Car license plate lore: What those numbers can tell you

If license plates could only talk! The tales they’d tell would beguile many a helpless, fuming paralysis in traffic jams such as the New Year ones just past.

Actually, says Shukan Post (Jan 1-5),  they do tell tales, though interpreting them takes some skill, a little background information, and maybe a lot of imagination.

It’s a wonder the number 4 appears on license plates. Its Japanese reading, shi, is homophonous with the character shi (死), meaning “death.” But try spotting, just for fun, the next time you’re caught in traffic, a plate whose last two digits are 42 or 49. You’re not likely to. 42 – shi-ni, can mean, when written死に, “to death.” 49 – shi-ku can mean “death and suffering” ((死苦).

And yet the number 4219 you might well find, though one of its Japanese readings, shi-ni-i-ku, can mean “going towards death” (死に行く).

A Japanese license plate bears a locality and a small number topping a hiragana character and up to four large digits below. Hiragana characters lack the suggestiveness of kanji, but still, shi (し) is taboo – “death” again. Hei (へ) is similarly shunned, for its uncomfortable association with the homophonous kanji 屁 (fart).

 Local pride comes into play. Residents of Tokyo’s upscale Koto Ward have plates marked Adachi – a wide geographical designation, parts of which are not, economically speaking, upwardly mobile. As of September, Koto cars will bear Koto plates.

 Then there’s Yokosuka. It’s in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Yokohama, whose designation its plates bear. City officials bristled. Wasn’t it time Yokosuka graduated to its own plates? Strangely enough, residents were cool to the idea. A survey done in September showed 38% for, 47% against.

In 1999, drivers who care about such things won the privilege of choosing their own numbers. One who does care is former pro baseball pitcher Masaichi Kaneda. Now 83, he is the only Japanese pitcher to have won 400 games. His plate number is 34. Fans will immediately know why. It was his uniform number, first with the Kokutetsu Swallows, which he joined in 1950, then with the Yomiuri Giants until his retirement in 1969.

Nestled in the foothills of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture is the city of Fujiyoshida, whose public vehicles driven by local officials bear plates sporting, beneath kanji reading Fujisan (Mount Fuji), the number 3776 – immediately recognizable nationwide as Mount Fuji’s elevation, in meters.

Speaking of shared numbers: When U.S. President Donald Trump visited Japan in November, two vehicles in his entourage bore identical plates, top and bottom. In one rode the president. In the other rode a presidential decoy. License plates ordinarily meant to identify were in this case used to make identification impossible. For security reasons, presumably.

© Japan Today