This week's Kanji country is France. Japan's relation with France goes all the way back to the Edo era of 1800s. Although there were times where France and Japan clashed in wars, the overall relationship between the two countries are still very strong. Today, Paris and Tokyo are officially a sister-city.
What kind of cultural influence did Japan provide France over time? France has been hosting the Japan Expo since 2000 where the expo covers everything about Japan from pop culture (music, anime, manga, and cosplay) to Japan's classics (tea ceremony, origami, and caligraphies). In 2009's 4-day expo, more than 160, 000 people have attended.
Japan's martial art, judo is actually more popular in France then it's home country. France currently has over 560,000 people learning the ways of Judo to 210,000 in Japan.
France has also built Japanese-style Buddhist temples and they have French monks that have studied the Buddhist ways in Japan. This is where the kanji France gets interesting. The Kanji shown on the right is the two characters that represents France. Just like all the other countries that have been covered, a phonetic Kanji was picked out. Therefore "what does France mean in Japanese" is not really a valid question. The second character as mentioned in previous articles, is the Kanji for "Country". The first chracter is actually the character for "Buddha". Therefore France if asked can mean, "the country of Budda". Again, that Kanji character was chosen for phonetic purpose to make the sound of "fu" of "fu-ra-n-su", therefore translating the Kanji has little value.
I saw another Kanji on a lady's shoulder couple days ago, I couldn't read it. It probably wanted to be "forever" but it sort of looked like "water" instead. Tattoos are valuable to those that have it, but do not forget, there are people out there that can read it. And therefore if you're going to get one, you should get it right.
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