I'd like a word looked up in a Japanese dictionary.  I don't care what
the Japanese translation is.  What I want to know is, when you find it
in the Japanese dictionary, what other words are grouped with it?  I'd
like to know what those words are, in English.

Explanation:  I used to work with a woman who, from time to time, for
work reasons, looked things up for me in the dictionary she called
"the green goddess."  Once I asked her how the words were arranged,
and she said it was by the number of strokes in the Kanji characters. 
That system has the interesting effect of grouping related words and
concepts together; for example, along with "eye" you might find
vision- and sight- and seeing-related words and also expressions such
as "eyesore" and vision-based figures of speech.  I thought this was
fascinating--sort of like the concept categories in Roget's original
(Kant-based) thesaurus structure.

So what I want to know is, using the Japanese dictionary entry as a central
organizing point, what related concepts are gathered around this
word?  I want the English words for them.  An online translator is
probably not the right resource, because, again, I am not interested
in the Japanese words--just a list of the English words for what is
found in the neighborhood of the Kanji character for this word in a
Japanese dictionary.

The word is "being," in the sense of "human being."

I'm thinking this is going to be a straight lookup and listing for
someone who reads both Japanese and English and so it won't take much
time or searching.

Thank you,
Apteryx

Most Kanji characters have retained their original Chinese meanings,
so you will find similar results in a Chinese dictionary as well.

For reference, the Kanji characters can be looked up at:

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server 
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1C

The character you are interested is:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwhalsod?3323_%B4%D6

You can then go to the Chinese dictionary at:

http://zhongwen.com/

and in particular look at this character:

http://zhongwen.com/d/182/x161.htm

If you look at the section in the bottom frame, you will see the other
characters with similar genealogy/strokes.

In a nutshell, the character you are interested in is built from the
character for sun/sunlight, coming through the character for doorway.

Clicking through the other characters in the tree in the bottom frame
on the Zhongwen site, you will see words that also involve the same
basic genealogy.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Incidentally, there are a lot of characters with similar genealogy
(ie. building off of the character for doorway), which is why I
thought I'd give you the joy of exploring the interactive results at
Zhongwen.com (albeit in Chinese as opposed to specifically Japanese)
instead of simply listing them out here.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

detailed kanji lookup instructions:

1. Go to http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1C

2. Select Keyword, enter English word in keyword text box, click Begin Search

3. Select phrase/character from results, select "Examine the
kanji...", click Continue

4. Select character of interest, select "Link to Kanji
information...", click Continue

5. Select the Zhongwen dictionary to go directly to that character at
http://zhongwen.com/

Very interesting, aht!  (May I call you AHT? or Aht?)  And very
helpful, as a start.  Thank you.

I followed your instructions in the third message, but when I got to
step 3, I didn't know which character to select.  None of those under
"being" lists "human being" as the sense of it.  And it's just the
word "being" I'm after here, not a synonym for "person."  It would
also be the same word or concept as in the expression "sentient
being."  The word "being" gives me a "not found" result in the
Zhongwen dictionary.  Can you guide me a little further?

Gassho,
Apteryx

The character I referred you to does not actually literally mean
'being', in the same sense as 'human being'. Such a noun doesn't
really exist in Chinese or Japanese, to the best of my knowledge (my
mother tongue is Chinese, and have taken some Japanese courses for
basic conversation only). The character is more a modifier of the
first character (which means person), to refer to the essence of the
person. That's about the closest one can get to the same level of
word.

It's interesting that the WWWJDIC Server displays that phrase for
human being. That's the 'formal' Mandarin phrase; in my native
Cantonese, the closest word would be simply 'person' (the two-stroke
character that looks like a person walking). If you came across
something and could identify it, you'd call it by it's actual name. If
you couldn't identify it, you'd refer to it as "it / thing" until you
could identify it!

Now you understand why I posted this as a comment instead of even
attempting it as an answer.

Actually, this brings up an interesting difference between these
Oriental languages, and English (and, I suppose also any other
European languages of the same genealogy). In my own personal
observation, there are a lot less abstract words in the Oriental
languages than in English. So, abstract words tend to be represented
by complex phrases that suggest a similar meaning. I like, for
example, the literal interpretation of the characters that make up
"philosophy" as provided by zhongwen.com:

"Mouth that breaks fallacies , hands reaching down through covered mind to teach".

Perhaps there is another way to get at what you are looking for? Am I
interpreting this correctly in thinking that you are interested in
what concepts are related to the concept of "being"?

aht-ga

I agree with aht_ga. In my experience as a student of the language,
Japanese doesn't really have a noun like the English "being". The
character that aht_ga gave you is usually translated as "being" when
it appears as part of "ningen", "human being", but it doesn't really
mean "being" in and of itself. This said, I also agree with aht_ga
that the kanji for "person" may be closer in concept to what you're
looking for. For instance, in Japanese an alien is "uchuujin", "space
person", and one word for an android or cyborg is "jinzouningen",
"artificial human". Both compounds contain the "person" kanji, even
though they refer to non-human beings.

Perhaps you could find better results if you concentrated on kanji
compounds that contain the character for "person". If you like, I can
list the English equivalents of these from my kanji dictionary. I
don't think that this would constitute a proper answer to your
question, but it may help, so I'll be happy to list them as a comment.
Please comment on whether or not you'd be interested in seeing these.

Thank you, aht, and you, too, vorfeed, for your good attempts to help.
 This is amounting to much more of a quest than I expected, and so if
the question does get answered, I will raise the fee.

However, I truly meant what I said when I stated that I am not looking
for synonyms for "person."  What I am interested in here is the fact
that English does not apparently have its own noun for this concept
that we mean by "being" and instead must use the present participle of
a verb.  But I don't want to discuss those ideas here; I just want the
words as raw material.  I have already gathered up every thesaurus
entry I can find to help me look at all the dimensions of the word,
and I was thinking of the structure of a Japanese dictionary as a kind
of additional thesaurus (even if not so intended) that might show me
other facets of the concept, just as the "eye"-related words did long
ago.  All I am after here is whatever Japanese uses for a noun or
adjective form of its verb "to be," if there is such a form, and not
specifically anything about a "person" (which I had expected would be
a different word).  I know enough about languages, including a
smattering of Japanese, not to expect to find exact equivalents,
especially not for idiomatic expressions; but I figured that whatever
there was would shed some kind of light.

I said "in the sense of 'human being'" to distinguish the word from
such uses as "Being a parent, I am concerned about teenage drug abuse"
and "We're arriving late, the reason being that we have a prior
appointment" and "You are being paged."  What I meant was that I am
talking about the gerund and not the verb in the continuing present or
the adjectival use of the present participle.

If there's just no way we are going to come close, then I will
consider this an unanswerable question and withdraw it, with thanks
for all your helpful remarks.

Apteryx

I've checked with several other native speakers of Chinese, including
one who is fluent in many different dialects, and they all concurred:
there is no word in the Chinese language (and therefore highly likely
no word in the Japanese language) that approaches the same meaning as
"being" used in this context. The Oriental languages do tend to be
pretty practical languages. Like I said, if you can see it, it'll have
a specific name; if you can't figure out what 'it' is, you just keep
referring to it as 'it'. There is no special word used to refer to an
'it' that also happens to have 'the spark of life' (my personal
definition of 'being').

Just out of interest, and only if you can share this knowledge...
which languages DO have such a word?

Regards,

aht-ga

"Being" in English has not always implied "living creature": 

"The word 'being' has existed in English for many centuries in the sense of 
'existence'.  It is recorded from 1628 in the sense of 'thing which exists' 
and from 1751 in the sense of 'human being'.

In these later senses, the word is quite possibly a calque on medieval 
Latin <entitas> 'being, entity, thing which exists', which is built upon 
classical Latin <ens> 'being' (participle)."

http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg10038.html

I'm grateful, as always, for your added knowledge and insight, Pink. 
In this instance, you are precisely right:  I am *not* looking for
just the "living thing" idea.  I am afraid I introduced confusion by
specifying the gerund by example rather than by label.  I am
interested in the more general notion of a thing that has existence. 
And your pointer to the Latin does assist me in my examination.  The
fact that the origin in Latin is or may be a present participle too is
even more interesting.

Thank you,
Apteryx

P.S. to aht:  I have not made a study of this question across
languages, so I don't know the answer to your question.  However,
that's where I'm going next.

Perhaps, in English, the word "thing" (which, as sometimes used, can
imply material existence, as contrasted with the word "concept") or
the word "entity" approaches your meaning, Apteryx. To me, "being"
implies life and/or sentience. For instance, I would not describe my
beloved old Volkswagen as a "being" unless I meant to imply that it
has personality (which it does).

Unfortunately, I know very little about Asian languages, so I can't
help with the Japanese and Chinese.

I'm sorry for my failure to communicate my question.  The word I am
interested in IS "being"--the word itself, as is, as used, and
specifically as used as a gerund.  I am not looking for anything to
use in its place and I am not looking for translations of it.  I am
looking for its depths and dimensions.  The Japanese question was one
way of coming at it.  This is just the kind of thing I like to explore
out of my own curiosity and interest.  I have never really tried to
justify or even explain it to anyone before.  Thanks for all comments.
 I'll close the question now.

Apteryx