The Oxford English Dictionary recently announced that its word of the year is “vaxx,” reflecting another tough stretch in the pandemic. But in Japan, the word of the year is “Sho-time.”
Japanese baseball player and Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani, unanimously named the American League’s Most Valuable Player last month, topped the annual Word of the Year competition in Japan on Wednesday.
“Sho-time,” Ohtani’s nickname, and “real two-sword wielder,” a translated Japanese reference to his famed talents as both a pitcher and an outfielder, were the winners of the 38th annual competition hosted by the Jiyu Kokuminsha publishing house. Ohtani is widely celebrated in Japan, a country that loves baseball.
The competition’s top term is often called the “buzzword of the year,” and the nominees do reflect the trends that have captivated the Japanese public during the year.
So perhaps it’s fitting that a top entry was “Baron Von Ripper-off,” a nickname coined by Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins for Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee.
For much of the year, Japan was roiled by the IOC and Japanese government’s decision to hold the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics despite widespread disapproval and concerns about the coronavirus.
Other terms in the top 10 this year included “eating in silence,” and “gender equality.” The latter made the list in part because of the uproar over sexist remarks by Yoshiro Mori, an 83-year-old former prime minister who resigned as head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee after he said women talked too much at meetings.
Then there is “gon-zeme,” a skateboarding term used when someone is aggressive with their board, popularized during the Olympics after it was used by Ryo Sejiri, a 24-year-old Japanese skateboarding champion.
Sejiri grabbed headlines for his unconventional style while explaining skateboarding moves as a TV commentator for Japan’s NHK, a usually staid broadcaster.
Sprinkling in terms such as “grinding,” “sooo sick,” and “that’s hot” during appearances that went viral, he increased public understanding of the sport, which made its Olympics debut in Tokyo.
Also among the top 10 was “ussee-wa,” a term that means “shut up” — used in a viral earworm performed by high school singer Ado that expresses anger over social pressures. Another was “oya-gacha,” or the game of choosing your parents, which describes how people face predetermined destinies they can’t control.
Each year, a jury of six panelists from academia, the arts, the press and entertainment — as well as the encyclopedia publication director of Jiyu Kokuminsha — analyze 30 words, which they narrow down to 10 to pick the winner.
Last year, the winning word was “sanmitsu,” which means “the 3 C’s” (closed spaces, crowds and close contact), a pandemic term used by Japanese authorities to remind the public about social distancing.
