Front of Mind: Thinking in Japanese

Consider the Japanese words for “front” (omote) and “think” (omou). You’ll notice right away that these have the omo in common. Is there a connection? Yes: when you think of something it is front of mind.

There are lots more omo words, and they all have to do with “front-ness”. It’s a classic example of the sound symbolism in Japanese we have been talking about. It’s one of hundreds of such sound symbols.

Todays’ sound symbol: omo for “front”

Omo is the sound symbol for front. Although front-ness and back-ness are intrinsic to your existence and all languages have a way to represent them, this distinction takes on special weight in Japanese. Almost everything—objects, people, organizations— has a front and a back. In Japanese, that is omo-te and ura (where the -te part simply means “side”—as in “front side”). The omote is the face, the outward-facing part, the surface, what is visible, the outside, the outdoors, what is visible, the cover, what appears, the external aspect, the facade, the principal feature, the main entrance.

If you know your way around Tokyo, you certainly have visited Omote-sando, written 表参道. Now it’s a street where you buy overpriced handbags. The original meaning is the front approach or main approach (to Meiji Shrine).

Some scholars hold that omou is not just about bringing something to the top of your mind, but also reflecting it in the expression on your face.

Omo is used in many other words in Japanese. For example, there’s omoshiroi, literally “white front”, meaning “interesting”. But actually shiroi is broader than just “white”: it could refer to being pale, or light, or clear, or bright. In other words, omoshiroi refers to your face lighting up when you see something interesting. It’s even written with the common kanjis for the two sounds symbols that make it up: 面白い.

And or course there is 主に/omo-ni, meaning “primarily” or “mainly”. The connection here is that clearly the primary or main aspect of something is its front, visible part. 主立つ/omodatsu is a good word to learn; it means to “stand out” (as the main thing), gain prominence.

Today’s homework: learn the word omomuku/赴く, meaning to be drawn or inclined to something (in other words, move facing in that direction), but has many other nuances as well.

And sorry, no, omocha (toy) is not an omo word. That is a corruption of an older, unrelated word もちあそび/mochi-asobi, “hold and play”.

Today’s Chinese Characters

The character 表 is the most common way to write omote. It is a compound pictogram, with hair on the top (毛) and a garment on the bottom (衣), and represents the notion of “outside” because old garments had the fur on the outside. Really.

But omote can also be written 面. That’s the character most often read men, meaning surface or face. It can also be pronounced omote, in which case it has a stronger nuance of “face” or “mask” (as in Noh). This character also has a slightly uncommon kun reading of mo, used in words like 川面/kawa-mo, the surface of a river. This character represents a man's face, with a huge eye (目) in the middle.

What about 思, the character most commonly used to write omou? This is a standard phono-semantic character, with the bottom kokoro/mind part providing the semantics and the top part, corrupted from 囟, the phonetic value. So no, omou has nothing to do with rice paddies.

More Homework

Your homework is to find the connection between omo and the word 重い/omoi, for “heavy”. Hint: when we think about something we “weigh” it. And something heavy might be called “ponderous”, but when we think about something we also say we “ponder” it. Also, isn’t the main, primary part of something conceptually the heaviest?