I imagine many of the victims of the powerful earthquake that struck the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture on Jan. 1 were celebrating New Year’s Day at home with family and friends or out and about enjoying family trips.
The buzzer announces the start of the performance. People in the audience take their seats and the buzz of voices gradually subsides. As anticipation rises for the story that is about to unfold on the stage, the theater curtain “doncho” in Japanese begins to rise.
“Sanseido Kokugo Jiten kara Kieta Kotoba Jiten” (literally, dictionary of words that have disappeared from the Sanseido Japanese Dictionary), co-edited by Yukinori Kenbo, provides a catalogue of expressions that were once included in the authoritative eponymous lexicon but later removed from revised editions.