Are there words so bad that they aren't allowed on television?

Question

Warning: We're all adults here, but just in case, this question may contain words, in both Japanese and English, that some may not like to read.

A long time ago, when I was working with a translator, a native Japanese speaker, the term 気違い{きちがい} ("insane person") came up. She told me it was one of the worst insults one can use. So bad, in fact, that you wouldn't hear it on television.

I wasn't clear to me then, or now, if she meant that as her opinion, hyperbole to express how bad the word is, or that there really are some guidelines or rules about words that can be uttered on television.

In any case, I took it to mean that 気違い{きちがい} is much more offensive than, say 「この野郎{やろう}！」, which means "You asshole!"... maybe.

Then, a little while ago, I'm reading a Tintin book, タンタンの冒険{ぼうけん} - 青{あお}い蓮{はす} (The Adventures of Tintin - The Blue Lotus), and on page 13, when Tintin is running away from a sword weilding madman on drugs, he yells 「きちがいだ！」

Since this is a book for young readers, I guess my impression of 気違い{きちがい} is wrong...?

First question is, just how bad is 気違い{きちがい}?

Second question, is there a list of words considered too bad for television? (If so, references please, lets not just speculate.)

(Please no overly technical linguistic terms. Thanks!)

Answer 1

1. You are right. Using the word 気違い is insulting and is not allowed on mass media. The reason is because its use often means that you are mixing up intellectual disability, insaneness, and other mental diseases, which have nothing to do with each other, and it connotates that they are all harmful. In the old days, mass media would write a news article such as "a patient of a mental hospital escaped and killed someone", and people will discriminate all the people belonging to any of the categories referred to as 気違い, thinking that they may do a similar thing. In the worst case, there are ignorant people who even confuse physically disabled poeple with mentally disabled people and with insane people.

2. Japanese broadcasting has taboos, on which factors other than political correctness have strong influence. You can easily obtain a list by doing a search with the words '放送禁止用語', so I will not place a link here. You can often see political pressure on them. Among the famous is to mention the nature of the religional sect soukagakkai: video 1, video 2 (Video 1 is already deleted, and I added the link intentionally to show you the political pressure). Another famous taboo word is the female genital. Male genital is not a taboo, and this shows sexual bias.

Edit The original video on youtube came to my attention, which shows the moment of an NHK announcer's mentioning the connection of 公明党 and 創価学会 being blocked probably by a superior in NHK due to a political pressure by 創価学会.

Answer 2

Oh yes. From what I understand, Japan is overzealous about keeping possibly politically incorrect terms off the air; see the Wikipedia article on "word-hunting" which does indeed mention 気違い. See the main Japanese Wikipedia article on 「放送禁止用語」(un-broadcastable words) for more information; it links to this list of un-broadcastable words.

One thing to note is that the list of words considered unfit for broadcast includes words in common usage that few people find offensive, not just words you wouldn't say in front of your grandmother. The word 「床屋」(barbershop) is a prime example. There was a barbershop in the Edo period that had a tokonoma; people referred to it as 「床の間のある店」(the shop with the tokonoma), and then just 「床屋」for short. However, the kanji「床」can mean "bed," so there are people who think it means that barbershops were fronts for brothels, even though this is not historically true. Thus 「床屋」is on the list of un-broadcastable words, even though it is used in common parlance without raising any eyebrows.

Answer 3

I prefer this question to the other one because whereas the other was asking for the actual words, I feel this one could evolve into more intelligent discussion on a particular facet of the language.

To answer the question, then: Yes, there are words so bad that (some) networks will censor them. To provide a reference, I recall watching a weekly comedy show on Saturday nights wherein one of the regular comedians had a routine based on drawing storyboards and asking girls (where "girl" means early 20s) in the audience to fill in blanks in the dialogue. The "correct answers" were always innocuous, but the blanks were chosen so that you could easily put in an vulgar word. (This was of course the entire point of the routine, as not only the word itself, which was censored, but also the comedian's exaggerated reaction to such a word coming from a girl, drew much laughter.)

Just as in the U.S., a different network (or a different broadcast time slot) will have different standards for what is censored and what is allowed. A late-night TBS Radio program such as 爆笑問題, which often takes in 下ネタ【しもねた】 from listeners, will censor nothing, whereas a midday show on the same station will be more judicious in which listener mail is chosen for reading on the air.

The most curious thing about Japanese profanity, in my opinion, is that a particular word can receive different English translations based on how and when it is said. For example, 畜生【ちくしょう】 is often used as a generic profanity when the speaker is frustrated by a situation or turn of events. It could be easily translated into English as a four-letter word beginning with F or S (both of which my upbringing has made me embarrassed to type out), but I have heard this word in situations where a "lesser profanity" would be a better translation: many times from people who would never think of saying anything from the list of outright vulgar words, and once even from a father who was playing a game of cards with his wife and two young children. Similarly, constructions which have an "informal variant", such as the ～んではない prohibitive and its ～んじゃねぇ variant, though they sound not much different to the ears of native English speakers, can sometimes be interpreted as particularly vulgar to native Japanese speakers. This illustrates the importance in Japanese of how you say something over what you say.

Answer 4

just add two cents on 気違い, I remember from the movie about Yamashita Kiyoshi, when he is being teased for being metally handicapped he yells: 気違いじゃないだな！ In this context I saw that it was rude but it did not seem like a terrible curseword.