Japanese Words: 16 Words That Tell the Story of Japan's 2014
You may not have heard some of these words, but learn them and you'll understand Japan's 2014.
**1.**The Tax Hike
On December 12, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation named the single character that best captured the mood of Japanese society in 2014: 税, "tax." Seihan Mori, chief priest of Kyoto's Kiyomizu Temple, brushed it onto an oversized sheet of washi paper.
On April 1, 2014, Japan raised its consumption tax for the first time in 17 years, from 5% to 8%. The increase touched everyone's daily life. According to figures from the Ameba blog platform, 616,900 blog posts mentioned the "tax hike" between January 1 and November 11, 2014. On the day before the new rate took effect, 30,078 posts on the topic appeared, the highest single-day count of the year.
What should I buy? What should I stock up on? These were the questions on Japanese minds as the hike approached. Real estate, luxury goods, major appliances, household staples, commuter passes and insurance were all considered smart purchases to make before the deadline. The higher tax also hit domestic car sales: November sales fell 9% year on year.
The government had planned to raise the tax again, to 10%, in October 2015. Faced with strong public discontent, it has pushed that second hike back to April 2017.
**2.**Dame yo~ Dame Dame ("No, you mustn't~ No, no")
A parent scolds a child: "You can't behave like that." The child calmly answers: "No, you mustn't~ No, no." In the general election for the House of Representatives that just ended, one candidate even campaigned under the slogan "Not voting? No, you mustn't~ No, no." The line, from the comedy duo Nippon Elektel Rengo, was without question Japan's hottest gag of 2014, and it made them the first comedians in two years to win the New Words and Buzzwords Awards.
In the sketch, Hosogai, an old man who lives alone, buys a humanoid robot called "Widow Akemi." The robot is broken: whatever its owner says, it answers, "No, you mustn't~ No, no." Furious, Hosogai phones to exchange it for another robot, and "Widow Akemi" still answers, "No, you mustn't~ No, no."
Humor rarely travels well, and whether the line's viral, earworm power works on us is an open question. But after years in obscurity, Nippon Elektel Rengo finally landed their first show of their own on the strength of this gag. It is titled "If You Don't Watch, No, You Mustn't~ No, No," and its first episode airs on TV Asahi on December 24.
3. STAP Cells
"STAP cells" was among the most dramatic buzzwords of 2014.
At the center of the story was Haruko Obokata, who led a cell-regeneration research unit at RIKEN, Japan's national research institute. In January 2014 she published two papers on STAP cells in the journal Nature. Put simply, STAP cells implanted in the human body could replace cells that had aged or died.
In 2012, Shinya Yamanaka, then a 50-year-old professor at Kyoto University, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on iPS cells. Obokata's STAP cells were far easier to produce than iPS cells, so her papers caused a sensation the moment they appeared. And to the general public, what could make a better story than a good-looking young woman publishing Nobel-caliber research at 31? The Japanese media were soon hailing her as the "star of the Rikejo" (women in science) and "Japan's Marie Curie," and footage of her at the lab bench in immaculate makeup became a staple of the TV news.
The ideal ending would have been academic glory and a charmed life while still young. It did not turn out that way. American scientists said her results could not be reproduced: a number of U.S. biology labs followed her papers step by step, and every attempt failed. Then someone noticed that images of experimental results in her Nature papers closely resembled images from her doctoral dissertation, even though her PhD research at Waseda University had nothing to do with STAP cells. Under mounting pressure, RIKEN and Waseda launched full investigations, and on April 1 RIKEN released its final report, which found that Obokata had committed research misconduct.
Eight days later Obokata, who had kept silent until then, held a press conference with her mentor, Yoshiki Sasai. In tears, she admitted her work had not been rigorous but insisted that STAP cells were real and that she had made them more than 200 times. Many Japanese internet users noted that she had borrowed her outfit and makeup from the press conference actress Noriko Sakai gave after her drug case. A natural-looking face like that takes at least half an hour to put on, and the blush was applied in a way that made her look worn out. People found it hard to imagine someone at the center of a public storm calmly making herself up. Two months later, Obokata retracted both papers from Nature and began trying to reproduce her results under RIKEN's supervision. Then, on August 5, the affair took a sudden dark turn: Sasai hanged himself at RIKEN. In his suicide note he urged Obokata to keep going and prove that STAP cells exist.
No one expected a research-fraud scandal to drive a professor with a spotless record to take his own life. Low-grade tabloids began speculating about an improper relationship between Obokata and Sasai. An adult-video studio shot a film alluding to the affair, and someone even offered Obokata a large sum to star in it herself. Perhaps only in Japan would the story take such an unwelcome twist. Some asked whether the vicious attacks and slander, which went far beyond any question of science, came simply because Obokata was a woman, and a rather pretty one.
The latest news: Waseda, which had at first tried to let Obokata keep her doctorate, has decided to revoke it; on December 19 RIKEN held a press conference confirming that the STAP cell results could not be reproduced; and Obokata has resigned from the institute.
**4.**Yuzuru Hanyu
Yuzuru Hanyu may have been Japan's best-loved male athlete of 2014. At the Sochi Winter Olympics, at just 19, he became the youngest men's singles figure-skating champion in history and the first Asian to win Olympic gold in the event. On December 14 he won gold again at the Grand Prix Final. Besides his superb skating, his fine-featured looks and his refusal to lose have made him a national favorite.
Hanyu found success early, winning the World Junior Championships in his teens. Born and raised in Sendai, he lost his home rink in the March 11, 2011 earthquake, and his family's house was badly damaged. He had to travel from rink to rink around Japan to train, and his status as a disaster survivor drew media attention.
Slender and light on the ice, Hanyu skates with fluid grace and great artistry; he is flexible enough to perform moves usually done by female skaters. His classic pretty-boy looks have won him a huge female following, and the fiercely competitive Hanyu always brings his beloved Winnie the Pooh to competitions, a contrast that makes him all the more endearing. On Japan's 2014 photo-book sales chart, YUZURU: Yuzuru Hanyu Photo Book sold 41,000 copies to rank seventh, the only book of a man in the top ten.
Hanyu is deeply attached to Sendai. After his Sochi win he donated his 3-million-yen prize money to disaster reconstruction and to rebuilding ice rinks. In September 2014, the Sendai city government's tourism and exchange division named him a tourism ambassador. Mayor Emiko Okuyama said: "The poster shows Hanyu's feelings for the disaster area and for his hometown. We look forward to the publicity it will bring." Table-tennis star Ai Fukuhara, known to Chinese fans as the "porcelain doll," is also from Sendai, and she and Hanyu now serve together as the city's tourism ambassadors.
**5.**Carp Girls
We have written before about mori girls and kojirase girls; "Carp girls" is another coinage on the same "___ girls" pattern. Hiroshima's professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, has female fans who call themselves "Carp girls." A group of models who are also Carp girls published a photo book titled Carp Girls, posing in all kinds of Carp cheering outfits and holding all kinds of fan merchandise, and the Carp-girl style took off.
A regional team whose fans, and female fans at that, are spread across the whole country seems puzzling. Why not a better-known team, such as the Hanshin Tigers or the Yomiuri Giants?
The answer lies largely in how the Carp is run. It is the only one of Japan's 12 professional teams that operates independently, with no single parent company behind it. By contrast, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks carry their sponsor SoftBank's name. The Carp once paid its way with broadcast fees from games against the Giants. After 2000, TV networks lost interest in airing pro baseball live, and the Carp had to rely on merchandise sales to survive. In the mid-2000s those sales came to about 200 million yen; today they reach 2 billion yen.
The Carp's merchandise is varied and includes many collaborations. Whenever a rookie wins his first game, or the team wins in the bottom of the final inning, the club quickly puts out a limited-edition T-shirt. Its T-shirts, jerseys and canvas tote bags are stylish enough that female fans can wear them every day. In May the Carp ran a "Kanto Carp Girls" game-watching tour: the club paid the Shinkansen fares for 148 Carp girls to travel to Hiroshima for a game. Carp girls had become a brand.
In 2009, the Carp also moved into a new stadium where fans can watch the game from anywhere around the ballpark. This new way of watching has drawn 1.5 to 1.7 times more spectators year after year; women make up 40% of the crowd, and young people aged 20 to 29 make up 20%.
**6.**Matahara (Maternity Harassment)
On October 23, 2014, Japan's Supreme Court overturned an appeals-court ruling and found that a Hiroshima hospital had broken the Equal Employment Opportunity Law by demoting a physical therapist after she became pregnant. Overnight, "matahara," short for maternity harassment, became a buzzword.
In May 2013, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) carried out its first nationwide telephone survey of working women. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, companies may not dismiss women for marrying or becoming pregnant. Yet according to the confederation's online survey, 25.6% of working women aged 20 to 40 had experienced maternity harassment. In addition, 9.5%, 7.6%, 7.0% and 4.7% of women respectively reported the following: "the employer made thoughtless remarks during my pregnancy or maternity leave"; "I was dismissed, or pushed to resign, because I was pregnant"; "there was no workplace culture in which I could talk about pregnancy"; and "during pregnancy or maternity leave, my employer made me work overtime or do heavy work."
Women make up 40% of new university students in Japan, and many of them hope to keep working after having children. But Japanese men work far longer hours than men in Western developed countries, so women end up carrying more of the housework. Unable to balance job and family, 60% of working women quit when their first child is born.
Under the Abe government's "womenomics" plan, women are to hold 30% of corporate management posts by 2020. Womenomics has a long way to go, but the Supreme Court ruling at least gives Japan's working women some legal protection.
**7.**Yo-kai Watch
Yo-kai Watch, No. 2 on Nikkei Trendy's list of the year's hit products, has proved once again that children's products can be big business.
According to Bandai Namco's forecasts, "Yo-kai Medals" priced at about 90 to 100 yen each are on track to sell 150 million units this year; the sales forecast for the 3,200-yen "Yo-kai Watch" toy has been raised to 2.5 million; and Yo-kai Watch merchandise alone should bring in 40 billion yen. Advance ticket sales for the Yo-kai Watch movie, out at the end of the year, have passed 770,000, breaking Toho's records again and again, and a second film was approved before the first had even opened.
Yo-kai Watch began as a Nintendo 3DS game released by Level-5 in July 2013. An anime adaptation in 2014 made it famous almost overnight. The story follows Keita, an elementary-school boy who meets a yokai butler by chance and receives a "Yo-kai Watch" that lets him see yokai, the spirits of Japanese folklore. Keita sets out to fight the troublemaking yokai, and each one he defeats and befriends gives him a "Yo-kai Medal." Slot a medal into the watch and Keita can summon that yokai friend to fight beside him. Does this remind you of Pokémon? Yo-kai Watch is indeed widely seen as the next Pokémon.
Level-5 did extensive research before making the game. The school scenes draw mostly on everyday moments children know, such as a mother bringing something her child left at home. Gags from cartoons that parents born in the 1970s and '80s watched as children also appear, so that adults and children alike can enjoy Yo-kai Watch.
The series has more than a hundred yokai, each very cute and with a sharply drawn personality. Every one of them has been made into a Yo-kai Medal, and the rarer, harder-to-find medals feed the urge to collect; parents run around hunting for medals to keep their children happy. Yo-kai Watch has also teamed up with McDonald's, aquariums and amusement parks, so children can meet the characters from the screen in real life, which strengthens their bond with the series. There is every reason to expect Yo-kai Watch to stay hot in 2015.
**8.**Harry Potter
"Harry Potter" is hardly a new term, but the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Japan (USJ) on July 15 made it a hot topic again.
The park is the world's second Wizarding World and Asia's first. USJ spent a record 45 billion yen to build it. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy both attended the opening. According to figures released by USJ, October attendance hit a record 1.46 million. November attendance, at 1.02 million, was lower, but it was still the fifth straight month of record year-on-year attendance.
Japanese internet users posted guides on how to get the most out of the Wizarding World, and some even catalogued every item of merchandise on sale in the park, with prices. The most popular of all was "butterbeer," which sold a million servings in just 24 days. Ever skilled at selling limited editions, Japan then rolled out a hot butterbeer, available only in Tokyo, for the winter. And fans who could not get enough worked out how to recreate USJ's butterbeer at home with ginger ale, butter, egg whites and other ingredients.
The Harry Potter effect also lifted occupancy at Osaka's major hotels. In recognition of the park's boost to the local economy, the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry gave USJ its 2014 "Osaka Vitality Gold Prize."
**9.**Waratte Iitomo! ("It's OK to Laugh!")
Anyone who follows Japanese music TV knows Music Station. For 27 years its host, Tamori, has worn his sunglasses on every show, while nine female co-hosts have come and gone beside him. As the saying goes, Tamori stays and the co-hosts change.
Besides Music Station, Tamori had another famous show: Waratte Iitomo! ("It's OK to Laugh!"). Its full title was The Kazuyoshi Morita Hour: Waratte Iitomo!, Kazuyoshi Morita being Tamori's real name, and he hosted it for 32 years. The last episode aired on March 31, 2014, and Fuji TV marked the occasion with a live prime-time special, "Grand Finale: Super-Sized Thank-You Edition."
Tamori actually hosts an even older variety show, Tamori Club, on TV Asahi. But Waratte Iitomo! holds the Guinness World Record for the most live broadcasts hosted by one presenter: Tamori hosted all 8,054 episodes.
If you started watching Waratte Iitomo! in middle school, you were middle-aged by the last episode. Viewers' reluctance to see the show go made its name a buzzword. Fuji TV set up a special page for it, where viewers still leave messages about how much they loved the program.
**10.**Ghostwriter
This affair was every bit as dramatic as Haruko Obokata's STAP cells. Because it too involved fakery, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation also listed 偽, "fake," among its candidates for kanji of the year.
At the center of the story is Mamoru Samuragochi, born in 1963. He said he had studied piano since childhood, began losing his hearing at 17 and was completely deaf by 35. His parents held health handbooks issued to survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, and after he became famous the media often mentioned this unusual background.
In 1996, Samuragochi scored the film Cosmos and made his name. In 1998, by then claiming to be completely deaf, he scored the hit game Onimusha; music for Resident Evil, which many of us know, was also credited to him. At a January 2001 press conference for the release of a soundtrack album, he added that he suffered from depression and severe tendonitis. That September, Time magazine profiled him as "a modern-day Beethoven."
In the following years, Samuragochi wrote a series of symphonies on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and at the 2008 G8 summit the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra performed Nos. 1 and 3 of the series. In 2013, NHK aired the documentary Melody of the Soul: The Composer Who Lost His Hearing, which showed Samuragochi visiting survivors in the Tohoku region after the March 11 earthquake and writing a requiem for a little girl who had lost her mother. After the broadcast, his Symphony No. 1 became a sensation, selling more than 100,000 copies, and he toured Japan giving concerts.
Fame invites scrutiny. At the height of his success, Samuragochi drew doubts from the music critic Takeo Noguchi, who in October 2013 published an article in Shinchosha's monthly Shincho 45 titled "Is the Deaf Genius Composer Mamoru Samuragochi Really the Author?" On February 5, 2014, the weekly Shukan Bunshun reported that Samuragochi had apologized, through his lawyer, to the people involved, and the ghostwriting finally came to light.
That same day, Takashi Niigaki, a lecturer at Toho Gakuen School of Music, issued a statement saying he was Samuragochi's ghostwriter. Niigaki had been writing for Samuragochi since 1996, the very start of his fame. Incredibly, this warped partnership lasted 18 years. According to sources at Capcom, the maker of Onimusha, staff knew at the time that Samuragochi was faking his deafness, but nobody said anything.
Niigaki first took the ghostwriting work because he needed the money, and he was simply glad when the music he wrote won praise. He later thought about ending the arrangement, but Samuragochi threatened to kill himself, so Niigaki kept writing. Over the 18 years, Niigaki was paid a total of 7 million yen.
At the Sochi Olympics, Japanese skating star Daisuke Takahashi performed his short program to music credited to Samuragochi. After the scandal broke, Takahashi's side had to ask the International Skating Union to change the composer credit, which became "composer unknown." The whole saga had so many twists it could be filmed as a Japanese The Ghost Writer. Japanese internet users marveled at Samuragochi's nerve and his award-worthy acting, and lamented that all the emotion they had felt over those years had been for nothing.
You may wonder what became of Samuragochi and Niigaki. What happened next may surprise you.
The variety show IPPON Grand Prix used the ghostwriting scandal as joke material, and Samuragochi complained to the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization (BPO) that the show had damaged his reputation. And Niigaki? He now appears often on variety shows, plays piano for children's programs, and was even invited to perform at the Koyabu Sonic music festival. Though Niigaki was Samuragochi's accomplice, people quietly regretted the waste of his talent, and the scandal turned out to be his big break.
**11.**Kei Nishikori
Kei Nishikori finished runner-up in men's singles at the 2014 US Open, becoming the first Asian man to reach a Grand Slam singles final. In the latest ATP rankings he entered the world top five for the first time, another first for Asian men's tennis.
Nishikori stands 1.78 meters. His height is a handicap, but he makes the most of his speed and quick footwork. Unlike most Asian male players, Nishikori, who trained for years at a tennis academy in the United States, plays an aggressive game, and under the close guidance of his Chinese-American coach, Michael Chang, he matured visibly in 2014, both technically and mentally.
Uniqlo has sponsored Nishikori since 2011. On September 9, 2014, it rewarded his US Open run with a special bonus of 100 million yen. In a survey by Nikkei BP Consulting from September 17 to 21, respondents were asked to match sports with company names freely. The 559 respondents gave 679 pairings, and the most common was tennis and Uniqlo. The Uniqlo polo shirt Nishikori wore sold out across Japan. By that measure, the publicity Nishikori brought Uniqlo was well worth the 100-million-yen bonus.
**12.**Hirugao ("Daytime Faces")
This Japanese drama about adultery set off debate not only in Japan but also in China; its daring plot made viewers think about what marriage and love really mean. Hirugao averaged a 13% rating in Japan and won the Best Screenplay prize at The Television's Drama Academy Awards, a success with both audiences and critics.
Fuji TV's talk show Non Stop! had brought up a new term, "weekday hirugao wives": housewives who, after seeing their husbands off to work, fall for other men on weekday afternoons. The show also introduced viewers to Belle de Jour, the film starring Catherine Deneuve.
The drama Hirugao was built on that term. Aya Ueto, in her first leading drama role in two years, plays a housewife who is gradually drawn into becoming a "hirugao wife." The drama shows the anguish of the hirugao wife, the clash between love affair and marriage, and the pull of family ties. The finale was titled "Will the Wife Choose Her Husband or Her Lover?" The touchy question gripped viewers, and the last episode drew a 16.5% rating.
In the end, both "hirugao wives" in the drama went back to their families, an ending that sparked heated online debate in Japan. But Fuji TV's Thursday-night drama slot is not a Tokai TV afternoon soap; had the show openly endorsed affairs, it would likely have drawn plenty of complaints.
We covered the following four buzzwords in earlier articles:
The year's most talked-about move in Japan. Want to pin a girl against the wall and confess your love? Only handsome men can pull it off.
A young woman born in 1992 who can transform herself into hundreds of different people, men or women, of any nationality. Even the people she copies say the likeness is uncanny.
From GeGeGe's Wife to Amachan to Hanako and Anne, NHK's morning dramas have become Japan's buzzword factory. Once neglected, the morning drama is back as Japan's most popular kind of TV drama.
Frozen is so big in Japan that you can hardly switch on the TV without hearing "Let It Go." The record-breaking film has lived up to expectations and has finally started selling figurines.
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.