Japan Travel Forum

A colleague told me that Japanese read from right to left "because that way they read towards the heart."

Okay, now I know that the Japanese reading and writing system is like it is primarily due to Chinese influence some 1500 years ago, but still - is this a saying in Japan that the Japanese "read towards the heart"?
Please help me out!
/cheers Maline

Oh, maybe this should've been posted in the misc forum? Sorry about that if so...!!/haven't been around VT for such a long time I have forgotten my manners apparently!

I don't know where your colleague heard that. I am a linguist and both Chinese and Japaneae are left to right or top to bottom in structure (so is Korean). However, the verb is usually at the end and sometimes in order to understand something you may read the verb first before reading (or listening) to a passage in order to understand it more quickly. Arabic is written right to left so go figure.

In Japanese we have a word ‘Shindoku(心読)’, which implies to read by (or through, or towards) your heart, or read until the concept written on it reaches your heart through your brain.
Perhaps it is taken from the Buddhism vocabulary in Chinese.
In Buddhism, reading the sutra is a kind of practicing. When you practice a Shindoku, it means you read the sutra contemplating various nature of the Buddha.

Oh, I think I missed your point of question.

Well, as olddude writes, Japanese is written in two ways, yokogaki (left to right) and takegaki (top to bottom). Tategaki is the traditional way introduced from China, yokogaki became popular since late 19th century under western influence.

I haven't herd a saying "read towards the heart", but searching in the internet I found a review of a book titled "Write in tategaki", by Ishikawa Kyuyou, a chirographer. According to the review, he says that when you write in tategaki, you feel the gravity from the above, and such text can reach towards the reader's heart. Well, I think I can understand his point. Tategaki does not allow you being objective to the text. Perhaps, the notion behind the word Shindoku is close to it.

The Japanese version of the Bible is in tategaki. I remember a pastor told me that when you read the Bible in tategaki, you nod line by line saying "yes, yes", but in yokogaki you shake your head line by line saying "No, no".