Love is all you need
Every year, Japanese people can vote for which kanji (Chinese character) they feel should be Kanji of the Year.
The winning character tends to be representative of a word that has appeared in the news a lot that year. Many of the winning choices over the past ten years have been fairly miserable, reflecting equally miserable news. They included kanji used to form the words for:
1995
tremble
Tokyo subway gas attacks; Kobe earthquake
1996
food
Mad cow disease
1997
fall
Large-scale corporate bankruptcies
1998
poison
An infamous poison case; greehouse gases
1999
end
End of the century and the millennium; various scandals surmounting to an end of society
2000
gold
Sydney Olympics; new coinage
2001
fight
9.11 & the world war on terror
2002
return
Kidnapped Japanese spies in N.Korea are returned but families remain
2003
tiger
Osaka baseball team wins national league; dispatch of Japanese servicemen to Iraq
2004
disaster
Many natural disasters throughout Japan and the world
As you can see, 2000 was pretty much the only roundly happy one.
This year?
2005
love
The 2005 Aichi World Expo; the disputed heir to the imperial throne, Princess Aiko; and the need for more love in the world
The character is often pronounced ai and appears in the names Aichi (Prefecture) and (Princess) Aiko above. But the character also appears in the name of the prefecture where I live, Ehime ('lovely princess').
The winning character tends to be representative of a word that has appeared in the news a lot that year. Many of the winning choices over the past ten years have been fairly miserable, reflecting equally miserable news. They included kanji used to form the words for:
1995
tremble
Tokyo subway gas attacks; Kobe earthquake
1996
food
Mad cow disease
1997
fall
Large-scale corporate bankruptcies
1998
poison
An infamous poison case; greehouse gases
1999
end
End of the century and the millennium; various scandals surmounting to an end of society
2000
gold
Sydney Olympics; new coinage
2001
fight
9.11 & the world war on terror
2002
return
Kidnapped Japanese spies in N.Korea are returned but families remain
2003
tiger
Osaka baseball team wins national league; dispatch of Japanese servicemen to Iraq
2004
disaster
Many natural disasters throughout Japan and the world
As you can see, 2000 was pretty much the only roundly happy one.
This year?
2005
love
The 2005 Aichi World Expo; the disputed heir to the imperial throne, Princess Aiko; and the need for more love in the world
The character is often pronounced ai and appears in the names Aichi (Prefecture) and (Princess) Aiko above. But the character also appears in the name of the prefecture where I live, Ehime ('lovely princess').