kakekotoba

A 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.

==History== 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: Using the context of the sentence before the kakekotoba and after it to create a new meaning. The kakekotoba is translated to two different meanings by itself.　Because it can be translated with different meanings, kakekotoba translations can sometimes be meaningless by themselves, and need a context to bring out their meaning, which was not considered a problem in the Heian period.