6438-400: The character 働 "to work", which has the kun'yomi " hatara(ku) " and the on'yomi " dō ", and 腺 "gland", which has only the on'yomi " sen "—in both cases these come from the on'yomi of the phonetic component, respectively 動 " dō " and 泉 " sen ". The kun'yomi ( 訓読み , [kɯɰ̃jomi] , lit. "meaning reading") , the native reading,
6549-431: The characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi . From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a nankun ( 難訓 , "difficult reading") , and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character. Gikun are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading 寒 (meaning "cold") as fuyu ("winter") rather than
6660-514: The characters, and only infrequently as konchō , the on'yomi of the characters. The most common reading is kesa , a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a single morpheme , or as a compound of ke (“this”, as in kefu , the older reading for 今日 , “today”), and asa , “morning”. Likewise, 今日 ("today") is also jukujikun , usually read with the native reading kyō ; its on'yomi , konnichi , does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in
6771-450: The city of Sapporo ( サッポロ ), whose name derives from the Ainu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the on-kun compound [札幌] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |4= ( help ) (which includes sokuon as if it were a purely on compound). Gikun ( 義訓 ) and jukujikun ( 熟字訓 ) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to
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#17330945052656882-484: The diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of allusion . Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese . During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at
6993-618: The education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication . The term kanji in Japanese literally means " Han characters". It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese , and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as hanzi ( traditional Chinese : 漢字 ; simplified Chinese : 汉字 ; pinyin : hànzì ; lit. ' Han characters'). The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around
7104-413: The end of episodes 1–12, with a blue "B" and a red "e" on "Be"; this matches the original logo of Be Inc. , a company founded by ex-Apple employees and NeXT's main competitor in its time. Serial Experiments Lain was first aired on TV Tokyo and its affiliates on July 6, 1998, and concluded on September 28, 1998, with the thirteenth and final episode. The series consists of 13 episodes (referred to in
7215-528: The ending theme and part of the television series' score, alongside other songs inspired by the series. The second, Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix , features electronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme "Duvet" by DJ Wasei. The third, lain BOOTLEG , consists of the ambient score of the series across forty-five tracks. BOOTLEG also contains
7326-574: The entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings. Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji , though in narrow usage, " ateji " refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas " jukujikun " refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling). Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally,
7437-518: The first disc in an edited format. All three soundtrack albums were released by Pioneer Records . The series' opening theme, " Duvet ", was written and performed in English by the British rock band Bôa . The band released the song as a single and as part of the EP Tall Snake , which features both an acoustic version and DJ Wasei's remix from Cyberia Mix . On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released
7548-513: The first rumor; and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru , literally "signal of loneliness". Mental illness , especially dissociative identity disorder , is a significant theme in Lain : the main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three different orthographs . The three names designate distinct "versions" of Lain:
7659-462: The fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar . This was essentially a kind of codified sight translation . Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language , resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū ) evolved that used
7770-433: The historical male name suffix 右衛門 -emon , which was shortened from the word uemon . The kanji compound for jukujikun is often idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases, a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese. For example, 馴鹿 (“reindeer”)
7881-412: The limitation of kanji. After the Meiji Restoration and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread. However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters
7992-705: The majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms. A list of 2,136 jōyō kanji is regarded as necessary for functional literacy in Japanese. Approximately a thousand more characters are commonly used and readily understood by the majority in Japan and a few thousand more find occasional use, particularly in specialized fields of study but those may be obscure to most out of context. A total of 13,108 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji . Individual kanji may be used to write one or more different words or morphemes , leading to different pronunciations or "readings." The correct reading
8103-522: The material world, and is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the opportunities and responsibilities of an almighty goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone's memories of her. She is last seen encountering her closest friend Alice once again, who is now married, though Lain herself is unchanged. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds . Serial Experiments Lain
8214-487: The name [ edit ] Masami Akita (秋田 昌美), Japanese Noise musician Masami Anno , Japanese director of the anime series Chūka Ichiban! which is based on the manga series of the same name Masami Hirosaka (広坂 正美), Japanese radio-controlled car racer Masami Horiuchi (堀内 正美), Japanese actor Masami Ichimura ( 市村 政美 , born 1950) , Japanese alpine skier Masami Kikuchi (菊池 正美), Japanese voice actor Masami Kobayashi (小林仁, 1890-1977), admiral in
8325-482: The names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words. Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it. Kamo no Mabuchi , a scholar of the Edo period , criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for
8436-407: The need for gaiji for most users. Nevertheless, they persist today in Japan's three major mobile phone information portals, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters). Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas , while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) technology allows the creation of customized gaiji. The Text Encoding Initiative uses
8547-604: The original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2,999 kanji from both the jōyō and jinmeiyō lists combined. Hyōgai kanji ( 表外漢字 , "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in the jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist. The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana , as well as other forms of writing such as
8658-474: The other. For example, 誠 means 'honest' in both languages but is pronounced makoto or sei in Japanese, and chéng in Standard Mandarin Chinese . Individual kanji characters and multi-kanji words invented in Japan from Chinese morphemes have been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. These are known as Wasei-kango , or Japanese-made Chinese words. For example,
8769-407: The practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana , referred to collectively as kana , are descended from kanji. In contrast with kana ( 仮名 , literally "borrowed name", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as
8880-594: The presence or absence of the -shii ending ( okurigana ). A common example of a verb with jukujikun is 流行る ( haya-ru , “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding to on'yomi 流行 ( ryūkō ). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is 強請 ( yusuri , “extortion”), from 強請る ( yusu-ru , “to extort”), spelling from 強請 ( kyōsei , “extortion”). Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using
8991-488: The pretense of objectivity in Lain . Acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series, such as the "natural" reality, defined through normal dialogue between individuals; the material reality; and the tyrannic reality, enforced by one person onto the minds of others. A key debate to all interpretations of the series is to decide whether matter flows from thought, or the opposite. The production staff carefully avoided "the so-called God's Eye Viewpoint" to make clear
9102-533: The psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools (see picture). It notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo. The Anime Essentials anthology by Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in
9213-402: The readings contradict the kanji), or clarification if the referent may not be obvious. Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, 今朝 ("this morning") is jukujikun . This word is not read as *ima'asa , the expected kun'yomi of
9324-403: The real-world, "childish" Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The "advanced" Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the "evil" Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her. As a writing convention, the authors spelled their respective names in kanji , katakana , and Latin characters (see picture). Reality never has
9435-475: The rest are kun ), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct. The on'yomi ( 音読み , [oɰ̃jomi] , lit. "sound(-based) reading") , the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. It was often previously referred to as translation reading , as it was recreated readings of
9546-435: The same given name . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Masami&oldid=1252463897 " Categories : Given names Japanese unisex given names Hidden categories: Articles containing Japanese-language text Articles with short description Short description
9657-546: The series a 75%, partly due to the "lifeless" setting it had. Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes. Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered. The first original soundtrack , Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack , features music by Reichi Nakaido :
9768-611: The series as "Layers") of 24 minutes each, except for the sixth episode, Kids (23 minutes 14 seconds). In Japan, the episodes were released in LD , VHS , and DVD with a total of five volumes. A DVD compilation named " Serial Experiments Lain DVD-BOX Яesurrection " was released along with a promo DVD called " LPR-309 " in 2000. As this box set is now discontinued, a rerelease was made in 2005 called " Serial Experiments Lain TV-BOX ". A 4-volume DVD box set
9879-529: The series making its debut on January 21, 2003. The original home releases went out-of-print in December 2007 when Geneon closed its USA division. At Anime Expo 2010, North American distributor Funimation announced that it had obtained the license to the series and re-released it in 2012. The anime series returned to US television on October 15, 2012, on the Funimation Channel . Serial Experiments Lain
9990-628: The series was broadcast for 13 episodes on TV Tokyo and its affiliates from July to September 1998. The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet . Lain features surreal and avant-garde imagery and explores philosophical topics such as reality , identity , and communication . The series incorporates creative influences from computer history , cyberpunk , and conspiracy theories . Critics and fans have praised Lain for its originality, visuals, atmosphere, themes, and its dark depiction of
10101-575: The standard readings samu or kan , and instead of the usual spelling for fuyu of 冬 . Another example is using 煙草 (lit. "smoke grass") with the reading tabako ("tobacco") rather than the otherwise-expected readings of *kemuri-gusa or *ensō . Some of these, such as for tabako , have become lexicalized , but in many cases this kind of use is typically non-standard and employed in specific contexts by individual writers. Aided with furigana , gikun could be used to convey complex literary or poetic effect (especially if
10212-483: The telegraph, television, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet and cyberspace . The series posits that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables subconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. Such a system is explained by the Schumann resonances , a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long-distance communications. If such
10323-407: The two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain cannot. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'". Mike Toole of Anime News Network named Serial Experiments Lain as one of the most important anime of the 1990s. Despite the positive feedback the television series had received, Anime Academy gave
10434-411: The usual kun'yomi . Examples include 面白い ( omo-shiro-i , “interesting”, literally “face + white”) and 狡賢い ( zuru-gashiko-i , “sly”, lit. “cunning, crafty + clever, smart”). Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to
10545-663: The wealthy daughter of the Rainbow Factory Owner from The Amazing World of Gumball Masami Kousa, a yakuza boss in the manga/anime series Black Lagoon Masami Fujii, a character in the manga/anime series Ro-Kyu-Bu! Masami Iwasawa (岩沢雅美), the original lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Girls Dead Monster from the anime Angel Beats! Masami, the "kid" in Samurai of Hyuga See also [ edit ] Japanese name Japanese language [REDACTED] Name list This page or section lists people that share
10656-605: The word for telephone , 電話 denwa in Japanese, was derived from the Chinese words for "electric" and "conversation." It was then calqued as diànhuà in Mandarin Chinese, điện thoại in Vietnamese and 전화 jeonhwa in Korean. Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China . The earliest known instance of such an import
10767-721: The word was borrowed before the Meiji period . Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana , especially Portuguese loanwords such as かるた ( karuta ) from Portuguese " carta " (English “card”) or てんぷら ( tempura ) from Portuguese " tempora " (English “times, season”), as well as たばこ ( tabako ). Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being kera ( 啄木鳥 , “woodpecker”), gumi ( 胡頽子 , “silver berry, oleaster”), and Hozumi ( 八月朔日 ,
10878-424: Was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions" it asks. According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA , the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and
10989-460: Was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda . Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement he had made in an Animerica interview where he claimed that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II ". He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with
11100-470: Was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear. The bear pajamas she wears were a demand from character animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea. Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. It
11211-475: Was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously jinmeiyō kanji; some are used to write prefecture names: 阪 , 熊 , 奈 , 岡 , 鹿 , 梨 , 阜 , 埼 , 茨 , 栃 and 媛 . As of September 25, 2017, the jinmeiyō kanji ( 人名用漢字 , kanji for use in personal names) consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants of jōyō kanji. There were only 92 kanji in
11322-477: Was first broadcast in Tokyo at 1:15 a.m. JST . The word "weird" appears almost ubiquitously in English language reviews of the series, or the alternatives "bizarre", and "atypical", due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction themes, and due to its philosophical and psychological context. Critics responded positively to these thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it
11433-599: Was generally more complicated than what finally appeared on screen. As an example, the X-shaped hair clip was to be an interlocking pattern of gold links. The links would open with a snap, or rotate around an axis until the moment the " X " became a " = ". This was not used as there is no scene where Lain takes her hair clip off. Serial Experiments Lain is not a conventionally linear story, being described as "an alternative anime, with modern themes and realization". Themes range from theological to psychological and are dealt with in
11544-448: Was inspired by Kenji Tsuruta , Akihiro Yamada , Range Murata and Yukinobu Hoshino . In a broader view, he has been influenced in his style and technique by Japanese artists Kyosuke Chinai and Toshio Tabuchi. The character design of Lain was not Abe's sole responsibility. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature. It
11655-446: Was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication"
11766-410: Was produced by Yoshitoshi Abe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired . Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain , and the way they are exposed. The authors were asked in interviews if they had been influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion , in the themes and graphic design. This
11877-526: Was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs , called shinjitai ( 新字体 ) . Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as hyōgaiji ( 表外字 ) . The kyōiku kanji ( 教育漢字 , lit. "education kanji") are
11988-596: Was released in the US by Pioneer/Geneon. A Blu-ray release of the anime was made in December 2009 called " Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box| RESTORE ". The anime series was licensed in North America by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon USA) on VHS and DVD in 1999. In December 2002, TechTV announced that Serial Experiments Lain would air on the channel as part of its Anime Unleashed programming block, with
12099-434: Was strictly denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka in an interview, arguing that he had not even seen Evangelion until he finished the fourth episode of Lain . Being primarily a horror movie writer, his stated influences are Godard (especially for using typography on screen), The Exorcist , Hell House , and Dan Curtis 's House of Dark Shadows . Alice's name, like the names of her two friends Julie and Reika, came from
12210-542: Was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Wa emissary in 57 AD. Chinese coins as well as inkstones from the first century AD have also been found in Yayoi period archaeological sites. However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread. According to
12321-618: Was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the Japanese Army decided on the "Table of Restricted Kanji for Weapons Names" ( 兵器名称用制限漢字表 , heiki meishō yō seigen kanji hyō ) which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the "Standard Kanji Table" ( 標準漢字表 , hyōjun kanji-hyō ) with
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