Tag - kanji

 
 

KANJI

Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2015
'An,' meaning safety, named Japan's kanji of the year for 2015
The kanji an, which denotes safety or peace, best symbolizes the national mood in 2015, a Kyoto-based kanji promotion organization said Tuesday.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 18, 2014
Complicated characters: Let us now praise difficult kanji
For beginner and intermediate students of Japanese, encountering a kanji such as 鬱 (utsu, depression) in the wild can be a somewhat traumatic event that, appropriately, induces a deep, introspective depression regarding their language ability. Let's pull out our electron microscopes and examine that sucker up close: It's got an upstairs, a downstairs and what appears to be a safety deposit box holding some secret treasure. It has a kakusū (画数, stroke count) of 29 and takes half an hour to write. How the hell would you even determine the bushu (部首, radical) in order to look up the meaning in a kanji dictionary? It looks like it has 10 bushu.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2014
Fukada's young castaways on adulthood's shores
Born in Tokyo in 1980, Koji Fukada released his first film in 2004, but his breakthrough was 2010's "Kantai (Hospitalité)," a witty black comedy about a mysterious stranger who talks his way into a job at a small Tokyo printing shop and is soon insinuating himself into the lives of the shop's proprietor and his family. Premiering in the Tokyo International Film Festival's Japanese Eyes section, "Hospitalité" won the best film prize and was widely screened abroad, while its French title and story called up comparisons with the 1932 Jean Renoir comedy classic "Boudu Saved from Drowning."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 9, 2013
A friend to kanji learners worldwide
Mary Sisk Noguchi helped readers unravel the complexities of Chinese characters, adding an element of fun to a process often fraught with frustration for many learners of Japanese.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 28, 2013
What's in a Japanese name? More than you might expect
Last year I went to Yumenoshima Park in Tokyo's Koto Ward to see a museum housing the 第五福竜丸 (Dai-go Fukuryu Maru, aka No. 5 Lucky Dragon), the ill-fated fishing boat that inadvertently sailed too close to a 水爆実験 (suibaku jikken, thermonuclear test) at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954.
EDITORIALS
Jun 20, 2010
Adapting to the Digital Age
The pervasive influence of digital media was highlighted on June 7 by the announcement of recommendations for changes in the authorized list of kanji for everyday use. A government advisory panel has proposed adding 196 kanji and removing five for a total of 2,136 characters.

Longform

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.
Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree