- 14 Mar 2002
- 21,057
- 18,914
The kanji chosen to represent the year was "kuma," or bear — a result that surprised few and only narrowly surpassed the character for rice. The announcement came on 12 December at Kyoto's Kiyomizudera temple, where the chief priest, Seihan Mori, brushed the winning character in sweeping strokes across an oversized sheet of paper.
The selection captured a year marked by an unprecedented number of bear sightings and attacks nationwide, as well as renewed attention to giant pandas, whose Chinese name literally translates as "bear cats," following their return to China. The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, which runs the annual campaign, again invited the public to propose and vote on candidate characters. A total of 189,122 votes were submitted, with "bear" taking 23,346 of them.
The selection captured a year marked by an unprecedented number of bear sightings and attacks nationwide, as well as renewed attention to giant pandas, whose Chinese name literally translates as "bear cats," following their return to China. The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, which runs the annual campaign, again invited the public to propose and vote on candidate characters. A total of 189,122 votes were submitted, with "bear" taking 23,346 of them.
The Top 5:
- 熊 (kuma) — bear
- 米 (kome / bei) — rice; also used as a character representing the United States
- 高 (taka / kō) — high, elevated
- 脈 (myaku) — pulse, vein, network
- 万 (ban / man) — many, numerous; appears in the word for expo (万博, banpaku)