五

Pattern visualization

Examples

1. 五時に終わります。▶ —
   It ends at five.
2. 五月は新緑がきれい。▶ —
   May has beautiful fresh greenery.

Collocations

Mnemonic

Go-five (五) is the on-yomi for five; Yamato readings are itsutsu (5 items) and itsuka (5th of month or 5 days). Goji (5 oclock), gogatsu (May — late Golden Week, fresh-greenery season), gonin (5 people), gojuu (50), gofun (5 minutes). The kanji carries rich cultural weight: gokan (the five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch — the base from which rokkan, sixth sense, extends), gogyou (the Five Elements wood-fire-earth-metal-water shared by Daoism and Shinto), gorin (the Olympic five rings), gokoku (the five grains rice-wheat-millet-bean-glutinous millet for harvest rites), gogatsu-byou (May illness, the post-Golden-Week slump mentioned earlier in rokugatsu-byou). Gojuuon (the 50-sound chart, Japans phonological grid) is the foundational kana table. Gojuunotou (five-story pagoda) is iconic Buddhist architecture — Kyotos Toji has the tallest wooden pagoda in Japan at 54.8 meters, a National Treasure. Shichi-go-san (the 7-5-3 rite, covered earlier) includes age 5. The kanji is shared: Sino-Korean o, Chinese wu, Japanese go. Five anchors yin-yang and Five-Element cosmology — the building block of East Asian space-time perception.

Quick check

1. The five elements (gogyou) of East Asian cosmology?

   • Wood, fire, earth, metal, water
   • Earth, water, fire, wind, ether (Indian)
   • Earth, water, air, fire, ether (Greek)
   • Spring, summer, autumn, winter, in-between