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匂 nioi Scent, once the glow of color

Abstract

匂 is classed by the dictionary Jitsū 字通 and by KANJIDIC2 as a 国字, a character made in Japan, and is read for the native verb にほふ, niou, and its noun にほひ, nioi, a word that in the Man'yōshū 万葉集 mostly names a bright, chiefly red color shining out and only toward the end of that anthology begins to be used of a good scent [1]. The word is attested centuries before the earliest witness of the character known to this study: the Man'yōshū writes it in kana, or, by the 日国's count, with 香, 薫, 艷, 艷色 and 染 [1]; the earliest entry printing 匂 in the Historiographical Institute's full-text database of old records is of 1092, in the modern edition of a courtier's diary, for a gradation of color in court dress, from a copy thought to have been made in 1151, whose hand this study did not read, and the earliest 匂 read in a hand for this study is of 1169, in the courtier Sanjō Sanefusa's own diary, again for a color of court dress [2][3][4][5][6][7]. In the twelfth-century dictionary Iroha jiruishō 色葉字類抄, in both copies read for this study, the word is written 匀, a Chinese character meaning even, and in a copy of the Ruiju myōgishō 類聚名義抄 made in the middle Kamakura period 匂 stands as a character of its own, glossed ニホフ and カホル, while a note with no headword of its own, just before 匀, reads ヒトシ ニホフ 是欤, setting to glow beside even as a question [8][9][10]. In 1701, the earliest date of the argument known to this study, the Kotowazagusa 諺草 called the common reading にほふ for 匂 an error, and Edo scholars, in books printed from 1736 on, argued over where the shape came from: a scribe's confusion with 芸, a cursive form of 皀, the old form of 香, or 韵, a form of 韻 sound, rhyme, cut short; Jitsū takes the last, and none of the sources read shows the step in a document [11][12][13][14][15][16].

A reading

I read 匂 as the Chinese character 匀 taken for a Japanese word and reshaped before the earliest hand read for this study, and I read the twelfth century as a time when both shapes were written, 匂 by a courtier in his own diary and 匀 in the copies of the lexicographers' dictionary; of the explanations offered for why 匀 was taken for にほふ I hold the one that derives it from 韵, a form of 韻, as the likeliest, though no document read for this study shows that step. The order of the witnesses is what any account has to explain. The dictionary Iroha jiruishō 色葉字類抄, compiled between 1144 and 1181, writes にほふ with 匀, 勹 enclosing two short strokes, in both copies read (one judged by its editor to have been copied about 1177–1182, one written out in 1565), and has no 匂 in that group; a copy of the Ruiju myōgishō 類聚名義抄 made in the middle Kamakura period has 匂, 勹 enclosing ヒ, as an entry of its own, and just before 匀 a note with no headword of its own writes ニホフ followed by 是欤, is it this? [8][9][10]. The change from two short strokes to ヒ is a small one. Read in that order, the dictionaries suggest that 匀 came first and 匂 was its later reshaping. One hand of the same decades does not fit that order. In 1169 Sanjō Sanefusa 三条実房, writing his own diary, wrote 匂 for red in court dress, in a roll that survives in his hand; the earlier of the two copies read of the Iroha jiruishō was copied, by its editor's judgment, about 1177–1182 [6][7][9]. So the earliest hand read for this study writes 匂, and no dated hand read shows 匀 written for the word before it. The modern editions of the courtiers' diaries print 匂 from an entry of 1092, in a copy thought to have been made in 1151, and if that copy writes what they print, 匂 stood in a hand earlier still [2][4][5]. I therefore read the twelfth-century state as a second order: 匂 the shape of those who wrote the word in the course of things, on the footing of one hand, and 匀 the Chinese character the lexicographers set for it. The one hand does not show how 匂 arose, whether the hands of 1092 wrote it, or whether Sanefusa ever wrote 匀, and no second instance of either shape in his hand was found to set beside it. Nor does it explain why the Iroha jiruishō, in both copies read, has no 匂 in its group, when the Kanchiin copy of the Ruiju myōgishō, a middle Kamakura copy, enters it; that silence is the part of the record this reading explains least. In Chinese the 康熙字典 glosses 勻 少也, little, 均, even, 齊, level, and 徧, spread through; 漢典 gives besides the verb senses to share out and to make up evenly, a surname, a reading jūn the same as 均, and, from the 字彙, a reading yùn in which 勻 once wrote 音韻, sound, rhyme, before the character 韻 was made for it [16][17]. In a couplet by the poet Fujiwara no Atsumitsu 藤原敦光 (1063–1144), as the woodblock of the Gunsho ruijū 群書類従 prints it, 濃勻 stands against 落蘂, fallen stamens, where the other slots pair like with like, so the slot wants a noun [18]. Read as Chinese, the one common noun among those senses (a surname aside) is that old 音韻, and so Matsui Rashū and Tachibana Moribe read the character, as 韻 shortened (§ The argument over the shape); I read it as the Japanese noun にほひ, the glow or the scent of the flowers, the gloss the Iroha jiruishō gives the character in the same decades [8][9]. On that reading, and if the woodblock keeps the poem's own character, 勻 carried the Japanese word by the anthology's date, about 1164 (the poem is Atsumitsu's, who died in 1144). Of the explanations, the confusion with 芸 put forward by the scholar Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 and the cursive 皀 put forward by an anonymous answer to him both explain the shape 匂 and say nothing of 匀, and neither names a witness [12][13]. The derivation from 韵, which the lexicographer Tanigawa Kotosuga 谷川士清 gave by his death in 1776, starts from 匀, the shape the twelfth-century dictionaries write, and it accounts for a character of sound and resonance standing for a word of radiance [14]; the 字彙's note that 勻 once wrote 音韻 is its Chinese side, though it says nothing of にほふ [16]. It is an argument from fit, not a witness, and the readings I do not take are set out in the record below.

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Overview

The sense. 精選版 日本国語大辞典 enters the verb にお・う (にほふ) under 匂 with nine senses for its intransitive use, the first 赤などのあざやかな色が、光を放つように花やかに印象づけられることをいう, of a bright color such as red, to make a showy impression as if giving off light, with its earliest example in the Man'yōshū, 春の苑紅爾保布桃の花, the spring garden, the peach blossoms glowing crimson; the fourth, ( 「臭」とも書く ) 嗅覚を刺激する気がただよい出る, (also written 臭) for something that stirs the sense of smell to drift out, has its earliest example in the same anthology, 橘の爾保敝る香かも, is it the scent of the tachibana, drifting out? [1]. The dictionary's note on the word gives the proportion: in the Man'yōshū, a visual sense, a bright, mainly red color and gloss spreading out, is overwhelming, and use of a good scent begins only toward the anthology's end; in the middle ages the word is also used of sound and voice, and its range widens with time [1]. The noun におい (にほひ), under the same character, has seven senses: ① あざやかに映えて見える色あい, a color that shows bright; ④ ( 「臭」とも ) ただよい出て嗅覚を刺激する気, (also 臭) what drifts out and stirs the sense of smell, first in the Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (905–914); ⑤ a voice's fullness; ⑥ an air or mood, and in Nō and in haikai an aftertone; ⑦ a gradation of color from dark to light, in dyeing, in armor lacing (匂威), and on a sword, 日本刀の刃と地膚の境に煙のように見える文様, the pattern seen like smoke at the border of the edge and the body of a Japanese sword [15]. Today the two characters divide the smell: the 日国 notes that for a bad smell the word is also written 臭, and JMdict marks 臭い as used for unpleasant smells [15][19].

The words. The dictionary Jitsū 字通, by Shirakawa Shizuka 白川静, classes 匂 as a 国字, a character made in Japan, read におう; KANJIDIC2 gives it the readings にお.う, にお.い and にお.わせる and no Sino-Japanese reading [15][20]. The shape is 勹, to wrap, enclosing ヒ. Beside it stand four characters the history of the shape turns on. 勻 is 勹 enclosing two short strokes (written 匀 in the Japanese books read here); the 康熙字典, citing the Shuowen 說文, glosses it 少也 … 一曰均也, little; one says, even, the Yupian 玉篇 齊也, level, and the Guangyun 廣韻 徧也, spread through; 漢典 gives besides the verb senses 分出；分讓, to share out, and 打扮；塗抹, to make up evenly, a surname, a reading jūn 同「均」, and, from the 字彙, a reading yùn, 勻，音運，古用為音勻字。自後人制韻字，而勻字不復讀為運矣, 勻 is read 運; of old it was used as the character of 音勻 (so 漢典 prints it), sound and rhyme; after later people made the character 韻, 勻 was no longer read 運 [16]. 韻 is that character of 音韻, sound, rhyme, and 韵 is a form of it written with 匀 on the right [15][16]. 皀 is, in an Edo answer to the scholar Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠, the old form of 香, fragrance [13]. 芸 is the character of Sorai's guess. The word itself is native: デジタル大辞泉 derives にほふ from 丹 red and 秀 standing out, 「丹に秀ほ」を活用した語で、赤色が際立つ意, a word made by inflecting 丹秀, meaning that red stands out [1].

The text in English. James Curtis Hepburn's dictionary of 1867 enters NIOI under 香, not 匂, as An odor, scent, smell, fragrance, an exhalation, and the verb as To emit an odor, to smell [21]. By its second edition of 1872 the verb has to perfume; in its fourth of 1888 it adds a second sense, to appear brilliant, or beautiful, still under 香 [22][23]. Between those editions, in 1881, Josiah Conder printed Moyegi-nioi-odoshi in English, the name of an armor lacing of one color shaded from deep to light [24]. JMdict today gives 匂い as smell; scent; odour; odor; stench, then aura; whiff; smack; flavour; flavor; mood, then faint, mist-like pattern along the temper line of a Japanese sword, and 匂う as to be fragrant; to smell (good), to stink; to smell (bad), to glow; to be bright and to smack of; to show hints of [19]. KANJIDIC2 gives the character fragrant, stink, glow, insinuate, and marks it (kokuji) [20].

The historical record

The word before the character

The eighth century, the Man'yōshū. The anthology writes にほふ in kana, 爾保布 and 爾保敝, in about fifty poems that use the meaning-characters elsewhere in the same poem, and only a few of them are about smell; where it is written with characters read にほふ, they are 香, 薫, 艷, 艷色 and 染, five, in seven poems, and 香 and 薫, characters of smell in Chinese, are used there of something seen [1]. These counts are the 精選版 日本国語大辞典's, in its note on the word; no character 匂 appears among them.

The character in the court diaries

From 1092, in the modern editions. Several courtiers' diaries of the period, the three below among them, are printed in the series 大日本古記録 of the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo, whose editors, as the 日本大百科全書 describes them, establish each text from the autograph where it survives and otherwise from the best copy [2]. The Institute's full-text database of old records, which carries the text of that series and of others beside it, searched for 匂 and sorted by date, oldest first, gives 91 hits, and the first is an entry of 1092 (寛治6) in the Go-Nijō Moromichi ki 後二条師通記, the diary of Fujiwara no Moromichi 藤原師通, later regent: on the back of the entry for the sixteenth day of the tenth month, under 中納言五節下仕装束色, the colors of dress for the Middle Counsellor's under-attendants at the Gosechi, the edition prints 紅梅之匂, plum-pink worn as 匂, which I take in the 日国's seventh sense of におい, a gradation of color from dark to light [3][4][15]. The edition's head note, where the winter of that year begins on its p. 292, names its source as 古寫本第二十巻, the twentieth roll of the old copy; that copy, twenty-nine rolls handed down in the Konoe 近衛 family and now in the 陽明文庫, is thought, from its colophons among other evidence, as the 日本大百科全書 reports it, to have been copied and collated in 1151 in the household of Moromichi's grandson Yorinaga 頼長 [5], and the head note puts the winter of 1092 in its twentieth roll [4]. So the date of the entry is 1092, and the hand under the edition's 匂 is, if that account holds, of 1151.

The next month, in the entry for the twenty-fifth day of the eleventh month, the Chūyūki 中右記 of Fujiwara no Munetada 藤原宗忠 (1062–1141) has, as its edition prints it, 紅梅の匂織物, woven silk of plum-pink in 匂, and the Gumaiki 愚昧記 of Sanjō Sanefusa 三条実房 (1147–1225) has 紅匂, red in 匂, in a note naming the colors of garments in 1169 (嘉応1); each printed 匂 was read on the edition's page, and each is 勹 enclosing ヒ [3][25][26][6][27]. In the database's text of the fourteen hits to 1172, thirteen name a gradation in court dress, of plum-pink, red (紅), sappanwood red (蘇芳), yellow (山吹 or 款冬), blue-green (青) or purple; the one other, of 1124, in the 御産部類記, a compilation of records of imperial births, 覚花之匂遠播, the 匂 of the flower of enlightenment spreads far, names what spreads from a flower, a scent or a radiance, not a dress [3].

1169, in Sanefusa's own hand. The Gumaiki survives in part in its author's hand, in rolls held by the Institute and the 陽明文庫 [27]. The edition's head note for the section 嘉應元年春, on its p. 185, names its base as 東京大學史料編纂所所藏原本第三巻, the third roll of the original held by the Historiographical Institute, with a copy by 三條西實隆 used to fill its losses, and gives Sanefusa's age that year as twenty-three; on p. 213 the editors box the characters they supply, and 紅匂 stands unboxed [6]. The Institute's catalogue of its holdings enters the diary as 三条実房(自筆), in Sanefusa's own hand, eight rolls of 1167–1182, seven of them marked 自筆本 and one a 古写本, and its third roll, 仁安4 (嘉応1) 正月–3月, as 自筆本, with images [7]. On the sheet of that roll carded 33表, frame 107 of its images, the split note of the column 檳榔毛車五両 reads 紅匂 over 萌黄表着 [7]. The second character is 勹 enclosing a short stroke across and a stroke that falls and turns to the right, ヒ, where 匀 has two short strokes; a wormhole repair crosses its upper right and leaves the strokes inside clear. So in 1169 a courtier wrote 匂, in his own hand, in a note naming the colors of garments, 紅匂 and 萌黄表着, which I read, as for 1092, in the 日国's seventh sense of におい, red in a gradation, in the decades in which the Iroha jiruishō was compiled (below) [28]. No other 匂, and no 匀, in his hand was found to set beside it: the reading rests on the strokes inside, which are clear at four times the size.

What the editions do and do not show. Whether the copies under the entries of 1092 write 匂, or 匀 as the dictionaries of the next decades do (below), no page read for this study shows: their hands were not read [5]. The practice of the series elsewhere makes 匂 the likelier shape, without showing it, and the one hand read, of 1169, writes what the edition prints. The same database, searched for 匀, gives seven hits that print the character as such, five of them in the series' edition of a Zen monk's diary of 1484–1486, the 蔗軒日録, each printed 匀〔韻〕, the manuscript's character kept and the editors' reading beside it; searched for 勻, it gives one, of 1437 [3][2]. So the series' edition of the 蔗軒日録 keeps 匀 where its manuscript writes it and sets 〔韻〕 beside it, the one 勻 of 1437 stands without a note, and the editions print the dress gradation of 1092 to 1172 as 匂 with no note. That is evidence about editions, not a reading of the hands.

The character in the early dictionaries

1144–1181, the Iroha jiruishō. The Iroha jiruishō 色葉字類抄 of Tachibana no Tadakane 橘忠兼, a dictionary of words arranged by the first kana and then by subject, compiled between 1144 and 1181 by the encyclopedias' dates, is read here in two facsimiles: the Maeda copy, which its editor of 1926 judges, from the list of years Tenyō to Jishō and Yōwa at the end of its last volume and from its hand, to have been copied in the Jishō and Yōwa years, 1177–1182, and the Kurokawa copy, written out in 1565 [28][9][8]. In the section of words beginning with ニ, among the 辞字, words written with more than a noun's sense, the group for ニホフ opens with 匀, glossed ニホフ on the right and ニホヒ on the left, and runs on through seven more characters, the first not settled at the size read and then 薫 芬 馥 芳 氳 菲, closed by 已上同, the same for all the above, in both copies [8][9]. The character written is 勹 enclosing two short strokes, not ヒ, and no 匂 stands in the group.

About 1162–1164, the Honchō mudaishi. The Honchō mudaishi 本朝無題詩, an anthology of Chinese verse by Japanese poets, compiled about 1162–1164 by the encyclopedias' dates, carries a poem by Fujiwara no Atsumitsu 藤原敦光 (1063–1144), 對庭花, Facing the flowers in the garden [29][30]. The woodblock of the Gunsho ruijū 群書類従, undated in the library's record, prints the poem, whose first four lines are [18]:

層臺曲觀是誰家 閑對庭前數片花 當戶濃勻含露媚 入簾落蘂帶風斜

Whose house is this, of tiered terraces and winding views? At leisure I face a few flowers before the garden. At the door the deep 勻 holds the dew's charm; into the blinds the fallen stamens slant on the wind. The character in the third line is 勹 over two short strokes, and the line reads 露, dew.

The middle Kamakura period, the Ruiju myōgishō, Kanchiin copy. The Ruiju myōgishō 類聚名義抄, a dictionary of characters arranged by radical with Japanese glosses in katakana, survives whole only in the Kanchiin 観智院 copy, which 日本大百科全書 dates 鎌倉中期写, copied in the middle Kamakura period, from a text revised by a priest of the Shingon school about the end of the twelfth century [31]. In the section of 勹, at 法下 57 in the numbering of the 1940 index (the leaf is headed 六十六), after 匍, a note stands with no headword of its own, ヒトシ ニホフ 是欤, even; to glow; is it this?, and then 匀; at 法下 58 匂 stands as an entry, glossed ニホフ and, lower in the entry, カホル, to be fragrant [10][32]. ヒトシ is 匀's own sense, even, and 是欤 sets the gloss ニホフ beside it as a doubt; 匂 is the other shape, given its own entry and a scent among its glosses. The dictionary 字通 reads that entry's glosses as カカル・アナクル・カホル・ニホフ・マカル [15].

The argument over the shape

1701, the Kotowazagusa. The Kotowazagusa 諺草, a book of words and sayings compiled by the Confucian scholar Kaibara Yoshifuru 貝原好古 (1664–1700), its colophon dated 元禄十四年辛巳春正月吉旦, 1701, the year after his death, enters 香 with the readings ニホフ and ニホヒ, and opens [11][33]:

俗に。匂の字をにほふとよめり。誤也

In common use the character 匂 is read にほふ. It is an error. It goes on, 字書に。匂を薫香とするの義なし。, the character dictionaries give 匂 no sense of fragrance, and then quotes Atsumitsu's couplet, writing the character 匂 and the dew as 霜, frost [11]. On the facing page it judges the couplet: 濃匂を落蕋に對す。是も又薫香の義とせり。如此の類官家先儒の詩文に多し。, it sets 濃匂 against 落蕋; this too takes the character in the sense of fragrance. Cases like this are many in the verse and prose of court families and earlier Confucians, and it ends by calling them all errors of habit, unexamined [11]. So by 1701 the shape was 匂, the reading にほふ was common, and the objection had been made. Yoshifuru reads the couplet as one more instance of the misuse, not as 勻 even.

Printed 1736 and 1762, the Narubeshi. The Narubeshi 南留別志 of Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666–1728) [34], a book of short notes each ending in a guess, was first printed in 1736 under the title 可成談, a pirated printing full of omissions, and in a corrected printing in 1762, as the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 dates it [35]. A Meiji typeset prints its entry on the character [12]:

一にほふといふに。匂の字をかく事は。音通なれば。誤りて芸と匂とかき違ひたる本のありしを。昔の博士どもが。珍しき事に思ひて。誤りつたへたるなるべし。

That 匂 is written for the word にほふ must be because, the two being alike in sound, there was a book that had miswritten 芸 and 匂 for each other, and the scholars of old, taking it for something rare, handed the error on. The entry goes on to compare 弱 and 若, and 宍 for 肉, as other characters that became ordinary here though rare in Chinese books. It is a guess, marked なるべし, must be, and it names no book. Whether Sorai wrote it before or after 1701 is not known.

Undated, printed 1891, the Narubeshi no ben. The Narubeshi no ben 南留別志の辨 answers a selection of Sorai's entries, in his order. Its editors of 1891 wrote, 此辨は何人の著なるや知りがたし楳堂淺野中書の叢書中に収め置れたるをとりてこゝにいだせり, who wrote this answer is hard to know; we took it from the collection in which 楳堂淺野中書 had placed it and print it here, and that it leaves aside what is not worth mentioning and answers only what grates most, あまりに聞にくきもののみを辨えたるものなるべし [13]. It quotes Sorai's entry on 匂 and replies [13]:

香の古字を皀に作り皀を草に書て匂としたるなりあやまりにあらす

The old form of 香 is written 皀, and 皀 written in cursive became 匂. It is not an error.

By 1776, the Wakun no shiori. The Wakun no shiori 倭訓栞, the dictionary of Tanigawa Kotosuga 谷川士清 (1709–1776), of words elegant and colloquial, arranged in kana order [36], printed in parts from the year after his death, discusses the character in its opening essay, the 大綱 [37][14]. The printing of 1898 sets it in the woodblock's words [38][14]:

匀をにほふとよめるは藤敦光の詩に當戶濃匀含霜媚といへり にほふといへる詞に音韻の義ありて芬香の謂のみにあらすよて韵の省文より謬れる成へし 又韻の古文均にして匀は均也と字書に見えたり

That 匀 is read にほふ: Fujiwara no Atsumitsu's poem says 當戶濃匀含霜媚. The word にほふ carries the sense of sound and resonance and does not mean fragrance alone, so it must be an error from 韵 shortened. Again, the dictionaries show that the old form of 韻 is 均 and that 匀 is 均. He then reports, as another's view, 或は…ともいへり, that the character is a cursive change of the old form of 香 that the Zhengzitong gives [14]. Kotosuga writes 匀, not 匂, and argues from the shape the twelfth-century dictionaries write.

By 1822, printed 1845, the Toyama no ishi. In his collection of notes Toyama no ishi 它山石, printed in 1845, the Confucian and scholar of the Yijing Matsui Rashū 松井羅洲 (1751–1822) heads an entry 匂の字, the character 匂. Our country's custom, he begins, uses 匂 for にほふ and にほひ, and then [39][40][41]:

これ異邦の字書に无所の文字なる故に、前輩等俗造の國字なりとせり。藤原敦光對庭花詩に、當戶濃匂含霜媚、入簾落蘂帶風斜、とあり。按るにこれは即ち韻といふ字の省文なり。

Because it is a character the dictionaries of other countries do not have, earlier writers held it to be a national character of common making. Fujiwara no Atsumitsu's poem 對庭花 has 當戶濃匂含霜媚, 入簾落蘂帶風斜. On reflection, this is the character 韻 shortened. He goes on that 韻 is also written 韵 and, shortened again, 均 and 勻, and that this 勻 turned into 匂, 其勻の字が轉じて匂となりしなり; that 韻 at root means the echo a sound leaves; and that the names of layered colors in dress, 紫匂ひ, 紅匂ひ, 萌黄匂ひ, carry that sense of 餘韻, a lingering resonance. He ends that early China had no character 韻: the hymns of Zhou and Han wrote 音, and 韻 was made in the Wei and Jin [39]. Rashū is the only writer read here to report that the 国字 view was older than his own note.

By 1849, the Zokugokō. The scholar of the Japanese classics and poet Tachibana Moribe 橘守部 (1781–1849) has an entry ○匂 in the に section of his Zokugokō 俗語考. The manuscript copy in the library of the Imperial Household Agency reads [42][43]:

或人の匂字をにほふとよむは心得ずといへる。藤原敦光對庭花詩に、當戶濃勻含露媚、入簾落蘂帶風斜、とあり。按るにこれは即韻といふ字の省文なり。韻字或は韵に作り、又は省して均勻に作れり。

Someone has said that reading the character 匂 as にほふ makes no sense. Fujiwara no Atsumitsu's poem 對庭花 has 當戶濃勻含露媚, 入簾落蘂帶風斜. On reflection, this is the character 韻 shortened: 韻 is written 韵, or, shortened, 均 and 勻. The copyist writes the headword and the objector's 匂 with the inner stroke hooked, 匂, and the poem's character and the shortened form with two short parallel strokes, 勻, so this copy keeps the two shapes apart. Moribe goes on that 韻 at root means the echo a sound leaves, 此韻韵は元来音の餘響なれば, and comes to calling the present-day writing 匂 an error, 今俗の匂字に作るは … 誤れる [42]. He quotes the couplet with 勻 and 露, as the Gunsho ruijū prints it.

Printed 1918, the Kankei sōtetsu. Asano Nagayoshi 浅野長祚 (1816–1880), a shogunal retainer and a painter and calligrapher who wrote as Baidō 梅堂, wrote in his notes Kankei sōtetsu 寒檠璅綴, printed in 1918 [44][45]. The 解題 of a 1974 reprint, of which only short passages are open outside the National Diet Library, names the collection that held the Narubeshi no ben as the 漱芳閣叢書 of 浅野梅堂, and adds 浅野梅堂は名は長祚, Asano Baidō's name was Nagayoshi [46]; on that account of the same collection this study takes the 楳堂淺野 of the 1891 preface and Baidō 梅堂 to be one man. He wrote:

匀字ヲ吾俗古ヨリニホヒト訓シテ香ノコトトス藤敦光ノ詩ニ當戶濃匀含霜媚ナト其佗イクラモアリ コレハ香ノ古文皀ノ草體ヨリ變シテ匀ノ字ニナリタルナトイヘトモ附會ノ鑿說ト思ル 匀ハ韵ノ字古通ニテ均ト同ケレハ初風韵幽韻ナト、用シヲ芬芳ノ義トトリチカヘテ用ヒタルカ卒ニ字ヲモ略シテ匀ノ訓ノニホヒトイフコトニハナリタルナルヘシ

Our people have long read the character 匀 as にほひ and taken it for fragrance; Atsumitsu's poem, 當戶濃匀含霜媚, and many others. Some say it changed into 匀 from the cursive of 皀, the old form of 香, but I think that a forced and far-fetched theory. 匀 was anciently interchangeable with the character 韵 and is the same as 均, and it was used in such words as 初風韵 and 幽韻; it must have been mistaken for the sense of fragrance, and at last, the character shortened too, the reading of 匀 came to be にほひ. He goes on that the 匀 of a sword means not fragrance but something like 韻致, 韻趣, refined charm, taste, a quality hard to put into words [44]. So the collector who kept the anonymous answer to Sorai rejected the theory it gives, though he names no book [46][44].

Today, the Jitsū. Shirakawa Shizuka 白川静 (1910–2006) writes in Jitsū 字通 that 匂 is 韵, the variant of 韻, shortened, with the shape of 匀 mistaken for it, 思われる, it seems; he gives Sorai's theory as a confusion with 芸 and the 皀 theory to Fujitani Nariakira's 富士谷成章 Hi-narubeshi 非南留別志, and says the abbreviation of 韵 is to be preferred; he notes that the Ruiju myōgishō gives both shapes, 匂 and 匀 [15][47].

The sword's 匂

On a sword 匂 is a visual sense, of the kind the 日国's note finds older than scent. The 日国 enters, under におい, the pattern seen like smoke at the border of a sword's edge and its body, citing a source of 1771 [15]. 世界大百科事典 (旧版) explains that the grains of the temper pattern too fine to tell apart unaided are called 匂, and the coarse ones like scattered silver dust 沸 (にえ), and that the difference is only of grain size, 科学的には同じ組織, scientifically the same structure [15]. Asano Nagayoshi read the sword's 匀 as 韻致, a refined charm, not fragrance [44].

What is not a source. Atsumitsu's couplet is quoted for 匂 in five of the Edo books read here, the Kotowazagusa, the Wakun no shiori, the Toyama no ishi, the Zokugokō and the Kankei sōtetsu, and it is not a witness to the shape 匂. The Gunsho ruijū woodblock read here prints 勻 and 露; the Kotowazagusa of 1701 quotes it with 匂 and 霜, and Tanigawa Kotosuga, Matsui Rashū and Asano Nagayoshi quote it with 霜, while the copy of Tachibana Moribe's Zokugokō read here writes 勻 and 露, as the anthology does [18][11][14][39][44][42]. The poem shows the character used for the Japanese word in the twelfth century; which of the two shapes Atsumitsu wrote, no copy read here can show.

The character in English

1867, J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, p. 317. The noun, ニホヒ, 香, An odor, scent, smell, fragrance, an exhalation. Nioi no yoi hana, a fragrant flower, and the verb, ニホフ, 香, To emit an odor, to smell. Hana go niō, the flower is fragrant (the book's go for ga) [21]. Hepburn writes the word with 香, and gives it smell alone.

1872, J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, p. 368. The verb, ニホフ, 香, To emit an an odor (so printed), to smell, to perfume. Hana ga niō, the flower is fragrant, and the noun, ニホヒ, 香, An odor, scent, smell, fragrance, an exhalation or effluvium [22]. To perfume and effluvium have come in; the sense is still smell alone.

1881, Josiah Conder, The History of Japanese Costume: II — Armour, p. 271. In a paper printed in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Conder describes the lacings of armor: There are still other arrangements when one colour is used in different shades, so as to shade off the colour from deep to light. Such an arrangement is the Moyegi-nioi-odoshi, where green is used in a shaded arrangement [24]. I read the name as 萌黄匂威, the gradation of the 日国's seventh sense of におい, whose example is 萌黄の匂の鎧 [15], and the sense in which I take the courtiers' diaries to use 匂. So nioi stood in English print, in the name of a shading of one color, by 1881; Conder does not gloss the word alone.

1888, J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, p. 455. The noun as in 1872; the verb, still under 香, To emit an odor, to smell, to perfume; to appear brilliant, or beautiful: hana ga niou, the flower is fragrant [23]. Between the second edition and the fourth (the third, of 1886, was not read), the older, visual sense has come into the entry, under a character of smell; Conder's paper of 1881 falls in that interval.

Today. JMdict gives 匂い as smell; scent; odour; odor; stench, with aura; whiff; smack; flavour; flavor; mood and the sword's faint, mist-like pattern along the temper line, and 匂う with to glow; to be bright among its senses; KANJIDIC2 gives the character fragrant, stink, glow, insinuate [19][20]. This history's English, scent, once the glow of color, gives first the sense today's dictionaries give first, the 大辞泉 and JMdict (the 日国 lists the color sense first), and keeps the older one beside it, because by the 日国's note the older one is the word's, attested before any witness of the character known to this study.

Notes

匀 and 勻 are two forms of one Chinese character, 勹 enclosing two short strokes. This history writes 匀 where a Japanese dictionary or essay is read and 勻 for the poem, as the editions of the anthology and the Chinese dictionaries print it; in the manuscripts and the woodblocks read, the leaf shows two short strokes in both cases.

Jitsū gives the 皀 theory to Fujitani Nariakira 富士谷成章 (1738–1779), in his Hi-narubeshi 非南留別志 [15][48]. The passage read for this history is in the anonymous Narubeshi no ben, printed in 1891 [13].

In the 1891 typeset of the Narubeshi no ben, the character read 皀 is cut as 白 over a short stroke, which the type does not separate from 皀's lower part; the sense, 香の古字, requires 皀 [13].

The copy of the Kotowazagusa read carries on its back cover a manuscript note of 文化十二 (1815), so it may be a later impression from the blocks of 1701 [11].

On the Iroha jiruishō, the editor of the 1926 facsimile of the Kurokawa copy calls it a book of two parts, while 世界大百科事典 counts the Kurokawa copy among the copies in three parts; this history names it by its owner and date [8][28].

The Genji monogatari 源氏物語, written in the early eleventh century [49], has a prince and a chapter now written 匂宮, Niou no miya, the prince who burned fine incense into his robes [50]. The tale was handed down in copies: the 日本大百科全書 says no copy of the Heian period survives and the surviving text was copied from the Kamakura period on, while the 世界大百科事典 names, among fragments, the text of the illustrated scroll copied in the Heian period [49]. No manuscript of it was read for this study, so its 匂 is counted here with the modern prints, not among the witnesses of the character.

A manuscript copy of the Honchō mudaishi, undated, in the 佐野文庫 of Niigata University Library, writes the third line of Atsumitsu's couplet 當戶濃勻含露媚, the character with two short strokes, and 露, as the Gunsho ruijū woodblock prints it [51][18].

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References

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-11-06, citations — 24 claims tested, 11 resolved, none read differently, 13 not openable to the script (the page images and live dictionary pages, each read by eye or live) · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-11-07, citations after the 1169 autograph was added — 27 claims tested, 4 resolved, none read differently, 23 not openable to the script (the page images, the autograph and the live pages, each read by eye or live) · two fresh-context readers (Claude), 2026-11-07, the lines changed for the 1169 autograph, Conder 1881 and the Genji note, traced claim by claim: one PASS; one FAIL on the Conder title, which the volume's contents leaf and first page carry and which the reference now names; every wording narrowed at the page · two fresh-context readers per round (Claude), 2026-11-06, every claim in the page's summary block and the abstract traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 FAIL, both, on a sense of 勻 the history had missed and an identification resting on a name alone, the first corrected and the second given its source; round 2 PASS on the summary block; corrections made at the page in both rounds

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · November 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 匂 (nioi)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/nioi.