The kanji of the year

According to this article it’s 災

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I went to the Kanji Museum in Kyoto last year and saw their display of all the previous years’ kanji of the year. Some dude writes them in huge calligraphy.

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How huge? :slightly_smiling_face:

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I can still see the people in that pic, so obviously that’s quite small scale.

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You would think they would superstitiously avoid picking that one.

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The part about the past years’ kanji is kind of fascinating – I didn’t know they chose 北 last year in part because of all the North Korea missiles. Also interesting that it was 絆 in 2011 instead of 震 or 災

And lol that it’s been 金 three times

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I was curious because it is beyond my level and I haven’t run into it in the wild. Needless to say, I was surprised to discover…

(For anyone else who hasn’t learned it yet)

It looks like, if I’m reading this article at all decently, the runner up was 平。Gave me a small chuckle that “calamity” was chosen over “peace”.

Edit number 2: the list of past winners is revealing and interesting, like 戦 in 2001 (9/11?) and the Tohoku earthquake was responded to with 絆 - human bonds or relationships. Thanks for linking this article, I did not know such a thing existed.

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me not so much, i’m living here, and seriously, we have a lot of disasters every year. they could freeze the competition and just leave it at that :confused:
btw you should see that kanji soon, and with it, a looong list of all sorts of disasters. flood disaster, fire disaster, earthquake disaster, personal disaster…

I was listening to NHK’s news podcast every day for a while this year and the phrase that’s embedded deep in my mind now is “猛烈な雨が降るそうです”

(lol edited to correct for my bad listening comprehension/grammar retention)

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This article on NHK Easy was recently published: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10011744331000/k10011744331000.html

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I could see how that kanji could be kanji if the year. Apart from the obvious I spent a couple of weeks staring at it from a Hokkaido window.

Japan times (subscription now cancelled, scumbags) did have this useful article

For a second, I thought that guy caught a narwhal by hand! :wink:

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I dropped by the Kanji Museum again the other day and saw the exhibition.

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What does it mean?

The answer to that was mentioned above, by lollipophuho in the big green image.

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