Necessary Change of Japanese
Nowadays, our language Japanese is changing as time goes on and circumstance changes. In America, people changed the words longer times ago than Japanese did. For example, "fireman" changed to "firefighter", "policeman" changed to "police officer", and so on. And the words are called "political correctness", changing phrases to prevent. Now in Japan we also start to take a hard look at our words as in the Japanese word 看護婦(kanngofu) changed to看護師(kanngoshi).
Now, we Japanese often use 看護婦(kangofu) to point a nurse, and the word imply female nurse and the kanji “婦” particularly means woman. But now, the correct word is 看護師(kangoshi) to point nurse, and the kanji “師” contains the meaning of woman and man. So, 看護師(kangoshi) means both male and female nurse. In 2002 a law about nurse was revised, and the name was changed as the revision. It was to remove sex discrimination, and it was inevitable for present day. However most Japanese is used to use 看護婦(kanngofu), so it will take more time to spread the new word. There are many other changed words in Japan, because a lot of words aren't appropriate as time goes by. You know肌色 (hadairo) is famous color in Japan, and the color represent general Japanese skin color, light orange color. The kanji "肌" means skin and the kanji "色" means color. But now it is also not the name肌色 (hadairo). Now, the new name is うすだいだい(usudaidai). "うす" means light and "だいだい" means orange color, so the new ward represents the color directly without comparing the color with skin's color. In the old day, the name 肌色(hadairo) has no problem to describe the color, because there are almost Japanese and Asian in Japan, so most people has similar color of skin, of course, the color is light orange. But now, there are so many peoples who have different color of skin in Japan as globalization goes on. And the background of changing the word is discrimination of skin colors in thought. 肌色(hadairo) suggests that light orange color is good color as Japanese, but others color is not good color. Therefore, the name 肌色 (hadairo) doesn’t suit current trends, and it is needed to change.
When I was elementally school student, the word 父兄(fukei) which means parents was used, for example, 父兄参観(fukeisannkan) which means that parents come to watch their child's class. But the kanji "父"means father and the kanji"兄" means brother, and 父兄(fukei) does not contain the meening of woman. A long time ago, men had stronger right than woman, so many words don’t represent female. But now, those words have died and new words like 保護者(hogosha) are used in Japan. 保護者(hogosya) is equal to “parent”, “curator” or “custodian” in English. And, 保護者(hogosya) means father or mother or grandmother or grandfather or etc, so it represents the person who take care the child. Of course 父兄参観(hukeisannkan) changed to 保護者参観(hogosha sannkan). The later contains woman, so it was considered gender free. On the other hand, 障害者(syogaisya ) which is disabled person in English is changing to 障がい者(syogaisya). The kanji "害(gai)" is bad word which means harm and damage, so the new word doesn’t contain the kanji,害(gai) and use hiragana, がい(gai).
Thus, Japanese change to suit current trends. Nowadays people tend to dislike the words, which contain the meaning of discrimination, and that shows us the spread of thought of equalization. Most important tihng is not changing words but changing mind of discrimination.
