I don’t have anything interesting to post, but the lack of comments is a shame; this was really interesting. Ok let’s go on a tangent. These days 茶 is often drawn with a vertical stroke in the middle tree-like element, but sometimes one also sees it with a hook to the left, like in 余 (I’m under the impression it happens more frequently in old texts, but I might be wrong). Many character etymologies think 茶 came from 余、 which would explain that.

(Another etymology is that it came via 荼 first (notice extra stroke), a character closer to 艹+余 and meaning a kind of herb, and AFAIK unused in Japanese except phonetically in some Buddhist words.)

Aw, thanks Leo. I only wish I knew enough about kanji etymology to make this a proper thread.

Well this is your lucky day mister! Right after writing these comments I decided to out the secrets and now you know as much as me :)

Nice! My main problem is that although I have access to many resources, I lack the expertise to reconcile different claims from (as far as I know) equally respectable researchers.

How do you feel about Shirakawa?

I have even less expertise; I just read what everyone has to say and assume nothing’s certain. After all, even the shuōwén jiězì 說文解字 was compiled a good few centuries after the essential system was standardized (Rogers claims as much as 1500 years), so there’s little external evidence to trust about the original construction (for example, a composite that Xǔ Shèn thought was semantic/semantic might actually have been created as phonetic/semantic with earlier phonetics, much like most laypeople now think 清 is “blue water”).

And you know, just like later copies of manuscripts are as important to philology as The Original, I figure from a cultural point of view the multiple possible analysis of kanji are worth investigating, too, even if historically innacurate. So 東 was not originally made of 日＋木、 but for how long have people been analysing it as such?

Wow I had missed Shirakawa. I don’t think our profs would point us in that direction :) The kind of argument he makes triggers all sorts of internal alarms about unscientificness, but at the same time I’m dying to read more (audience, here’s a blog with examples). He seems to downplay the role of language and phonetics, like an anti-DeFrancis. I wonder how much of Shirakawa’s claims would stand up to analysis by mainstream linguists, anthropologists, archæologists. I’m also intrigued by his unusual approach to the Man’yōshū (and kokugaku). Rogue scholars are entertaining!

Thus I heard: 余 (or 予) is the first person pronoun in the Shang period (in Zhou Classical Chinese it's already the 我/吾 doublet) It was largely out of the possibilities of Written Chinese (because it's not in spoken Zhou), but is later taken by the Classical Prose Movement writers. It is the usual 1st person pronoun in scholarly works of at least the last 500 years, too. That's probably why I also use 余 when I need to refer to myself in Literary Chinese -- it's the one I'm most familiar with, as the greatest input of Literary Chinese to me, as is probably to other literate Chinese, is the commentaries of other works in Literary Chinese (much less copious).

There still seems to be a pattern, though. In topic position, it's largely 余; in possessor position, and when modified (東に還る今の我) only 我 seems to be possible. This is quite consistent with the Literary Chinese that I have in my head: 余生也有涯…… 昔之我非今之我……

Thanks for the insight, minus273! The link to Literary Chinese would make a lot of sense, since Ogai was obviously well versed in that too. The attributive thing in particular I can see too.

I am not so sure about possession:

1) 危きは余が當時の地位なりけり。
2) ... 余が彼を愛づる心の俄に強くなりて ...
3) 余が病は全く癒えぬ。

And also with を:

4) 一人子の我を力になして世を渡る母...
5) 皆快く余を迎へ...
6) 彼人々は余を猜疑し...
7) かくまでに我をば欺き玉ひしか

(4) is arguably "modified," but I don't think that applies to (7).

Do you see potential patterns there based on LC?

I think 7) is because of the direct quotation. 余 is a Chinese word exclusively destined for written usage after 1046 BC, while われ is a good Japanese word, if a little old. So to represent a person, especially a woman, speaking, it's quite impossible to have a 余 here with a straight face on, while われ is at least blessed by the monogataris.