The Kanji Of The Year 2021 – “Gold” (Kin)

The kanji “kin” (金) , meaning gold or money, has been selected as the kanji that best summarizes the year, a Kyoto-based academic organization announced on Monday.

The kanji was chosen in relation to the gold medals of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which took place in July 2021 after being postponed for a year and then held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Japanese athletes won a record number of gold medals (27 in total) at the Olympics, breaking the country’s previous record of 16 medals set at the 1964 Tokyo Games and once again at Athens in 2004.

Another reason for choosing the kanji for this year was that Los Angeles Angels player Shohei Ohtani won the US League MVP in 2021 as reported by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation. who organizes the event. Last but not least, news of cash donations making headlines also helped push the kanji to the top of the list, the foundation said.

Of the 223,773 votes cast by the public, the kanji for “kin” received 10,422 votes (4.6% of the total votes). In second place is Wa (輪), which means ring, due to the Olympic Games, obtaining 10,304 votes. The next kanji on the top 10 list were:

• raku/tanoshii楽, meaning joy or fun
• hen変, which is one of the kanji characters used to describe new variants of the coronavirus
• shin新, which means new
• sho翔, one of the kanji characters for Shohei Ohtani’s given name
• ki希, a character that describes hope
• tai耐, a kanji meaning to tolerate or endure
• ie , 家, meaning home
• yamai病, which means disease

This is the fourth year that the kanji character for “gold” 金 has been chosen. The previous years were 2000, 2012 and 2016. The high priest’s calligraphy will be displayed at the temple until December 22 and at the Kanji Library and Museum from December 23.

Last year, Mitsu (密) was selected as the kanji of the year. With close or dense meaning, the meaning of Mitsu was often invoked in warnings about the new coronavirus.

The foundation began naming a kanji for the year in 1995. The first kanji was shin (震) meaning “tremor” or “shiver”, reflecting the fear felt by people in the aftermath of the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the attack with sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system. Click here to see the Kanji of the Year for previous years.