Language is a constantly evolving beast. In our never-ending quest to sound educated at cocktail parties and keggers, we humans are always inventing new modes of expression.
Japanese is, of course, no exception. The language has a few patterns that lend the language very nicely to the sudden creation of neologisms:
- The existence of kanji, the language’s ideographic characters, which make it easy to forge new words through new kanji compounds
- The popularity of abbreviations, such as the short names of TV shows and popular manga (e.g., the use of desu-no as a diminutive name for the series Death Note)
- The preponderance and popularity of loan words taken from English and other languages
In Japan, the distance learning company U-CAN has taken upon itself to nominate and then select the year’s trendiest new words. Most of the words don’t survive as permanent parts of the language, of course. Mostly, they highlight the news and social trends from the past year that are at the top of most people’s minds, which makes them an intriguing cultural barometer.
U-CAN just announced its shortlist of nominees for 2018 – 30 words that encapsulate a full year of news. While the list is often controversial, the general consensus on social media seems to be that this year’s nominations are spot on, and reflect 2018 rather accurately.
However, in a clever segment, TV Asahi News took to the streets and asked 30 random people what they thought each word meant. They then highlighted the top five that had most people stumped – i.e., the words that are so new and trendy that even a significant number of Japanese people haven’t heard them.
(JP) Link: It’s Here! This Year’s Remarkably Unknown “Top Five Trendy Words” (Note – link no longer active)
Table of Contents
ToggleNumber 5: Tik Tok
If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard of Tik Tok…well, please send me the address of your rock so I can move in for the next few years. Tik Tok is one of a growing number of apps that promise to turn ordinary people into Internet celebrities. The site contains short music and audio clips against which users can record their own videos. The app supports a number of special cut effects, as well as tandem recording, in which users can select a previous user’s video and record a response, which leads to some clever collaborations. You can get a taste for the kind of material that goes viral on Tik Tok in the above compilation.
Tik Tok, along with live broadcasting apps like 17 (pronounced ichi-nana in Japanese), are insanely popular in Asia. Frankly, I’m amazed that so many people haven’t heard of Tik Tok, as the last time I was in Tokyo in July, its billboards were plastered everywhere. Such apps seem like the perfect digital accompaniment to Japan’s idol culture. Indeed, they feel like the digital embodiment of an idol show – a 24/7, worldwide stage upon which anyone can strut.
This is gonna sound very “get off my lawn, you damn kids”-ish, but Tik Tok and their brethren have never appealed to me. It feels like the harbinger of that Black Mirror episode, “Fifteen Million Merits”, where people who are generating electricity to power the world accumulate “merits” for a chance at stardom. But people seem to have fun with it, so who am I to judge? (It’s all fun and games until civilization collapses…)
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Number 4: グレイヘア (gurei hea)

I’m a little confused to see this entry in the top five, because it’s exactly what it says it is: grey hair! The word represents the trend away from older women dying their hair as it turns white (usually referred to by the word 白髪 [shiraga]), and sporting it grey as a fashion statement.
Remember how I said that this year’s choices weren’t very controversial? Weeeelll…here’s an exception. In an article for News Post Seven, cultural critic Yamada Mihoko claims she’s found little evidence on TV shows or in women’s fashion magazines geared toward women in their 40s and 50s to indicate any sort of “boom” is going on.
「グレイヘア」、本当にブーム? 流行語ノミネートも疑問の声
放送作家でコラムニストの山田美保子氏が独自の視点で最新芸能ニュースを深掘りする連載「芸能耳年増」。今回は「ブーム」と一部で報じられた「グレイヘア」について。 * * * 7日、…
Yamada attributes the faddishness of the word to a single actress, Kindou Sato, whom she terms a “magical beauty” (美魔女). However, publishing house Housewives’ Friend, which has been pushing the “grey hair” phenomenon, claims it has surveys backing an increased awareness of the beauty of grey hair, and a desire from more women to learn about styling methods for grey hair.
Number 3: かめ止め (kame-tome)

Few people got this at first, but most instantly recognized it when it was spelled out for them. kame-tome is the nickname for kamera o tomeru na! (カメラを止めるな!), the innovative Japanese zombie film by director Ueda Shinichrou. Ueda himself plays a director who’s forcing his uninspiring cast to do a zombie film in a single take – but the action comes alive when they’re attacked by real zombies. The film, produced on a shoestring budget of US $30K, was a breakaway hit and went from airing in two movie houses in Japan to over 300.
Zombie Comedy ‘One Cut of the Dead’ Attracts Crowds and Controversy
Taking the box office by storm, Japanese indie movie is accused of ripping off stage play.
The success of Kame-tome – also known by its English title of One Cut of the Dead – is notable for two reasons. First, it’s a huge boon for indie filmmaking in Japan, which isn’t nearly as robust as it is in other countries. Second, it’s one of the few times that Japan has jumped aboard the zombie bandwagon. As Adam at Japanese Level Up discussed back in 2013, several cultural factors have worked against the popularity of the undead, including a fascination with ghosts, and a basic respect for the dead that goes out the window when you’re forced to hack your dear departed to pieces.
Number 2: ご飯論法 (gohan ronpou)

I gotta admit, this was a new one for me too, but when I heard it, I thought about how it aptly describes nearly every political debate I’ve ever heard.
The word “gohan” (ご飯) literally refers to cooked rice, but is also shorthand for “a meal”. So when someone asks, “Have you had gohan?”, they’re asking, “Have you eaten?” Straightforward question, right? But when it becomes a gohan rompou, it takes something like the following form:
Q: Have you eaten (had gohan)?
A: I have not had gohan. [Speaker hasn’t eaten rice, but has eaten bread, but completely omits this information]
Q: Ah, so you haven’t eaten anything?
A: It’s not clear to me what’s being asked, or what you consider in the realm of “food”.
Q: So, haven you eaten or not??
A: I don’t know what answer you’re looking for, but, speaking from commonly held opinion, it’s important for one’s health to eat.
Q (about to hit A): No, I’m not asking about common opinion. The issue is whether you had breakfast yesterday.
A: Like I said…
The phrase gohan ronpou was popularized by Professor Uenishi Mitsuko on Twitter, who was criticizing the testimony before the Diet of Katou Katsunobu, Japan’s Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare surrounding the new labor law proposed by the Abe administration. When pressed by a Communist Party politician about whether a specific scenario of abuse was possible, Katou did everything in his power to not answer the question, causing Uenishi to liken it to the debate above.
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上西充子 on X (formerly Twitter): “Q「朝ごはんは食べなかったんですか?」A「ご飯は食べませんでした(パンは食べましたが、それは黙っておきます)」Q「何も食べなかったんですね?」A「何も、と聞かれましても、どこまでを食事の範囲に入れるかは、必ずしも明確ではありませんので・・」そんなやりとり。加藤大臣は。 / X”
Q「朝ごはんは食べなかったんですか?」A「ご飯は食べませんでした(パンは食べましたが、それは黙っておきます)」Q「何も食べなかったんですね?」A「何も、と聞かれましても、どこまでを食事の範囲に入れるかは、必ずしも明確ではありませんので・・」そんなやりとり。加藤大臣は。
While the Abe administration has in some ways kept Japan on decently firm footing these past years, it’s also subjected it to hours of useless debate in the Diet over Abe’ various financial scandals, including two apparent sweetheart land and permitting deals that were cut for his friends. After month after month of watching politicians sidestep clear questions, it’s no wonder that gohan ronpou took off like wildfire.
You can judge the relative visibility of the Abe admin’s scandal by the fact that they have a second entry in this year’s list: shusou anken (首相案件), or “a Prime Minister Matter”, which became famous as a codeword used by Abe admin politicians when working to cut his friends favors.
This is also the second year that the Abe admin has helped a word land on U-CAN’s list. One of last year’s entrants was sontaku (忖度), or “consideration”, a word used by Abe’s opponents to describe how various government officials helped Abe’s friends out because they assumed that’s what the Prime Minister expected.
Number 1: GAFA

Those of you who have read The Four by Scott Galloway will get this reference. “GAFA” is the title of the Japanese translation of Galloway’s book, which argues that four tech companies – Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple – have a stranglehold on our society’s future, and will only continue to grow if left unchecked.
The book has been released in Japan by Toyo Keizai, one of my personal favorite sources of in-depth analysis of Japanese business and culture. I can’t say much about the book itself, as I haven’t read it, but I’m not surprised to see this become popular in Japan. The reach of these four companies is something no business anywhere in the world can ignore.
Other Choice Words of 2018
Here are a few other words from the 30 released by U-CAN that deserve special mention. Several of these have even been covered in the past year on Unseen Japan!
su-pa- boranchia (スーパーボランティア) – “Super volunteer”, a reference to the hard-working and heroic Obata Haruo, the 78-year-old who made headlines after rescuing a lost child. You can read more about this badass in my write-up from August.
akushitsu takkuru (悪質タックル) – A reference to the controversy and cover-up around an illegal tackle at an American Football game at a Japan university. I wrote about this scandal in May for Unseen Japan.
kasou tsuuka (仮想通貨), the Japanese word for “virtual currency” technologies like Bitcoin.
dasakakko-ii / U.S.A. (ダサかっこいい / U.S.A.) – “dasakakko-ii” means “nerdy-cool”, and it was popularized this year in a song by Japanese group Da Pump.
saigaikyuu no atsusa (災害級の暑さ) – “The most lethal level of heat”, an expression that trended this summer when Mother Nature, as part of her season-long ass-kicking of Japan, subjected the nation to months of record-breaking hotness.
aori unten (あおり運転) – the asshole practice of weaving your car back and forth in traffic, and putting other drivers in danger…like this asshole. Japan is witness to over 7,000 cases of aori unten a year, which can now land a driver in jail in most prefectures.