Blog – Page 161

August 8, 2002

Vending machines far and wide

Most first time visitors to Japan remark on the amount of vending machines in the country. I surely did. Like pubs in England, there appears to be at least one, and sometimes more, on every single corner. Across the street from where I live, there were actually two, until a few months ago when one day we discovered they were no longer there, having been spirited away in the middle of the night presumably by whatever vending company had put them there in the first place. And I must admit that what had always struck me as a blight on our neighbourly landscape had suddenly overnight turned into a gaping hole, something missed, a symbol of Japan ripped out of the ground as if it were a cherry blossom tree. Nevermind that I had never partaken of its riches save for one desperate morning when there was no time for brewed coffee and I was trying to stave off the impending caffiene headache (yes, many vending machines carry both hot and cold canned coffee).

I remember having to learn the kanji for “vending machine” in one of my Japanese classes at Soko Gakuen in San Francisco. I’m not sure what took me aback more: actually having to learn what surely can’t be one of the, say, thousand most important kanji in the Japanese language, or the sheer length and inpenetratability of the compound (yes, I’ve reproduced it here so you can see this for yourself). Made up of 5 separate kanji characters, I think the only reason I actually bothered to learn how to read and write the thing was some sort of imagined ego-stroking I might later gain by being able to scribble it for native Japanese (needless to say after the course was over I quickly forgot it). Being in Japan, I have seen no need to reaquaint myself with this kanji save for this here post. It’s not like I need for the actual vending machines to display signs letting me know what is already quite obvious — that they are, in fact, vending machines. (I’m being somewhat apocryphal here; of course the individual kanji are eminently worth learning).

I do find it curious — but heartening, I should hasten to add — that in a language that everyday seems to add a new “loan word” to its vocabulary, the Japanese actually organically created their own word for vending machine, complete with its own kanji: ji-dou-han-bai-ki. I’ve broken it up here along the lines of its 5 kanji characters, but in reality the word should be broken down into 3 kanji compounds, as follows:

I haven’t been able to determine when or exactly how this word started to appear in the Japanese lexicon, although the Koujien dictionary seems to suggest it had its origins in Automat, the name of America’s first fast-food joint, which served food via coin-operated machines in waitress-less restaurants beginning in 1902.

The history of the actual machines is a bit easier to trace. According to this site (in Japanese), the first patent for vending machines in Japan was filed in 1890, but the first working machine was not introduced until 1904, when the Japanese Postal system used wooden machines to dispense stamps and postcards.

It wasn’t until the 1960’s, however, that vending machines began to really make an impact on the Japanese consumer landscape, due largely in part to American soft drink makers led by Coca-Cola who needed a way to quickly saturate the Japanese market with their product. (This site attributes the rise of the vending machine to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but I haven’t found other sources backing this up).

In 1967, with the introduction of a new nickel-based 100-yen coin into circulation (replacing the prior silver-based coin), vending machines started to take off. A year later, Japan National Railways (presently Japan Railways) introduced ticket vending machines into all the stations in Yamanote Line in Tokyo, further solidifying the proliferation of automated machines.

According to this TIMEasia.com story from last year, there are now over 5.5 million vending machines in Japan, pulling in more than $56 billion (USD) in sales annually. America has more: according to this story in Nipponia, in 1997 there were 6.89 million in the US. But of course, there are twice as many people in the states. Going by these figures, in America there is approximately one vending machine for every 39 people; in Japan, one machine for every 23 people.

Looked at another way, in Japan, which has a total land area of only 374,722 square kilometers, there are approximately 14.5 vending machines per square kilometer. By contrast, in the United States, with its vast total land area of 9,158,160 square kilometers (5th in the world just behind Canada, in case you were curious), there is less than one vending machine per square km (.75 or three-fourths of a machine to be exact).

I think it’s this sheer volume and the ubiquitous nature of these automated wonders that impresses the visitor most, much more so than the endless variety of goods found in them, including those near-urban legend used panties worn by Japanese schoolgirls that were briefly available in 1993. There’s just something a bit disconcerting about jidouhanbaiki propped up against garages or sides of houses in residential neighborhoods. However, if you manage to be in Japan during hot and humid summer season, it’ll all start to make sense, and you’ll be thanking whoever put them there. But if only they’d be stocked with more bottled water and less Pocari Sweat…

August 7, 2002

The continuing Japanese to English trade imbalance

One could say that Japanese is a very absorbent langange, meaning that it has taken, appropriated, and made its own countless number of loan words, or gairaigo as they are known in Japanese. Most gairaigo entered the language from Chinese 1500 years ago, with a certain amount also coming in slightly more recent times from Portugese Jesuit priests (tempura, for example) and Dutch traders (eg. kaban, meaning bag, satchel, or briefcase).

Most of these words have long been assimilated into the language to the point where their origin, at least to an outsider or non-native speaker, is obscured. However, it is the more recent English imports, like waishatsu (business shirt, not necessarily white), pasokon (personal computer), conbini (convenience store), or tsuaa kondakutaa (tour conductor), that get the most attention these days (popularized as either “Japlish” or “Engrish”), often because their meanings — to say nothing of their pronunciation — are at odds with that of the original word (manshon — ahem, “mansion” — for apartment building is one of my favorites).

If I may borrow an economics analogy, we could say that with respect to the English and Japanese languages, it is English that enjoys a considerable trade surplus. Japanese words that have entered into the English language are few and far between, and most of them directly refer back to some item or element of Japanese culture, eg. futon, origami, sushi, kimono, tofu, sake, zen, etc. However, there are two words in English that entered the language from Japanese whose entry I find curious and amusing, in part because not only are their meanings somewhat related, but their etymologies are mutually resonant as well. These two words are tycoon and honcho.

According to Dictionary.com, tycoon has a particularly fascinating history of how it entered into English, going back to Commodore Perry in the 1850’s:

Tycoon came into English from Japanese, which had borrowed the title, meaning “great prince,” from Chinese. Use of the word was intended to make the shogun, the commander in chief of the Japanese army, more impressive to foreigners (his official title shgun merely meant “general”). It worked with Matthew C. Perry, who opened Japan to the West in 1854; Perry carried out his negotiations with the shogun, thinking him to be the emperor. In fact, the shogun did rule Japan, although he was supposedly acting for the emperor. The shogun’s title, taikun, was brought back to the United States after Perry’s visit. Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet members used tycoon as an affectionate nickname for the President. The word soon came to be used for business and industry leadersat times being applied to figures like J. P. Morgan, who may indeed have wielded more power than many princes and presidents.

Honcho, which comes from the Japanese hanchou and means “group leader,” is a more recent addition to the English language, again resulting from American involvement in Japan, this time from the post-World War II occupation of the nation by the Allied Powers.

There are a couple of words or phrases in use in English that have occassionally been traced back to Japanese, though the etymology is inconclusive or at the very least fanciful: hobo, and hunky-dory (as in the expression “Everything is hunky-dory.”).

There are some who wonder if the word hobo, meaning “One who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood” (American Heritage), whose etymology has always been listed in dictionaries as “of unknown origin,” might be from the Japanese word houbou, meaning “here and there”. But this seems to be pure speculation, and speculation not shared by too many at that. Merriam-Webster seems to think hobo has a purely American origin.

According to the Word Detective, there are some that believe that hunky-dory originated from a street popular among American sailors in the 19th century in Yokohama named “Honcho-dori.” The story is fascinating, but unfortunately the facts don’t add up so neatly. See this thread at Phrase Finder for more.

August 7, 2002

New money, but same old same old?

Last week the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan announced that it would introduce three new currency bills into circulation in fiscal year 2004. The new 1,000-, 5,000-, and 10,000-yen bills are the first new currency designs in roughly 20 years.

Ostensibly the bills are being introduced in an effort to thwart counterfeiting, and will, according to Dow Jones, make use of state of the art printing techniques such as “holograms, advanced bar-coding and pearl ink – used to print semitransparent patterns that shift when viewed from different angles” to foil would-be counterfeiters.

There can be no denying as well that the government hopes the new issuance might give Japan’s moribund economy a shot in the arm. From a Daily Yomiuri article,

The government and central bank announcement raised expectations it would have a positive impact on the economy, since vending machines, bank ATMs, ticket machines and other machines that accept banknotes must be modified to handle the new bills, thus leading to more business.

Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute Inc. estimates that about 960 billion yen will be spent in the coming two years on such upgrades, pushing up the gross domestic product by about 0.1 percent.

Indeed, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa was quoted as saying the new bills would “brighten the mood” among Japanese consumers. Whatever boost does result, it will not come cheaply. From a sampling in the Daily Yomiuri article of various costs involved, printing the actual yen notes will cost 317 billion yen; modifying ATM machines will cost 330 billion yen; and upgrading vending machines will run about 312 billion yen.

An intriguing angle to the story regards the personages chosen to grace the new 1,000- and 5,000-yen notes, which will feature Hideo Noguchi and Ichiyo Higuchi respectively. Noguchi was a microbiologist who isolated the cause of syphilis. Higuchi, shown in the image accompanying this post in a prototype of the 5,000 bill, was a Meiji-era novelist and poet who died of tuberculosis at only 24 years of age. She will be the first woman to grace the front of a Japanese banknote.

The Asahi Shimbun recently delved into the irony of choosing these two figures to grace the new money, given that both came from poverty-stricken backgrounds where by necessity they piled up many debts. Regarding Higuchi, “[i]n her desperate quest for money, she made requests for loans even to people she was not acquainted with.” According to Asahi’s article, Noguchi does’t come off much better: “[He] was loose with money. He would ask his friends and relatives for loans, spend the money quickly and go back to them for more, apparently with no intention of paying them back.”

Naturally the goverment spun the choice of these two a different way. According to Finance Minister Shiokawa, Higuchi and Noguchi were chosen out of consideration for gender equality, “as pioneers of modernization” and because they had “difficult-to-counterfeit faces.”

The 10,000-yen note, though part of the anti-forgery printing plans, will not be getting a new personage gracing its front. Speculates the Asahi Shimbun,

What is a bit worrisome is that the portrait of Yukichi Fukuzawa, a prominent author and educator of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), will be retained on the 10,000-yen bill, although the bill will be redesigned like the notes of lower denominations. The retention of Fukuzawa, who founded Keio University, could feed speculation that it may have resulted from close ties between two Keio alumni – Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa.