TOKYO: The character “kuma” – meaning bear in Japanese – was chosen as “kanji” of 2025 following a year defined by a surge in bear sightings and attacks across Japan.
Every December, a kanji character that distils the national mood over the past year is chosen through public voting and announced at the Kiyomizudera temple, a World Heritage site in Kyoto.
Kuma received 23,346 votes – 12.3 per cent of the total cast – in the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation poll.
Bear attacks in Japan reached record levels in 2025, leaving a trail of injuries and deaths and pushing a once-remote danger into city streets and residential neighbourhoods.
The sightings unsettled the public, led to school closures and cancelled events, and inflicted heavy damage on crops in rural areas already struggling economically.
Those anxieties helped shape the selection of kuma as “kanji of the year”.
Organisers said the choice was also influenced by heightened attention on another kind of bear: the giant panda.
Four pandas were sent back to China in 2025 from a theme park in Wakayama prefecture, leaving only two animals at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo.
Those pandas, the last in the country, are scheduled to be returned to China in 2026, an impending departure that has stirred nostalgia and unease among animal lovers.
The runner-up, with 23,166 votes, was the character read as “kome” or “bei”, meaning rice.
Voters pointed to rising prices of the staple grain, the government’s release of emergency rice stockpiles and broader worries about agriculture and food security.
Read another way, the character also refers to the United States, which some voters associated with President Donald Trump’s return to office and renewed uncertainty caused by his tariff policies.
Third place went to “kō” or “takai”, meaning high or expensive, reflecting a year of soaring prices for rice, stocks and gold, as well as Japan’s hottest temperatures on record. It is also the first character in the surname of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
In 2024, the kanji “kin” also read “kane” and meaning gold or money, was selected, reflecting both the gold medals won by Japanese athletes at the Paris Olympics and Paralympics and money-related issues such as political funding scandals. - The Japan News/ANN
