Expert: John J - 4/8/2009

Question
Someone said that wushu in kanji means martial art but another said it means to stop a spear, so which is it? Thanks.

Answer
Hi Holly,

It's a tricky question for me cuz you asked about the meaning of wushu in kanji, which is Japanese, which is beyond my specialty.

However, I think you might mean wushu in Chinese Hanzi, in this case, Wu3(3rd tone) means military or martial, and Shu4 means skill, technique, art, method and etc. So Wushu is correctly translated as martial art.

Honestly, I didn't know about "to stop a spear" thing, so i did a little google. Given that you mentioned Japanese Kanji, I found this website introducing Japanese martial art-Budo(as Wu3Dao4 in Chinese), which gives a detailed explanation of it. (http://jackhuser.free.fr/budo.html) It does mention that Wu3 can be disassembled into three parts, each as a hanzi or kanji, meaning to stop, two, and spear respectively. So in the sense of philosophy, it makes sense to say that the purpose and spirit of wushu is to stop violence-"to stop a spear".

I hope you'll find the answer satisfactory.

best wishes,
John