Are you deaf or are your ears in rigor mortis? Is your watch slow, or just naff?

No, your ears are officially "dead" and your watch, unbelieveably, is "fast."

Are you deaf or are your ears in rigor mortis? Is your watch slow, or just naff?

No, your ears are officially "dead" and your watch, unbelieveably, is "fast."

People have been asking some odd questions and coming up with still more confusing answers. It's all in an effort to rid the Japanese language of terms that some say demean the disadvantaged.

This word purge, a veritable witch hunt against plain speaking, is not only secretive and semi-official, it's confounding the work of cartoonists, filmmakers, writers and broadcasters.

"I've had it," vowed top science-fiction writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, making a formal declaration of dan pitsu, or "abandoning the pen." That was two years ago, and the trend continues.

The move to shield the disadvantaged from presumed insult, intentional or otherwise, may be generating value-added paranoia among some of Tokyo's literati. Tsutsui, noted for his dark humor, explained that he was swearing off writing because of the "current social climate with its excessive repression" of words.

"More than in the past, the number of these `words that should not be used' is increasing. At this rate, it will one day be impossible to do even rakugo (comic stories)," he continued.

The immediate trigger for his outrage was a demand by the Japan Epileptic Association that he remove a passage from one of his novels excerpted for use by a high school textbook. The novel depicts a police state of the future, where cops scan our brain waves as routinely as checking for stolen bicycles. Anyone showing signs of epilepsy is forbidden to drive vehicles.

The association charged that the novel could promote discrimination against epileptics. Yet although Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co. stood by the author, refusing to delete the offending passage, Tsutsui was staunch in his decision to quit. In order to get the public thinking, he said, he wanted to be "the first canary to die." His problem was not with groups that protest, but with the media, which has largely sidestepped the issue and broadly censored itself.

"Black humor is no longer viable in Japan," Tsutsui concluded.

Writers, editors and journalists aren't the only ones increasingly harassed by self-appointed watchdogs whose mission is to weed out sabetsu yogo, or "discriminatory terminology."

A producer at a certain Tokyo broadcasting company decided that the phrase tokei ga kurutte iru, meaning "the clock isn't working properly," could not be aired since kurutte iru can also mean "insane" and might therefore upset the mentally ill, or those who speak for them. But the substitute phrase, tokei ga okurete iru, or "the clock is slow," may suggest that the owner of the clock--if not the owner of the clock itself--is "backward," or "out of touch." Finally, the phrase was changed to "the clock is fast," and everyone was happy, or at least relieved.

Many other broadcasters as well go out of their way to avoid offending anyone with any of a broadening range of afflictions. Tokyo's Channel 12 once dropped a song it was planning to air since the lyrics mentioned being "blind with love." And in the style manual of a daily newspaper, the phrase fujiyu na, which means, roughly, "inconvenienced," is recommended to describe a broad range of physical handicaps.

According to the handbook, blind people are no longer to be described simply as mekura ("blind"), but as me no fujiyu na hito, or "visually inconvenienced." As with the "sensitive" terms like physically challenged, hearing impaired and seeing impared, the Japanese language euphemisms are straightforward and also apply to the deaf, the mute and the lame.

Comics have not escaped revision. The manga classic Kamui Gaiden, set in the rough, tough times of samurai Edo, concerns a youthful ninja (Kamui), who goes blind and is bullied by villagers. In the original edition, a villager defends Kamui, saying, Aite wa mekura de neeka ("Come on, the guy's blind"). But the revised edition reads--you guessed it--"Come on, the guy's visually inconvenienced."

Things get more complicated when taboo words crop up within other words. For instance, mekurajima, which refers to dark blue cotton cloth, is to be avoided, says the book. So is moai, meaning "blind love," which is better replaced by a word such as nekokawaigari, or "doting on cats."

Since 1973, the Tokyo television station TBS has kept a secret handbook of taboo words. Both NTV and NET have followed suit, with books that contain up to 230 words. "There are no set guidelines," says Harumi Miyoshi, a department director at the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan. "Judgment must be made by each corporation."

On some words, however, there is consensus. Most TV and radio broadcasters consider the word kichigai, meaning "crazy," strictly a no-no. This taboo extends to any expression that includes "kichigai," such as kaakichi (car crazy), tsurikichi (fishing crazy) and eiga kichigai (movie crazy). In fact, Mainichi Broadcasting once aired a program claiming doctors had proved the sound of the word "kichi" arouses anxiety in mental patients and impedes their treatment.

Nor are translated works immune. The name of a frequently appearing character in the Ed McBain crime series 87th Precinct, "The Deaf Man," was changed to "The Man with the Dead Ear." And according to one writer and translator who has worked for major publications, there was talk of changing the title of Dostoevsky's classic, The Idiot. Fortunately for Dostoevsky, the title still stands, but with a disclaimer and an apology in some editions.

Some of the media's paranoia stems from what it claims are the extreme sensitivities of the Buraku Kaiho Domei, or Buraku Liberation League, which was founded in March 1922 to fight discrimination against Japan's traditional "untouchable" caste, the burakumin. Now a powerful interest group, the BLL has reportedly hauled alleged violators of its acceptable-language threshold before special tribunals, where the offenders are pressured to recant and apologize in grueling "trials."

In freelance writer Kenji Yamazawa's article about physical fitness, he described an exercise intended to tone the buttocks, which involved getting down on one's hands and knees. To Yamazawa's surprise, his editor changed the phrase "go down on all fours" to "lie prone," and when quizzed by Yamazawa, answered that he was concerned about offending the BLL, since the word yotsu ("four") can be used as a derogatory term to describe burakumin.

Other media have been equally cautious. The controversial manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi (TJ 05/94), whose irreverent views earned him the admiration of readers and colleagues--and a place on the Aum Shinrikyo cult's hit list--points out that cartoonists are often forced to draw all five fingers on a human hand instead of four, even if the perspective of the drawing dictates otherwise. This is for the same reason that the word "four" was out of bounds for writer Yamazawa.

"It's overreaction by the media," says BLL spokesman Satoshi Onishi. "We don't just look to see what words are being used, we consider the context and the intent. The media just mechanically substitute euphemisms without thinking of context--they are actually promoting discrimination, simply by avoiding what they consider to be touchy topics."

Cartoonist Kobayashi would agree. In his manga, Gomanism Sengen, or "Declaration of Arrogance," Kobayashi attacks the media head-on with charges of fascism--a "fascism of self-censoring expressions." "The media are afraid," he says. "They're strangling their own throats and throttling their words."

Ironically, the shrinking acceptability of plain language is itself subject to a partial taboo. NHK, a bastion of conservative broadcasting, refused to be interviewed for this article. "There's nothing to talk about," replied a press spokesman, who claimed that NHK strictly observes the ban on "discriminatory terminology." When pressed for more details, he said only, "The subject is too complicated to discuss."

Some journalists and others in the media are concerned about criticisms that they bow too easily to censors. The president of the Japan PEN Club, Hotsuki Ozaki, who has just finished editing a book of essays and debates on the issue, believes that the situation is improving. However: "We must be constantly vigilant," he says. "We must be aware of the feelings of people who have been victims of discrimination. At the same time, we must not resort to `word hunting,' or we could lose the beauty of our living language--our rich cultural asset."

Hopefully, Ozaki's words won't fall on deaf--oops, we mean dead--ears.