Two people can look at exactly the same scene and give it completely different titles. Morning glories are blooming in a garden. One person might call the picture: “Morning Glories.” Another: “Summer Garden.” Someone else might choose: “Morning with Grandma.” The scene has not changed. So why do the titles change? Because a title does not always tell us only what is there. Sometimes it tells us what a person noticed within what was there. The world contains far more things than we can pay attention to at once. Before the girl are morning glories. Leaves. A garden. Sunlight. Wind. Her grandmother. The sound of a wind chime. And the passage of time that allowed yesterday’s buds to become today’s flowers. No single picture or sentence can contain all of it. So we choose. “This is what I want to paint.” “This is what I want to think about.” “This is what matters to me today.” Through that act of choosing, a 題 begins to emerge from the enormous world around us. And this is not true only of paintings and stories. Two people may experience the same day and remember it differently. A rainy day might become: “The day our outing was canceled.” For someone else, the very same day might become: “The afternoon I stayed home and talked with Grandma.” The event is the same. But where we place our attention can change the “title” we give that memory. Sometimes a 題 is given to us by someone else. A question. An assignment. A problem to solve. Someone is saying: “Think about this.” But even when the topic is shared, our answers do not have to be identical. One 題 can open the door to many different thoughts. A title is not an answer. Often, it is the beginning of a question. At the top of the girl’s painting is a small empty space. She does not yet know what she will write there. But because the space remains empty, she looks once more at her painting and at the garden beyond it. What was I really looking at? What did I want to remember? Perhaps giving something a 題 is not simply giving the world a name. Perhaps it is giving a name to something we ourselves have discovered within the world.

One summer afternoon, morning glories swayed gently in the garden. Sitting beside her grandmother, a little girl finally finished the picture she had been working on since morning. Purple and blue flowers. Bamboo supports. Sunlight filtering between the leaves. She put down her brush with satisfaction. “Finished!” Grandmother leaned over to look. “You painted them beautifully.” Then the girl suddenly noticed something. There was still one empty space at the top of the page. “Oh! I forgot the title.” She picked up her brush again. She was about to write: “Morning Glories.” But her hand stopped. She looked at the garden. Then at her painting. Then back at the garden. “What’s wrong?” Grandmother asked. “Is ‘Morning Glories’ really the right title?” “Why wouldn’t it be?” “Well… because I painted morning glories.” “Then ‘Morning Glories’ would be a perfectly good title.” Grandmother said nothing more. The girl continued thinking. She remembered that morning. She had still been sleepy when Grandmother called her into the garden. “They’ve opened.” Several buds that had been closed the day before were blooming in the morning light. For a moment, the girl had felt as though the flowers themselves were welcoming the new day. “Oh.” The girl suddenly spoke. “Maybe I didn’t really want to paint the flowers.” “Then what did you want to paint?” The girl looked toward the garden. The wind chime rang softly. A morning glory moved in the breeze. “The feeling I had when I found them blooming this morning.” Grandmother smiled. “Then perhaps you can give that feeling a name.” The girl thought for a long moment. Then she slowly brought her brush toward the empty space. Grandmother did not ask what she would write. It was the girl’s 題 to choose. Anyone could look at the picture and see what was painted there. But what the girl had noticed within that scene, and what she had decided was worth remembering— perhaps the title was the small collection of words that could reveal that.

Collecting this kanji brings these jukugo closer ✨