New love-related words develop among young Japanese people

May 30, 2009

New love-related words develop among young Japanese people


“Yubi-koi,” which literally means finger love, is one of brand-new words in use among young people in Japan. The term means love which has developed as a result of finger-touch cell phone mails. A new breed of abbreviated and shortened words is emerging amid changes in young people’s behaviors following the spread of mobile information devices. In Japan, words are long believed to have miraculous power. Will the series of words enrich or just confuse the language in Japan?
Waka poems of the earliest time, including love poems, were made when people hoped to express their wishes or wills to the gods while counting on the special power of the language. A poem extended from Prince Ootsu (663-686) to Lady Ishikawa and her return poem follow:

I got wet with dewdrops
when I was waiting for you, my love, on a mountain path.
I wish I were the dewdrops that you said wetted you
who were waiting for me on a mountain path.
(Personal translations)

The poems were included in the Manyoshu (ten thousand leaves) poem anthology, which came into being in the eighth century. Their rendezvous failed, but the couple came to love each other later. Another poem composed by Prince Ootsu and placed just after the two poems in the anthology says:

Our relations have been revealed by fortune teller Tsumori,
but while exactly knowing this would happen,
I had slept with her.
(A personal translation)

A newly published book collects a variety of new words spoken by young Japanese people, mainly teenagers. Besides yubi-koi, love-related words shown in the book include “rea-koi,” or real love, and “tomo-koku,” a declaration of love by a friend as a surrogate. “Byosatsu,” or killing in a second, means one falls in love with her or him at very first sight.
Prince Ootsu, a son of Emperor Tenmu, was known for his distinguished talent and popular among court people at his time. But he succumbed in a power struggle which followed his father’s death. He was “given a death” just after the incident, history says.
Poems exchanged by couples came first in the second volume of the Manyoshu anthology, followed by elegies, including those regarding the prince’s death. This indicates that love and death were close to each other for ancient people. A separate poem in the anthology suggests Lady Ishikawa was also loved by Crown Prince Kusakabe. But he also died young. Prince Ootsu had married Princess Yamanobe. She followed her husband to the grave.
Young people in today’s Japan are not exposed to such real threats of death, but they are faced with new kinds of harassment, such as stalking and sexual abuses. How to declare love for her or him is always the foremost issue of concern for young people. The Japanese language is flexible in accepting imported or new words to evolve itself. Young Japanese people, who have inherited a keen sense of the language from their ancestors, are expected to create new words further to express their feelings in their own way in the current information-oriented age.