Here are the characters Ku and Kan:
空 - the same 'Ku' from Sanshin no Kata. Void or empty are associated meanings
間 - meaning a space, not just a 3 dimensional space, but four to include time, hence it can also mean interval
Space can be full or empty. 間 on its own is pronounced 'Ma' and means space. Kukan and Ma act like Yin/Yang or In/Yo (陰/陽).
From a material perspective empty space often appears to have no value. Empty bank accounts, empty wardrobes, empty space where the nice new LCD TV screen could be. In this sense Kukan is undesirable and most would prefer their space to be full.
So what use is empty space? Take this simple blog entry, imagine if I used no spaces between paragraphs. And what if I didn't seperatethewords? Or if the letters themselves had no space? Could anyone read it? Alternatively imagine some music with no intervals between notes, not just close together but all on top of each other. It would be nothing but noise, indistinguishable from anything else.
Empty space is important, without it the universe would be one unfathomable entity of mass with no seperation. Empty space is in other words, vital to the existance of life.
And empty space is not always empty either. Regarding the spaces between paragraphs mentioned earlier, these spaces also tell the reader where I think the break should be. In other words they actually contain some derived information. So the space is not 'completely' empty after all (陰/陽)
