A bicycle was parked at the end of a dimly lit hallway in an old apartment building

As I walked through the residential area, I saw an old apartment building. It was an old apartment building with the scent of the Showa era (1926-1989), and a name in a foreign language would not be appropriate. I didn't know what kind of name it had, but a Japanese name would have been more appropriate here.

The sliding door of the entrance was open, so I walked up to it to see what was going on inside. I peeked through the crack and saw a dimly lit hallway stretching straight to the opposite door, with a bicycle parked at the end of the hallway.

I was told that the Chinese character for "mansion" was not used as a name for apartments until the 1980s. It seems that it already had an old-fashioned image at that time. Instead, foreign words such as "Corpo" and "Heim" came to be used. Even if the words have the same meaning, it is easier to evoke a new and cool image by using a new foreign word.

According to the website Daily Portal Z, the tendency to use foreign words in names has been seen in the names of commercial facilities until relatively recently: until the early 2000s, many names used English words such as "shopping center" and "building," and then names reminiscent of Latin words increased. Since 2010, however, the trend has been to incorporate more Japanese words into the names. Typical examples are Shibuya Hikarie, Tokyo Solamachi under the Skytree, and KITTE next to Tokyo Station.

In light of the fact that such naming of commercial facilities is becoming more and more common, we may soon see more apartment and condominium names incorporating Japanese words that are somewhere between punny and fashionable.

Comment via

日本語