Reading Japanese maps and marketing practices 8 - introduction 2

  

Although learning sōrōbun is beyond the scope of these exercises, let’s try one last challenge. Many introductions to kuzushiji recommend starting reading old Japanese written sources by looking for the kanji 候 in them, as it allows one to grasp where the phrase ends. How many times did the character 候 appear in the last section of the text we were studying? Keep in mind that 候 is a character used very often and is usually depicted in very distorted ways. Consequently, the shape of this kanji in particular varies greatly even within the same text. In this particular case, the character appears written in the two styles you can see in the pictures to the left.

Note: If you want to delve into the world of sōrōbun, a good start is the introduction to sōrōbun in English by Professor Laura Moretti which can be found at the following link.
 
http://wakanedo.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Manual-sorobun.pdf)