Some of you may wonder what 'Manji' means... Actually I was asked this question many times by non-Japanese friends. My nickname, Manji, is a Japanese Buddhist terminology meaning "a sign of good omen that appears on Buddha's chest, hands, or legs".
Manji is written as "卍" in Japanese. This is not a graphic sign, but an official Japanese kanji character. This character is also used on Japanese maps to indicate Buddhist temples.
According to my Japanese-English dictionary, Manji could be translated into English as "fylfot", "gammadion", or "swastika".
Oh my god! Is my name Swastika?
Calm down... come to think of it, I have had nothing to do with Nazis so far. Perhaps the English counterpart, swastika, derived from some confusion of these inverted signs. The shape of Japanese character "卍" and the symbol mark of Nazis are similar but definitely different.
Comments
With more and more manga coming to America there has been a lot of confusion on certain things. In particular I'm interested in what they do in the popular manga Naruto when they reveal the character Neiji has the manji character as part of a seal on his forehead. I've also read about some imported pokemon cards, and in a recent Bleach manga the character also appears in a spiritual sword technique called 卍解(ばんかい).
Witht he enormous popularity of the Naruto comics I am very interested in seeing if they alter the image in the American release.
Posted by: kuma | December 6, 2004 11:29 AM