How do you say “woke” in Japanese?

A slight linguistic difference illuminates big cultural ones

I don’t know when I first heard “woke” being used as an adjective in English. Perhaps it was the stay woke! refrain of Childish Gambino’s 2016 hit “Redbone.” Whatever the case, there’s no avoiding the word today. I gather that it originated as slang for “being aware of racism and inequality,” but over the course of time, it seems to have been co-opted by its critics into an all-around epithet for anything progressive. As this negative usage of the word gained traction in American politics and media, Japanese news outlets naturally began covering it as well.

Several months ago, the Asahi Shimbun ran a piece about “woke” and how its meaning shifted in English. I worked for many years as a Japanese translator, so I’m always curious about how American slang is translated. Mostly, we render foreign words into Japanese using katakana. But “woke” is uōku (ウォーク), the same as the commonly used transliteration of “walk,” which can be confusing. Early on, many outlets did use variations of this (such as uōku bunka, “Woke culture”) with a big chunk of explanation, but it’s clunky. You might think a straight translation could work, like mezameta (目覚めた), “awaken.” But this sounds like something a cult leader would exhort you to do. So that’s no good, either.

More recently, some Japanese media outlets, including the Asahi, are attempting to translate the concept as “something like ishikii takai kei.” This is modern Japanese slang for a “highly conscious-presenting” person. Breaking it down, Ishiki is conscious or aware, and takai is high, which together feel positive. But the addition of the kei subverts things. It implies a sort of pose. So ishiki takai kei has a mocking, even condescending ring to it in Japanese.

It made a certain sense, but something didn’t sit right. It made me wonder: why “something like” ishikii takai kei? Why not exactly? Is there no better way to render it definitively? What are the differences between “woke” in English and ishikii takai kei in Japanese? But the article wasn’t about translating the word; it was explaining a trend in America. And so I put aside my questions and forgot about it.

Until last weekend.

It was my high school reunion. About eighty of us gathered in our old school’s cafeteria to celebrate and reminisce, and we had a great time. Afterwards, a handful of us headed out into the streets around our alma mater, exploring how the old neighborhood had changed over the last three decades. And of course, it had, a lot. Nearly all of the storefronts we knew had been replaced. One was now a little boutique with lace curtains and dried flowers in the windows. It sold handmade cupcakes, advertised with a big sign saying “all natural and organic.”

“Is that what they call ‘ishiki takai kei’?” asked one of my old schoolmates. She is a freelance photographer who does a lot of work at schools. She’s spent a lot more time around kids and teens than the rest of us, and obviously picked up this slang from them. It reminded me of the Asahi piece. But the shop certainly didn’t seem to be presenting in any kind of overtly political way, other than highlighting the fact its cupcakes were natural and organic. Even though she’d said it as a lighthearted quip, it got me thinking about “woke” and ishiki takai kei again.

When I started digging, I learned that the phrase ishiki takai kei seems to have first emerged in the Aughts, fifteen or so years back. After the Japanese economy crashed in 1990, we experienced a bleak period known as the Lost Decade. Companies stopped hiring, to the point young grads called it “the employment ice age.” By the first decade of the 21st century things had improved a little and the employment rate began rising. The media described this bright new crop of grads as ishiki ga takai gakusei, or “highly conscious students,” which was meant as praise: companies sought such types out, and the students adopted the phrase as a badge of honor among themselves. After more than a decade of darkness, things were finally looking up.

But then came the Lehman Shock of 2008. It triggered a global recession, Japan included. Memories of the Employment Ice Age renewed paranoia and desperation among young adults looking for work, who feared that they had to live up to being “highly conscious” or get passed over. This fueled an image of young adults dropping Western corporate slang like “brainstorms,” “initiatives,” and “synergies” into their speech to appear more with-it and competitive. And that led to the coining of ishiki takai kei – people who acted highly conscious, and making sure everyone around them knew it.

“‘Brain storming! Logical thinking! Synergy effect! Initiative! Flexibility!!’ – SO ANNOYING”

It’s probably no coincidence that this was the same year Facebook and Twitter arrived in Japan, giving young people new ways of presenting their identities online. As netizens fumed over what they saw as egocentric, status-seeking posers, ishiki takai-kei took on a new life of its own. By 2010, the meaning of “highly conscious” flipped from its positive origins into a negative, similar to how “woke” would in English a few years later. A 2016 article lists “forty habits of ‘highly conscious-presenting’ people,” which included “Addicted to social media,” “idolizing Steve Jobs,” “always supposedly ‘busy,’” “loving being seen with foreigners,” and the succinct but evocative “Starbucks + Macbook.”

In recent years, the phrase has continued to evolve. Young people have embraced its opposite, ishiki hikui-kei, or “those who act with low consciousness,” as an ironic catchphrase. This evokes similar youth movements abroad – the “laying down” phenomena in China, or South Korea’s “N-po” (giving-up) generation. Ishiki hikui-kei is about abandoning ambition, expectation, and even hope for society, in favor of living a happy go-lucky life on your own terms. It’s less about personal growth than survival – kind of like playing the game of life on easy mode.

Because of all of this, I don’t think ishiki takai kei is a good translation for “woke.” “Woke” refers to a state of mind about society. But ishiki takai kei is a statement about individuals — essentially, a style. It is far too light of a sentiment to convey the strong emotions “woke” evokes among Americans, whether supporters or detractors. So what to do instead?

The fundamental problem with “woke” is that it isn’t inherently descriptive. It is deliberately vague, which is why it has gained so much traction, for it can mean different things to different people in different contexts. When I worked as a translator, I sometimes encountered words that were so freighted with cultural meaning that rendering them in translation could undermine them. This is why English speakers call samurai samurai, and sushi sushi, for “ancient Japanese warriors” and “raw fish on vinegared rice” don’t really evoke what these things are.

“Woke,” with all of its baggage from the American culture wars, seems to be another case. Tellingly, the Japanese Wikipedia page on the topic leaves “woke” in English, not even bothering to use katakana. And I don’t see this as a cop-out. Quite the contrary. “Woke” is a slippery thing, impossible to pin down without taking sides. Yet that’s exactly what ishiki takai kei does: in being condescending, it sides with the critics of “woke.” But the job of a translation isn’t taking sides. It’s in giving readers the context to make their own decisions.

“Woke” is less a word than a litmus test. Leaving it as-is makes the reader dig deeper and learn more without biasing them one way or the other. Just as it did for me, when I first encountered it myself. Sometimes, no translation is the best translation of all.