The final list of candidate characters for the great 2009 jōyō kanji update has been announced. Mutantfrog have a typically interesting and well-commented post covering the basics. Here are some additional observations I've been saving for this occasion.

I. 俺 (ore, "I")

It might seem unbelievable that the kanji used to write the most common first-person pronoun used in informal male speech was even up for debate. In fact though the 俺 debate is symbolic of much deeper issues in educational policy.

This article summarizes the position of the committee members who argued against 俺 as follows: The jōyō kanji list is about official/public standards, not informal/private ones. Putting 俺 on the same footing with 私 (watashi, the polite first-person pronoun) would send the wrong message to schoolchildren about appropriate language in formal settings.

The counter-argument is that 俺 is an irreplacable part of the Japanese language as a medium for communication. Even if most men know enough not to refer to themselves as 俺 while meeting a client, they identify "in their hearts" as an 俺 (男性が心の中で自分を主語にして考えるときはほとんどが「俺」). It is therefore cruel and unusual to leave 俺 off the list when 私 and 僕 (boku, another casual first-person male pronoun) are on it.

Ultimately it comes down to what role the government should play in promoting literacy: Should focus strictly on getting all future voters to a baseline level where they can participate in public debate, ignoring all other possible applications of reading/writing, or should it spread its resources more broadly and try to sow the seeds of "private literacy" as well?

It should be obvious where my personal sympathies lie, although I always just write it 己 anyway. Good enough for Akutagawa is good enough for me.

II. 誰 (dare, "who?")

I still remember my first clash with this goddamn character. It was when I had just started reading books without furigana (kanji readings), meaning that I was looking a lot of characters up. I must have spent fifteen minutes unsuccessfully trying to find 誰 in my kanji dictionary — it looked so familiar, I was sure it had to be in there, maybe under a different radical or something. Later at home I looked it up at WWWJDIC or somewhere and found it easily. I also learned that it wasn't a jōyō kanji, and oh yeah those were the only ones my dictionary contained. But hey, why would you need a non-jōyō kanji? It's not like people ever ASK FUCKING WH- QUESTIONS OR ANYTHING.

So yeah, good decision.

(That was also the incident that prompted me to buy a real kanji dictionary.)

III. The losers

Five kanji are to be dropped from the list, and word on the street says that they are:

1. 銑, zuku. Pig iron.
2. 錘, tsumu. Spindle.
3. 勺, shaku. Obsolete unit of measurement.
4. 匁, monme. Obsolete unit of measurement.
5. 脹, hareru etc. To swell.

The first four are no-brainers. I don't even know what "pig iron" means in English. And classicist though I am, even I see no need to burden 21st-century kids with monme. It's an even bigger waste of time than learning the imperial system, which at least is still used in backwaters like Burma and the United States of America.

脹 is not being dropped so much as replaced. Most dictionaries give two possible spellings of hareru meaning "to swell": 脹れる and 腫れる. Despite the fact that the latter is far more commonly used, only the former is currently on the jōyō list. So 腫 has been scheduled for addition, and 脹 is to be shown the door. A triumph for descriptivism.

IV. Food

Two of the new characters are 串 (kushi, "(food on a) skewer") and 丼 (don, "bowl (of rice with something else on top)"). I wonder if this reflects some social phenomenon: changes in restaurant industry, weakening food snobbery...?

I also wonder if it's really worth adding 串. Just look at it. There are probably people out who don't even realize it's actually a character and not a picture.