Japan has selected the Chinese character for “disaster” as its symbol for 2018, a year that saw the country hit by deadly floods, earthquakes and storms. Japanese TV stations broadcast the annual announcement, with Seihan Mori, master of the ancient Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto, writing the character on a huge white board with a calligraphy brush. Organisers of the event, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, said, “Many people experienced the threat of natural disasters such as earthquakes, heavy rain, typhoons and heatwaves.”
At the end of every year, the general public votes for the Chinese character they think shows the key news and events of the previous 12 months. A total of 20,858 people out of 193,214 chose the character “disaster”.
The country was hit by a series of natural disasters in 2018, starting with massive flooding in western regions that killed over 200 people. It was also troubled by a typhoon that damaged a major international airport, and an earthquake in the north that brought landslides and stopped supply lines. A rare heatwave also struck the country over the summer, causing more than 150 deaths, with over 80,000 people in hospital.
The series of disasters hit GDP, with the country’s economy reducing in the three months to September. A 42-year-old woman from quake-battered northern Hokkaido said, “I was reminded of how scary natural disasters are. The power went out immediately after the quake and I spent days for the first time without electricity.”
Last year, Japan picked “North”, following a series of North Korean missile launches. The year before the choice was “gold”, in celebration of the success of Japanese athletes at the Rio Olympics. Chinese characters are widely used in Japanese, along with other types of alphabets.
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