Reiwa

01 April 2019, 06:55 AM

wtg

Reiwa

quote:
In a much-awaited moment that heralded the approach of a new chapter in Japan’s history, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced Monday that the new Imperial era will be named Reiwa, in one of the final steps toward initiating the nation’s first Imperial succession in three decades.

Holding up a placard that displayed the kanji characters for the new era, Suga said the name was formulated based on the introduction to a set of poems from “Manyoshu,” the oldest existing compilation of Japanese poetry.

The first character represents “good fortune,” while the second can be translated as “peace” or “harmony.”

The new era will be the 248th in the history of Japan, which has used the Chinese-style system for indicating the year since 645. In modern times, each era has run the length of an emperor’s reign.

This is said to be the first time that the characters chosen have drawn from Japanese classical literature, with prior era names, or gengō, having used kanji from Chinese literature.

The poem from which they are taken describes an ume Japanese apricot flower in full bloom in early spring after surviving a cold winter.

The new era will start on May 1, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Chrysanthemum Throne following the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, a day earlier.

The arrival of the Reiwa Era will in turn end the 30-year run of the Heisei (“achieving peace”) Era, which began in Jan. 8, 1989.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/n...nounce-name-new-era/

01 April 2019, 07:10 AM

ShiroKuro

Mr. SK and I stayed up late last night to watch the announcement live.

And I’ll probably be spending a lot of time in class today talking about this with my students, it’s an interesting point in contemporary japan. We’ll be talking about whether this is merely a patriotic choice, or more authoritarian and nationalistic, among other topics!

I’m curious what Ax and others who read Chinese think about the choice, the first kanji, 令 (Rei) could mean “fortunate” according to Classical Japanese, but it can also mean commanding or order, and I believe that’s the core Chinese meaning, and that’s the more general usage in modern Japan as well.

Add the wa part, 和 which gernally translates as peace, but can also mean Japan itself, and this could be see as a very authoritarian and nationalistic message. So I think there are two possible options, the hippie peace freak interpertation (shining peace, harmonious peace) or the nationalistic one (in which the meassage is behave! don’t step out of line and disturb the group harmony)

01 April 2019, 11:48 AM

Nina

That's fascinating. While many of our words and slogans are open to interpretation, it feels like Chinese and Japanese kanji (?) are much more fluid. Perhaps it's just that I have no knowledge of those languages.

Sounds like a really interesting class discussion.

01 April 2019, 01:18 PM

jon-nyc

quote:
Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Mr. SK and I stayed up late last night to watch the announcement live. And I’ll probably be spending a lot of time in class today talking about this with my students, it’s an interesting point in contemporary japan. We’ll be talking about whether this is merely a patriotic choice, or more authoritarian and nationalistic, among other topics!

I’m curious what Ax and others who read Chinese think about the choice, the first kanji, 令 (Rei) could mean “fortunate” according to Classical Japanese, but it can also mean commanding or order, and I believe that’s the core Chinese meaning, and that’s the more general usage in modern Japan as well.

Add the wa part, 和 which gernally translates as peace, but can also mean Japan itself, and this could be see as a very authoritarian and nationalistic message. So I think there are two possible options, the hippie peace freak interpertation (shining peace, harmonious peace) or the nationalistic one (in which the meassage is behave! don’t step out of line and disturb the group harmony)

Seems like there's a third option - intentional ambiguity?

(says this non-Asian language reader/speaker)

01 April 2019, 08:25 PM

ShiroKuro

Today's classes were so fun! I pretty much devoted the whole class period to this topic (for both my Japanese-language class and the English-taught culture class).

Jon,

quote:
Seems like there's a third option - intentional ambiguity?

This works perfectly fine in Japanese, and it's often used purposefully, including sometimes for artistic ends, sarcasm, innuendo etc.

But people want to know how to explain it or translate it in English, and you can't get away with the ambiguity, you have to choose.

Also, in the Japanese-language media and SNS, there's a lot of back and forth about whether it has an authoritarian meaning or a poetic meaning, so even when the issue isn't translating it, people want to have something more concrete to base their reactions on.