Raw Japan

Newly old

The character “shin”, or “new”, is on display at Kyoto’s Kiyomizu temple, selected by Japan’s kanji association as the word of 2009, with the chief priest’s calligraphy perched above the former capital, known more for its history than the au courant.

The word’s stock rose with phrases like “new Cabinet”, “new influenza”, new model Prius and new jury system. But looking at its dry, black ink on a recent trip, I wondered if the choice was also a comment on its ubiquity, or non-newness, in a marketing-saturated nation where the adjective is often pasted without any real commitment to the fresh or innovative. Two years ago the kanji for “fake” had been selected as word of the year.

Certainly, commercial hollowness is not new nor limited to Japan, while the world’s No.2 economy is undeniably home to fashion leaders, cutting-edge technology firms, and Nobel Prize and Oscar winners. But in the last two decades, Japan has seen a host of ”Shinseito”, “Shinshinto” and other “new” political parties, usually ending in tears, while its ”shinjinrui” — a new “breed” supposed to lead the country with a different drummer – are now barely distinguishable from the band they replaced.

The nation has experienced its share of “new eras”, “New Towns”, “new halfs”,  even annual “beaujolais nouveau” booms, and thus “it’s deja vu all over again” when new is news. Moreover, a recurring theme about the new here is how quickly, if not already, that novelty is past tense. Perhaps, then, it is because of this penchant for making the new old, or the old new, that Japanese have applied some cultural fail-safes, at least for the major holiday of the season.

Wishing someone a “Happy New Year” before Jan. 1 is bad form, while the “nengajo” – a year-end postal equivalent of the Western Christmas card — is never delivered before the new calendar year begins, although it can be sent or received days afterwards without social stigma, with some waiting to check inbound mail before any “new” labour is undertaken.

Japan PM finds reading a political headache

Foreigners who’ve spent years trying to learn how to read the thousands of ‘kanji’ ideograms used to write the Japanese language might well sympathise with Prime Minister Taro Aso, who has come under fire in the media for his public bloopers in misreading the written word.

The 68-year-old Japanese leader, whose popularity has slid due to policy flip-flops and other gaffes, has been ridiculed in the media for misreading kanji, first imported from China in the 6th century or before and adapted to write Japanese.

There are more than 70,000 kanji in larger dictionaries, although only about 2,000 are generally used, and the pronunciation of each must be painstakingly memorised.

To make matters worse, many kanji are pronounced differently when combined with other ideograms and take on still other readings when used with the Japanese language’s two phonetic syllabaries, hiragana and katakana.

The heavy media attention to Aso’s verbal blunders when reading speeches in parliament or most recently to an audience of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forumin Davos is helping to boost sales of books for ordinary Japanese who hope to avoid similar pitfalls.

Guides to reading kanji, with names such as “Commonly Misread Kanji – Think You Can Read Them But Can’t”, and “A Book To Keep You From Ever Being Humiliated By Kanji” are climbing up best-seller lists, with stores devoting entire shelves to them, sometimes not far from other displays of books using U.S. President Barack Obama’s speeches as a way to teach English.