For the past 15 years, the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation has held an annual poll, the Kanji of the Year (今年の漢字). The poll invites anyone within the nation to vote for the kanji that best characterizes the past year.

For 2009, about 160,000 people participated, with an interesting slew of results. Some poll experts predicted that 民 (“min” , people/citizen) would win as an indication of probably the most important national news last year: the huge victory of the Democratic Party of Japan over the Liberal Democratic Party which had previously ruled the government since 1955. Another top ten candidate was 鳩 (“hato”, pigeon/dove), the first kanji in the family name of the new ruling prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

Near the top of the list was 病 (“byou”, sick/illness), clearly a manifestation of Japan’s (and the world’s) paranoia concerning the H1N1 influenza (swine flu). If you went traveling last year and happened to see Japanese people with white masks around their mouths where no one else was wearing them, you should have been in Japan itself. You would have thought the country had gone overboard with their production of surgeons.

Continuing with the swine flu scare, the number 2 most-voted kanji was 薬 (“kusuri”, medicine), seeing as there was a worldwide shortage of H1N1 vaccines. And finally, the kanji champion of 2009 was… 新 (“shin/atarashii”, new) signifying the birth of a new regime, the DPJ.

There you have it! We’ll have to wait and see what 2010 has in store before any predictions can be made on what kanji will take the crown next year!

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