I can't read any of the script, but how about the rather silly six 有 under one roof, the open triangle, or the seal script looking thing at top left? That whole page looks like an entertaining read.

The use of triangles for "kaki" looks strangely familiar to me, but I'm probably just thinking of the beloved (by me) storefront "masu". 〼

Is that really the difference between 犬 and 狗? Or at least the modern understanding?

I've been lately (in between bouts with classical verbs) working on trying to get a handle on the nuances of alternate kanji for the same word. My most recent enlightenment was the connotations of 波 versus 浪.

---L.

I can't help but think that the big dog/small dog distinction comes from the 犬 = native dog, 狗　= continental dog (and 戌 = time to start preparing to have hair of the dog that bit you) distinction.

Wow, that photo of the book pages is lovely. I usually do fairly well with cursive hiragana but I can't read but about 10% of those glosses. I wish I knew of some study resources to improve my cursive reading.

Perhaps the degenerated kanji are like the fake words they bury in modern English dictionaries, so they know when someone just copied their entire list.

> with a helpful note explaining the character: "turn left, turn right"

Couldn’t he be describing the eiji happō strokes employed in drawing it (taku and migi-harai)?

Which brings me to what surprises me more about these examples—they appear to not follow the construction of kaisho characters at all! The lines in the Triforce are too simple, the bonji dots don’t look like 点 dots, and those tapering curves of the fork make me think of seal/bronze/oracle characters.

“An abstraction for fishhook”—looks like the left part of 以。

Charles: I found this book in my dept library, it’s quite interesting—but would take a whole lot of dedicated study to really profit from it. You can also find countless calligraphy books on cursive kana, renmeitai etc. Perhaps just taking shodō classes would be better, though I’d recommend talking with the teacher about your goals to avoid being stuck drawing 永 for 10 years.

I love the alternative character for よつ。 Dig those clocks that use IIII as roman for “4” instead of IV?

What’s いづる? Confusing but important distinction from usual 出 there— 出 has a single vertical stroke.

That he has things like what seems to be the left part of 以、 the frame of 直、 the top of 災、 the root hair component 彡 makes me feel like he was engaging in some early component analysis. Nice to see they were already amused by 凹 and 凸。

Really out of my depth here, but could the top-left seal-script robot be うるく~= intercalation (as in modern うるうどし leap year)?

And could the triforce be かき = fence, as in litle enclosures?

Okay, let's do this.

Seal-script looking thing is 鼎, /kana(h)e/ (yeah, it's actually an officially recognized kanji!). It means "tripod" and it is a picture of a tripod. (I can totally see where you got うるく from, though, anonymous, the kana do look similar.)

Open triangle: this page says that it's a type of cup made out of willow, also pronounced /ko/. (Kojien also gives /ko/ as a reading for 壺, with the meaning "cup (for alcohol)"

Six 有: This has the furigana /hasidate/, so it may be related to the tradition of assigning crazy compound kanji to "Ama no hashidate" (as in the view); search for 天橋立 at the link above to see an example.

Leo: "Couldn’t he be describing the eiji happō strokes employed in drawing it (taku and migi-harai)?" Maybe -- it just says "migi e modoru, hidari e modoru"

"they appear to not follow the construction of kaisho characters at all!" -- Yeah, it looks like this is also sort of his grab bag for glyphs or icons, which he had no category for other than "kanji".

Triforce = fence: Maybe!! I didn't think of that one.

Kana in general: The big problem isn't so much that they are just cursive as that they are hentaigana... like for "kanae" above, two out of the three kana are not the ones that survived to the modern day. I'll write a post about learning these next week!

Oh -- and "いづる" is just the old form of "でる". I think that the kanji 出 was originally two separate pieces, like he shows, but I don't have a dictionary to check.

Judging from the examples in chineseetymology.org they already started to write it as a unit in Seal, though it was two parts in Bronze and earlier—but it was “foot” (modern 止) and something, not two mountains 山。 I’d like to see the evolution of the reisho/kaisho forms but have no idea where to look for that.

btw that anonymous was me, I simply forgot to fill the fields due to enthusiasm.