Question in title. So far I was able to find that 前 is constructed from Chinese: 舟 and 止, which can be interpreted as "leaving a footprint", hence the "past" meaning, but it seems kinda far fetched.
Answer
There are many issues with the question, because it doesn't differentiate between words and characters. Fully addressing the question requires a discussion of the following:
- The glyph origin of「前」
- Spatiotemporal metaphors
- The Chinese word (Old Chinese: /*[dz]ˤen/) meaning front/forward, past and translating this Chinese word into the Japanese word「まえ」
Firstly, there is no demonstrable link between the character「前」and the meaning forward. The oracle bone version of「前」looked like
That is, a compound of「止」(foot) and「凡」(a tray, now written「盤」). The original meaning was to wash one's feet (e.g. in a basin), and sometimes to emphasise the meaning, drops of water「氵」were added around the foot, and「凡」was replaced with「用」(a tub/bucket, now written「桶」).
The original meaning was extended to mean wash in general, now written「湔」.「凡」is often confused with「舟」(seen in many characters such as「盤」, where the tray-shape is morphed into「舟」), because「凡」and「舟」looked very similar in many bronze inscriptions:
(Bronze script forms; Left: 舟, Right: 凡)
This leads to the form「歬」, and by this time「凡」and「用」were long gone from the character and「歬」was used for the meaning forward.
The character didn't stop changing, however, and eventually「刀」was added to represent the meaning cut, later written「剪」(to emphasise the meaning cut differentiated from forward via the addition of yet another「刀」). An overview of the change over the years looked something like this:
Hopefully this demonstrates the importance in separating the concepts of words and characters; the one series of characters「前」has been used to represent three completely different words (meaning wash, forward, cut) which merely sounded similar.
Now that we've determined that the character has nothing to do with the meaning, the second point of interest is the association of forward and past, and backward and future. Neurobiology/psycholinguistics terms the description of temporal directionality using spatial language as spatiotemporal metaphors, noting that words that describe spatial locations are borrowed in most languages around the world to also describe temporal sequencing. Studies relating to the English language typically categorises these as time-based and ego-based metaphors:
- Time-based metaphor, viewing a sequence of events from past to present. Future is behind, past is in front.
- English: after, before
- Chinese:「後」,「前」
- Ego-based metaphor, viewing a sequence of events as approaching you or leaving you. Future is in front, past is behind.
- English: forwards (what's coming ahead), backwards (what's left behind)
- Chinese:「未來」,「過去」
It is clear that English also has a metaphor equating front as past, which is directly translatable to「前」; however it is the time-based before rather than the ego-based forward.
Japanese「まえ」(etymology/historical spelling:「[目方]{まへ}」, the direction which the eyes are looking in), as a spatial term is an easy enough correspondence to Chinese /*[dz]ˤen/ (front), but did it carry a connotation of before, past prior to the importation of kanji? The presence of a few other Japanese vocabulary items specifying the past suggests a preference towards ego-based metaphors:
- 「[古]{いにしえ}」 - from「[往]{い}にし[方]{へ}」, in the direction of that which has left you;
- 「[昔]{むかし}」 - from「[向]{む}く」+「し」, in the direction of that opposite to the present (where you are located).
To summarise:
- 「前」has nothing to do with forward/past in terms of glyph origins;
- Chinese uses「前」as a time-based metaphor indicating the past;
- It is unknown whether「まえ」had the association to the meaning past before「前」was imported. Such a meaning would at least not be obvious from the etymology「[目方]{まへ}」, and we would expect an abundance of fossilised words containing a derivative or cognate of「[目方]{まへ}」referring to the past if「まえ」was associated with the past before the importation of「前」.
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