Kakekotoba

A kakekotoba (掛詞^?) or pivot word is a rhetorical device used in the Japanese poetic form waka. This trope uses the phonetic reading of a grouping of kanji (Chinese characters) to suggest several interpretations: first on the literal level (e.g. 松, matsu, meaning "pine tree"), then on subsidiary homophonic levels (e.g. 待つ, matsu, meaning "to wait"). Thus it is that many waka have pine trees waiting around for something. The presentation of multiple meanings inherent in a single word allows the poet a fuller range of artistic expression with an economical syllable-count. Such brevity is highly valued in Japanese aesthetics, where maximal meaning and reference are sought in a minimal number of syllables. Kakekotoba are generally written in the Japanese phonetic syllabary, hiragana, so that the ambiguous senses of the word are more immediately apparent.

Pivot words are first found in the earliest extant manuscripts where poetic verse is preserved in written form. The earliest examples are from the Nara period. The provenance of the technique is unclear, however it is likely it was already in common use in the period before writing was introduced, as part of the oracular poetic tradition. It is a technique devised to enrich the way of conveying a poem in a limited space. The general pattern is as follows:

Koishiki ni
wabite tamashii
madoinaba
munashiki kara no
na ni ya nokoramu

If in despair of love
my soul should wander,
am I to be remembered
as one who left
(a corpse) in vain?

This poem from the Kokin Wakashū makes a pun that is translated explicitly in the English version. Kara, herecan mean "empty shell" or "corpse" (since the implied narrator's soul has left his body). Spelling this out in translation is the only way to express the pun to an English reader, but doing so destroys the subtlety that makes the original so poignant

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