Japanese Influence on the English Language
Inevitably, many languages absorb foreign words. Some of these words are obviously foreign, others are more subtle, and others still are just plain surprising. English words that come from Japanese are no exception. I’ve left out some of the super obvious ones people use daily, e.g. sushi or anime, and compiled 10 words used in English that you might not realize are actually Japanese.
The definitions are taken from Lexico.com, using the Oxford dictionary definition. The Japanese definitions use the Japanese dictionary website Jisho.org. Some of the definitions are essentially the same, but others have deviated from their original meaning in Japanese.
Tycoon
Definition: a wealthy, powerful person in business or industry.
Japanese: taikun (たいくん / 大君) – liege lord; shogunate
In English, the word tycoon would normally refer to a successful businessman or a leader of an industry. It originated as the Japanese word taikun meaning a great lord. It was adopted into the English language in the mid 19th century as tycoon and was used by foreigners to describe the shogun from 1857 to 1868. Through the following years, everyday citizens began to use the word, and its meaning eventually transitioned to that of a powerful business leader.
Honcho
Definition: a leader or manager; the person in charge.
Japanese: hanchou (はんちょう / 班長) – squad leader; group leader; team leader
While the spelling of honcho has changed during its adoption to English, its meaning has stayed relatively similar. In Japanese, the word means a squad or group leader and has a military context to it. Americans picked up the word as slang during World War II. Interestingly, it wasn’t even in the context of Japanese that the Americans mainly used the phrase. According to an article on NPR by Lakshmi Gandhi, it was mainly used by American soldiers to refer to the Korean leaders they served with during the Korean war.
The term wouldn’t be used by everyday Americans until the 1960s. At that time, then presidential hopeful, Senator Goldwater of Arizona, described his campaign director as the head honcho in a New York Times article. The term would go on to be used by Americans as a fun adjective to describe people in charge as “honcho” or “head honcho”.
Futon
Definition: a type of low wooden sofa that can be unfolded for use as a bed.
Japanese: futon (ふとん / 布団) – Japanese bedding consisting of a mattress and a duvet
The futon of Japan is a set that includes a mattress (shikibuton), a comforter (kakebuton), and a pillow (makura) and are placed directly on the floor. They were introduced when Japanese immigrants first came to America; however their original design did not catch on. It wasn’t made popular until a furniture designer named William Brouwer, built a frame for the futon sometime in the early 1970s. Along with raising it off the floor, he thickened the mattress, and he designed the frame to be adjusted from a couch position to a flat position for sleeping. This space-saving design of the western style futon became an appealing convenience for many Americans.
Rickshaw
Definition: a light, two-wheeled hooded vehicle drawn by one or more people, used mainly in Asian countries.
Japanese: jinrikisha (じんりきしゃ / 人力車) – a mode of human-powered transport by which a runner draws a two-wheeled cart which seats one or two persons.
The first rickshaw was actually invented in France sometime in the late 1700s. However, the rickshaw the Japanese used was not the same as the French’s. Japan independently invented the rickshaw over 150 years later in 1869. The late invention is because of a ban on wheeled vehicles during the Tokugawa period which ended in 1868. There are several theories about who invented the rickshaw in Japan, but the most commonly accepted one was a man named Izumi Yosuke.
Jinrikisha’s literal meaning is man (jin) power (riki) vehicle (sha). After its invention in Japan, it spread throughout the rest of Asia as a popular mode of transportation. The word soon came to English as an abbreviated spelling of jinrikisha, rickshaw, in the late 1900s.
Emoji
Definition: a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc.
Japanese: emoji (えもじ / 絵文字) – pictorial symbol; pictograph; pictogram
Emoji’s literal translation is picture (e) character (moji). The term was first coined by Shigetaka Kurita, a 25-year-old employee of a mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo. The word and its popularity exploded in the West when Apple included emojis as a feature on the iPhone in 2008. While the word is similar to the native English word emoticon in both spelling and meaning, they actually aren’t related at all from an etymology perspective.
Karaoke
Definition: a form of entertainment, offered typically by bars and clubs, in which people take turns to sing popular songs into a microphone over prerecorded backing tracks.
Japanese: karaoke (カラオケ / 空オケ) – a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system.
The word karaoke is a combination of the kanji 空 (kara) meaning empty and オーケストラ (ōkesutora) meaning orchestra. A Japanese engineer, Shigeichi Negishi, developed the first prototype karaoke machine in 1967. Since there was no patent on the machine, other companies made their own karaoke machines and the audio company Clarion was the first commercial producer in the 1970s. Karaoke first spread to other Asian countries, eventually making its way to North America in the 1990s. While karaoke hasn’t taken off in North America like it has in Asia, it’s still not uncommon and the word is instantly recognizable in English.
Typhoon
Definition: a tropical storm in the region of the Indian or western Pacific oceans.
Japanese: taifuu (たいふう / 台風) – typhoon; hurricane
The etymology of the word typhoon is a little odd. The word is commonly ascribed to Chinese rather than Japanese, but Japan adopted the Kanji writing system from China. Both are pronounced similarly, “taifuu” in Japanese and “táifēng” in Chinese. The odd part about the etymology of typhoon is that it has a double etymology with Chinese and Portuguese origins. The Portuguese side started with ancient Greek (Tuphōn, “Typhon, father of the winds”) and was adopted into Arabic (ṭūfān). Later the word made its way into the Portuguese language. English adopted the word as typhoon from both the Portuguese and Chinese in the 16th century.
NOTE: Technically, this means that Typhoon came from Chinese to Japanese and then to English. It’s unclear as to whether English got their version of typhoon from Chinese or Portuguese directly or from Japanese later. However, you will find the word “typhoon” on any comprehensive list of Japanese loan words in English. For that reason, combined with the interesting double etymology of the word, makes typhoon a deserving addition to the list.
Sudoku
Definition: a puzzle in which players insert the numbers one to nine into a grid consisting of nine squares subdivided into a further nine smaller squares in such a way that every number appears once in each horizontal line, vertical line, and square.
Japanese: Sudoku (すうどく / 数独) – number puzzle in which digits may only occur once per block
Sudoku was not the first number puzzle. There were similar puzzles published in French newspapers in the 1890s, however they did not have the exact same rules as Sudoku. The suspected creator of the modern Sudoku was Howard Garns who published his puzzle called Number Place in a 1979 Dell Magazine. The puzzle was first introduced to Japan in 1984 in the paper Monthly Nikolist. The puzzle was called suuji wa dokushin ni kagiru, which was eventually abbreviated to Sudoku.
However, It took some time before Sudoku spread to the West. In 1997, a Hong Kong judge Wayne Gould found a partially complete Sudoku puzzle in a Japanese bookstore. Gould would then spend six years creating a computer program to quickly produce unique Sudoku puzzles. After its completion, he propositioned The Times in Britain to include Sudoku. They agreed and added the puzzles in November of 2004. It took off quickly in Britain and the United States and has been a staple puzzle game ever since.
Skosh
Definition: a small amount; a little.
Japanese: sukoshi (すこし / 少し) – small quantity; little; few; something
The word skosh was learned by American soldiers who were stationed in Japan after World War II. Skosh is an abbreviation of the Japanese work sukoshi which means “a little bit”. The word skosh was used by Americans later in the Korean war as a slang replacement for “little”. Some soldiers who were smaller in stature were even nicknamed “Skosh”.
Zen
Definition: a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition.
Japanese: Zen (ぜん / 禅) – dhyāna (profound meditation) or Zen (Buddhism)
Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China and spread across Asia. After Mahayana Buddhism came to Japan, it eventually became known as Zen Buddhism in the 12th century. The word Zen comes from the Chinese word chán (禪), which was a transliteration of the Sanskrit word dhyāna meaning “mediation”. Japanese Zen has gained popularity in the West as a form of Buddhism. It’s not known when Zen first came to the West; however there is record of a Japanese Zen monk, Soyen Shaku, coming to Chicago for the Word Parliament in 1893 to show Zen to Western Society.
Tsunami is also one.
(ツナミor 津波) tsunami is how it’s pronounced
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