Today, a friend sent me an interesting comment about « kokoroe » (cf. recent post). Kokoroe, « knowledge » is written 心得 shin/kokoro + u/toku. But when the two kanji of « kokoroe » are reversed: i.e. 得心,  it is « tokushin » and means « understanding ». So knowledge is also about understanding Nature and Life.

This is good but it gets better!

The sound of the first kanji « toku » in tokushin can be written with different kanji and have different meanings in Japanese. For example, we all know that  Karate, 空手 (« empty hand » today) used to be written Karate 唐手, Chinese boxing before Funakoshi Sensei changed it to have it accepted as a Japanese Budô at the end of the 19th century. Obviously a Chinese fighting system couldnt have recognized as a Japanese Budô.

So for « tokushin »…