An Inappropriate Winner? Japan’s Word of the Year for 2024

A 2024 Fraught with Fragmentation?

Fute hodo, the nickname for a popular TV drama, provided the phrase of the year named by the publisher Jiyū Kokumin Sha on December 2. Narrowing down the field from the 30 nominees announced on November 5, a panel of writers, poets, and other judges selected the winner and nine other finalists for the year, presenting a linguistic overview of the popular zeitgeist in Japan during 2024.

Sports and entertainment figured largely in this year’s list, perhaps fitting for an Olympic/Paralympic year. Ohtani Shōhei’s exploits as designated hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, including the first-ever achievement of 50 stolen bases and 50 home runs, landed him on the list in the form of the term 50-50, while Japan’s bronze-winning Olympic equestrian team and women’s javelin gold medalist Kitaguchi Haruka respectively provided shorō Japan, a self-deprecating description of their relatively advanced age, and meigen ga nokosenakatta, a lament that the athlete couldn’t think of anything memorable to say.

The year 2024 was a challenging one for those seeking bright spots, noted many of the judges. The linguist Kindaichi Hideho noted that the year had been one when just watching the news each day was enough to drag one down, while both the manga artist and columnist Shinsan Nameko (Ikematsu Emi) and the comedian Patrick Harlan touched on other terms from the long list of nominees, like the tokuryū and howaito anken “dark jobs” offered by criminals to people desperate for a payday in a souring economy.

Ōtsuka Yōko, editor in chief of Gendai yōgo no kiso chishiki (Basic Knowledge on Contemporary Terminology), a popular offering from the contest’s organizer, remarked that society appears to be increasingly fragmented nowadays (as seen in the term kaiwai, one of the finalists listed below). In this environment is it perhaps only to be expected that a handful of popular words with universal impact are no longer seen at the top of the rankings, which now span the gamut of society and language and are drawn from a broad range of subcultures rather than the Japanese linguistic culture as a whole.

The Winning Word of 2024

ふてほど — Fute hodo. The drama series Futekisetsu ni mo hodo ga aru (Extremely Inappropriate!), broadcast on TBS in Japan, was one of the big hits this year. With a script by Kudō Kankurō and starring Abe Sadao as the main protagonist and Kawai Yūmi as his daughter, the show involves a PE teacher swept through time from 1986 to 2024. Rather than simply portraying the views of the past as backward, or the modern “woke” era as misguided, the show strives to show that in all ages the key to mutual understanding is opening up to one another.

Other Finalists

裏金問題 — Uragane mondai. The “kickbacks issue” was a thread that ran throughout the year’s politics, implicating many Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers in a scandal, as they were found to have misreported donations from fundraising parties, and resulting in the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition losing its majority in the October 27 general election.

界隈 — Kaiwai. While it once meant “the local area” or “neighborhood,” among young people this word has come to be used for the people around one, like friends and others who are close.

初老ジャパン — Shorō Japan. Japan won bronze in the team eventing at the Paris Olympics, its first equestrian medal since 1932. The four members of the team had an average age of 41.5, and they self-deprecatingly dubbed themselves Shorō Japan—while the word shorō, “early old age,” was once used as another way of saying that somebody was 40 years old, in today’s Japanese it refers to somebody around 60.

新紙幣 — Shin shihei. In July, Japan issued new banknotes for the first time in 20 years, with stronger protections against counterfeiting, even inspiring some clever snacks in the process. In an increasingly cashless era, however, they will not be used as much as earlier banknotes.

50-50. Baseball phenomenon Ohtani Shōhei of the Los Angeles Dodgers marked both his fiftieth stolen base and his fiftieth home run in the 2024 regular season on September 19, making him the only member of the “50-50 club” in Major League history. He had become the sixth member of the “40-40 club” on August 23. He finished the season with 54 four-baggers and 59 stolen bases before going on with the Dodgers to win the World Series against the New York Yankees on October 31.

Bling-bang-bang-born. The Japanese hip-hop-inspired music group Creepy Nuts had a major hit on its hands this year with this pop song, used as the lead track for the anime series Mashle: Magic and Muscles. The song’s title doubles as part of the chorus and accompanies a dance move that became a huge hit in online video form as well, gaining massive popularity among kids down to elementary-school age as the “BBBB dance.”

ホワイト案件 — Howaito anken. These tasks, advertised as “white jobs” on social media to attract people who need quick income but want to avoid the “black jobs” offered by unscrupulous employers, are actually as black as they come. This year has seen a rising number of crimes committed by job-seekers who signed on and found themselves instructed to commit home robberies or other criminal acts by shadowy ringleaders.

名言が残せなかった — Meigen ga nokosenakatta. Kitaguchi Haruka, upon winning the gold medal in the women’s javelin competition at the Paris Olympics, noted that while she was ecstatic at her victory—which brought Japan its first track and field Olympic gold in 20 years—and at her 65.80-meter personal best for the season, she was still disappointed in herself “for being unable to come up with an appropriate inspirational phrase” to celebrate the win.

もうええでしょう — Mō ē deshō. The drama Jimenshi tachi (Tokyo Swindlers), costarring Ayano Gō and Toyokawa Etsushi, aired on Netflix starting in July. The character Gotō, played by Taki Pierre, frequently trots out this phrase in various contexts—everything from “All right, I’ve heard enough” to cut off an uncomfortable negotiation session to “OK, fine” to keep a conversation moving along.

(Originally published in English. Banner photo: Packaging for the blu-ray/DVD edition of the TBS program Extremely Inappropriate! Sold by TBS with cooperation from TBS Glowdia; distributed by TC Entertainment. © TBS Sparkle/TBS.)