Usage of Heisig radical "big"


I'm using RTK to learn the Kanji and yet am pretty happy with it.

To review the Kanji I am using an Anki deck.

My question is about the usage of Heisig's 大 radical for example in 器. In the
book the radical for "big" is used in the middle but if I draw the Kanji in
the Kanji Draw Android app without the drop all I get is the same Kanji but
with the little drop on the top right hand side. If I look the Kanji up in the
じしょ app it says "utensil, vessel, receptacle" which fits Heisig's keyword of
"dishes" (in the german edition). Also the Anki deck shows me the Kanji with
the drop.

I know that the Kanji for dog has this little drop and that its radical is
used in other Kanjis and as it has a slightly different meaning(big dog vs
small dog) I assumed that this may be an error in RTK.

But if I type "utsuwa" on PC I get the exact same Kanji but without the little
drop on the top right.

My conlusion is that it doesn't matter which one I use which doesn't really
make sense to me.




**Short answer** : As snailplane said, 器 was originally written with a 犬, and
that's still the preferred form in China. Nowadays 大 is the standard in Japan,
but you'll spot the older version from time to time depending on the font,
application etc.

**Long answer:**

Ok so first, it's important to understand that RTK is _not_ an analysis of how
are kanji built, or what's the actual logic behind their components and how
they combine. RTK a system of _arbitrary_ mnemonics to help memorizing kanji
(in the same spirit as similar mnemonic techniques to memorize an entire deck
of playing cards, or digits of pi and so on). The stories in RTK do not
necessarily bear any relationship to the actual reality of how were the
characters made, and why. If they did, they'd be a lot messier, with lots of
multiple meanings and graphical variants and characters based on
pronunciation, etc.; and "messy" don't work very well for mnemonics. That's
why the author decided to just invent "stories" out of the blue for his
simplified system of "radicals". The system of meanings described in RTK is an
invention of Heisig's; it's only loosely related (at best) to the system of
meanings of the kanji themselves.

器 is a good example. In the modern Japanese shape, the middle part is drawn
like 大, not like 犬. So if you're making stories to memorize Japanese kanji,
you'd want to use radical "big", not radical "dog". However, the original
shape of the character was something like this:

[![ancient shape of
器](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bchUl.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bchUl.gif)

Now, compare it with the original form of 大, which was a stick figure of a
person:

[![ancient shape of
人](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qarSL.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qarSL.gif)

And compare it also with the original form of 犬, which was a drawing of a
doggo:

[![ancient shape of
犬](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJvR5.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IJvR5.gif)

It should be clear that 器 was definitely built from 犬, not 大. You can clearly
see that slanted stroke standing for its head, which would later become the
drop in 犬 when calligraphers simplified the shape.

Why does the standard shape in Japan use 大, then? Purely for convenience! It's
one less stroke to draw, and it won't be confused with any other character
anyway. This kind of simplification dates a long way back; even in ancient
China, by the time 犬 started looking like 大, they would sometimes draw the
doggie head in 器:

[![One Seal variant of 器, with 犬
shape](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EqZWw.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EqZWw.gif)

And sometimes they'd omit it and just draw the 大 shape:

[![Another Seal variant of 器, with 大
shape](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lvu7k.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lvu7k.gif)

Or even simplify it even further:

[![Another Seal variant of 器, with 工
shape](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FawDr.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FawDr.gif)

This latter abbreviation, 噐, with a 工 shape, didn't catch on enough to be
widely used today; but 器 with 大 did, to the point of becoming the standard in
Japan. Here's an image directly from the _Jōyō Kanji_ table, the document in
which the Ministry of Education defines the kanji used in the school system:

[![Jōyō Kanji-hyō entry for
器](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M3AKt.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/M3AKt.png)

The first shape is the one currently prescribed for general use. The one in
parenthesis is the 旧字体{きゅうじたい} ("old") variant. These were never different
_characters_ ; the were just _alternative shapes of the same character_ (like
the 'a' and 'ɑ' characters when writing English by hand). So you were right:
as it regards meaning, it doesn't really make a difference which one you use.
You said that this variance doesn't make sense to you. That's probably because
you've become used to Heisig's neat little system where every shape has only
one meaning and all compositions always have a logic behind them. As we've
seen with this example, the real world of kanji isn't like that. In
particular, 大 in kanji combinations is often not a real 大 but a simplification
of 犬, just like 王 in combinations is often not about kings, but a
simplification of 玉.

**Bonus** : Why _did_ they put a dog in there, anyway? The four boxes are
clearly 'vessels, receptacles'; but what do 'dogs' have to do with anything?
We don't know! The oldest explanation is that of the _Shuowen_ dictionary,
written in the 2nd century, which says it was a guard dog protecting wares.
However, the _Shuowen_ was written a good thousand years after the invention
of Chinese writing, and today we know that many of its explanations were
wrong. The "guard dog" theory might be a stretch. What is it that it adds to
the meaning compared to 品? The respected Japanese kanji researcher Tōdō
Akiyasu thinks 犬 had a secondary nuance suggesting "varied; of various kinds",
by its association with dog races; that feels like even more of a stretch to
me, but who knows? Whoever created the characters left no explanation of what
were they thinking. Welcome to the world of kanji research.

(All images from [chineseetymology.org](http://www.chineseetymology.org/).)

