TOKYO: “Murakamisama,” a play on the Japanese word “kamisama,” or god, and the name of baseball player Munetaka Murakami, has been named this year’s top buzzword in Japan, it was announced Thursday.

The 22-year-old slugger of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows professional baseball team in Japan became the youngest player to win the batting triple crown in the 2022 regular season. Murakami hit 56 homers, also rewriting baseball legend Sadaharu Oh’s single-season home run record for a Japanese player, marked 58 years ago.

The list of top 10 buzzwords also includes “kitsune dance,” or fox dance, the viral dance used in cheers for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, also a Japanese professional baseball team, and “temaedori,” a phrase used to encourage people to take food products from the front of the shelf at shops including supermarkets and convenience stores.

“Warui enyasu,” or bad weakening of the yen, and “shirankedo,” used at the end of sentences to avoid making assertions, were also among the top 10 phrases.

Some of the top buzzwords are related to politics. They are “Kyiv,” Ukraine’s capital, which used to be called by its Russian name Kiev before Russia’s invasion of the East European country, “kokusogi,” or state funeral, linked to a funeral held by the government for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was gunned down in July, despite it dividing public opinion, and “shukyo nisei,” or children of people who have strong religious beliefs, which gathered attention after Abe’s assassination.

No words related to COVID-19 were selected for the top 10 list this year.

The buzzword list and the top buzzword were chosen from 30 candidates by a jury of seven including manga artist Mitsuru Yaku, columnist Nameko Shinsan and actress Shigeru Muroi.

JIJI Press