{"id":38913,"date":"2015-12-29T16:34:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T20:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=38913"},"modified":"2015-12-29T16:34:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T20:34:45","slug":"wit-life-292-%e4%bb%8a%e5%b9%b4%e3%81%ae%e6%bc%a2%e5%ad%97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/29\/wit-life-292-%e4%bb%8a%e5%b9%b4%e3%81%ae%e6%bc%a2%e5%ad%97\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #292: \u4eca\u5e74\u306e\u6f22\u5b57"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/a> (Kumamo<\/a>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with h<\/strong><\/em>er own obse<\/strong><\/em>\"\"rv<\/strong><\/em>ations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Well, it’s the end of the year already, and if you’re like me you’re wondering where 2015 went.\u00a0 The last time I checked in here was four months ago, which was pre-Paris attack and pre-Presidential candidate madness so a bit of a different world.\u00a0 We’ve certainly had our share of recent turbulence, and there is a big question mark as to what 2016 will bring.\u00a0 All of this uncertainty is part of why \u5b89 (an <\/em>or peaceful\/cheap) was picked as 2015’s \u4eca\u5e74\u306e\u6f22\u5b57 (kotoshi no kanji<\/em> or kanji of the year) at Kyoto’s Kiyomizu Temple earlier this month.<\/p>\n

It could refer to the \u5b89 in \u5b89\u5168\u4fdd\u969c (anzen hoshou <\/em>or security), since the controversial \u5b89\u5168\u4fdd\u969c\u95a2\u9023\u6cd5 (anzen hoshou kanren hou<\/em> or Security Related Bill) was approved back in September.\u00a0 It could also be reflecting the unstable environment in which we find ourselves experiencing information leaks and terrorist attacks, expressed by the word \u4e0d\u5b89 (fuan<\/em> or anxiety\/insecurity).\u00a0 \u5b89’s selection could also be touching on the fact that Japan’s economic situation is one of \u5186\u5b89 (enyasu<\/em> or weak yen).\u00a0 The conversion rate is currently hovering around 120 yen to the dollar, but the yen depreciated to as much as 125 at one point this year.\u00a0 \u5b89 came in at 5632 votes or around 4.3% of the 129,647 ballots submitted.\u00a0 Other candidates for 2015’s kanji were \u7206 (baku<\/em> or explosive), \u6226 (sen<\/em> or battle), \u7d50 (ketsu<\/em> or tie), \u4e94 (go<\/em> or five), \u8cde (sho<\/em> or reward), \u507d (gi<\/em> or deceive), \u4e89 (so<\/em> or dispute), \u5909 (hen<\/em> or change), and \u52dd (sho<\/em> or victory).<\/p>\n

In positive news regarding the \u5f93\u8ecd\u6170\u5b89\u5a66\u554f\u984c (juugun ianfu mondai<\/em> or comfort women issue), progress was made between Japan and South Korea.\u00a0 An agreement was reached<\/a> where Japan apologized and promised an $8.3 million payment to provide medical, nursing and other care for the 46 remaining survivors via a foundation that the South Korean government will establish.\u00a0 A fund previously existed, but it was not comprised of money that officially came from the Japanese government as this compensation does.\u00a0 Japan’s contribution ended up being about double what it was initially offering, and concessions were made on the Korean side as well.\u00a0 Seoul promised not to criticize Tokyo over this issue again, as well as to discuss with survivors the potential removal of a statue of a girl symbolizing comfort women that a civic group installed in front of the Japanese Embassy.<\/p>\n

Leaders from both nations were eager to forge an agreement, as 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the treaty normalizing relations between the two countries and the 70th anniversary of the war’s end.\u00a0 Many survivors aren’t satisfied, calling it “humiliating diplomacy” as the accord falls far short of their longstanding demand that Japan admit legal responsibility and offer formal reparations.\u00a0 Hiroka Shoji, a researcher on East Asia at Amnesty International, commented: \u201cThe women were missing from the negotiation table, and they must not be sold short in a deal that is more about political expediency than justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. Well, it’s the end of the year already, and if you’re like me you’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-a7D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38913"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38933,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38913\/revisions\/38933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}