Most cultures and languages have things that one must not even mention. Japanese, and particularly the Japanese media, provides numerous examples.
The mention of the subject matter of some of these taboos is itself arguably taboo, making difficult discussion of even the fact that they are taboos. I present them here from my experience in listening carefully to what gets discussed and what is not discussed (or spun with alternative expressions) in the Japanese media.
Use of the term war in news coverage of either the Russo-Ukraine War or Israel’s War in Gaza
From NHK coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian war, it appears that NHK consistently avoids referring to the war as a war, choosing to refer to it as a military invasion, although in English they have occasionally used the W-word. In Japanese, however, the only language that really matters in Japan with regard to policy, it is a military invasion. Well, there was indeed an invasion, and the ensuing war has lasted for more than two and a half years. What is going on—to any sane person and most of the non-Japanese media— is a war. Why would NHK avoid referring to the Russo-Ukrainian war as a war?
Could it be that there is a problem involving continued purchase of fuel from Russia? It’s hard to tell whether that is continuing, and perhaps discussion of that is avoided in the media, just as is the word war. Or is it perhaps kotodama belief, the notion that words have a mystical power that can make the things they signify happen in real life? If they called the conflict in Ukraine a war, a war might break out. Don’t look now, folks at NHK and in the Japanese government proper, but there has been a war waged by Russia against Ukraine since February 2022, and arguably since Russian unlawfully annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Although the dictator running Russia will punish people for referring this conflict as a war, I suspect most people in Ukraine, which has a significant amount of its territory occupied by Russia, and almost any media outside of Japan, realize that there is a war going on.
Turning to Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza, an argument could be made that there cannot be a “war” because there is no separate state that Israel is fighting. Gaza is arguably Israel, so there is no “foreign” state they are at war with, but that is precisely one of the reasons for this war, uh, conflict.
Unequivocal linking of smoking with specific diseases
The Japanese government holds a major interest in Japan Tobacco, the only company in Japan that produces cigarettes. You will hear people on TV just sometimes blaming smoking for diseases, but it is usually indirectly when someone dies of a smoking-related disease, by reporting incidentally that the person was a heavy smoker. It is extremely rare to hear a definitive statement linking smoking to specific diseases such as cancer or heart diseases. This is not surprising, since NHK is essentially a Japanese government mouthpiece, and the private broadcasters also have a reason to avoid talk of causality, since Japan Tobacco runs non-cigarette corporate advertisements in privately owned media.
Discussion of pachinko as gambling for money
Very few Japanese would deny that pachinko is gambling, but I cannot recall ever hearing any broadcast media seriously admit this truth. The tacitly assumed cover story is that pachinko is not really gambling for money, but just a game, with incidental winning of prizes that can be incidentally exchanged for cash at a window that incidentally is located right next to the pachinko parlor and essentially—but incidentally, of course—by the pachinko parlor or individual related to the management thereof. Those are a lot of incidental truths.
One more truth is that some people lose their entire paycheck playing pachinko in the hope of winning prizes exchangeable for cash. If pachinko were not gambling, we would not hear of parents leaving their small children to die in a hot car in midsummer while they gamble in a pachinko parlor.
Mentioning that pachinko parlors are largely owned and run by Koreans
Again, something of which very few Japanese are unaware, but something which I have not once heard in the broadcast media, in almost a half-century living here.
Discussion of jumping in front of trains as a common way to end it all
If you ride the trains with any frequency in Japan’s larger cities, you will numerous times each month hear announcements or see notices on displays that report the occurrence of an “accident involving human injury” on some train line that is experiencing delays because of the “accident.”
Most people know this is code for someone having jumped in front of a train. Yet the media will not discuss this, which is putatively a problem deeper than just the numbers of people jumping indicate. Perhaps they are afraid of copycat jumpers. They do occasionally try to warn people who drink not to fall onto the tracks from a platform, thereby taking attention away from the numerous accidents involving human injury that occur in the daytime, when it is pretty tough to find someone drunk.
“Outing” the nationality of a Korean in Japan who for all intents and purposes has been passing as a Japanese
A Japanese actress here who is thought to be a zainichi Korean resident—by rumor and “inherited wisdom”—was playing the part of the daughter of a Japanese military officer in Korea in a TV drama until she left the show. On one of Japan’s daytime talk/gossip shows, one of their resident commentators said that he thought it was natural for her to quit, not feeling comfortable with the role, because she was Korean. He was essentially fired from the show and was never again seen the media.
In Japan, outing a Korean as a Korean sets you up for charges of defamation of character even if it is true, if you realized that the revelation could damage the person’s social standing or financial interests. The truth of your revelation is not a defense. This presumably applies to revealing just about anything about someone if it damages them and you reasonably could realize that it could.
This also says something about what being outed as a Korean and particularly being outed as a Korean who was passing as Japanese means in Japan. This was the first and last time I have heard a Korean being outed in the Japanese broadcast media.
Japan’s historical and thought-to-be-persisting problem regarding the formerly persecuted burakumin people
It appears that discussion of this social problem is only possible if someone from the burakumin is doing this discussing. Any passing reference to it in the media is likely to cause a flood of protests from special interest groups. The very word buraku, although it just means hamlet, is itself pretty much taboo, and when NHK encounters it in the speech of someone being interviewed, for example, unless it can be edited out they will often change the word to shuraku (集落) or sonraku (村落) in the subtitling, thereby distancing themselves from the term. I always wonder whether they ask permission of the original speakers before they make that substitution. In no case that I have seen has the original speaker appeared to use the word in the sense with which it is used in relation to the burakumin problem; it simply refers to the hamlet in which they live.
Alternative Expressions
There have been countless lists created of expressoins to replace unacceptable expressions, many of which were acceptable just a few years ago. I might treat these in a separate post or webpage.