The Japanese language (kanji: 日本語 Nihongo) is the indigenous language of Japan. Its writing system uses a mixed script of logographic kanji and syllabic kana. Kana is comprised of katakana and hiragana. Sentences are commonly written using a combination of all three Japanese scripts without spaces between words. Japanese written in Latin script is called rōmaji. Though horizontal left-to-right Japanese writing is increasingly common in Japan due to European language influence, traditionally, Japanese is written vertically in columns going from top to bottom, with multiple text columns progressing from right to left.
Japanese word order is typically subject–object–verb and its basic sentence structure is topic–comment. For example, the sentence "My aunt read a book at the library on Tuesday" (伯母は火曜日に図書館で本を読みました Oba wa kayōbi ni toshokan de hon o yomimashita) in Japanese word order is "My aunt on Tuesday at the library a book read". Japanese has an honorific speech system used to show social rank, social intimacy, or similarity in rank. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number (e.g., "shoe" versus "shoes"), gender, or article aspect. Syllables can end only with vowels in Japanese, excluding the consonant ん (hiragana) /n/
. Japanese lacks the English 'C' sound, 'F' sound, 'L' sound, 'Q' sound, 'R' sound, 'V' sound, 'X' sound, short 'A' sound, and "th" sound.
Japanese name order is surname then given name (e.g., Hamato Yoshi's surname is "Hamato" while his given name is "Yoshi"). This is because Japan typically organizes information from general to specific and as a collectivist society, it prioritizes identifying the family one belongs to over identifying the individual. It is easy for Japanese speakers to differentiate between surname and given name no matter the order because very few Japanese names are both. Japanese names are usually written in kanji, but are also written in katakana, hiragana, or a kanji-kana blend. Kanji characters can have the same reading but a different meaning (e.g., the given name "Yoshi" can be written with the kanji character 克 or 芳 or 義, among others. In the context of a given name, each aforesaid kanji shares the same reading but differ in meaning) and because a single kanji character can have multiple readings, names written in kanji are more likely to be misread (e.g., the given names "Kaoru", "Yuki", and "Tsutomu" can all be written as 薫). Names written solely in kana ensure reading accuracy, but lack meaning in their characters, unlike kanji.
In TMNT[]
Japanese is a frequent source of both names and terms in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. As the various versions of TMNT have largely taken place in the North America (particularly New York City), Japanese is not an everyday language or even a necessarily well-understood language to most of the characters, who instead speak English, which is also the language most untranslated versions of TMNT are produced in.
Most versions of Splinter as well as the Shredder can speak and understand Japanese as their native language. In some versions, the Ninja Turtles also have knowledge of Japanese, while in other versions they may know vocabulary related to ninjutsu but otherwise cannot speak or understand it conversationally. When asked if the Ninja Turtles speak Japanese aside from ninjutsu terms in October 2014, TMNT creator Peter Laird answered in a Blogger post, "We never really got into this in the comics, but I think it is safe to say that Leo speaks it fairly well, Don also, but Mike and Raph only know some words and phrases."[1] Even where they may have knowledge of Japanese, Splinter and the Ninja Turtles normally speak English together in their home.
For a sampling of some of this Japanese vocabulary, see the Japanese glossary.
Mirage[]
In the Mirage continuity, proficiency in Japanese is not often addressed, but it is occasionally implied that all four Ninja Turtles are fluent in the language, though usually speaking English both at home and to others. This is retroactively cemented in the Usagi Yojimbo crossover story Namazu or the Big Fish Story, where it is specifically acknowledged that the four Ninja Turtles whom Miyamoto Usagi and Kakera had previously met had no trouble speaking or understanding Japanese, whereas none of the new Turtles they met in the story could speak or understand Japanese except for Michelangelo.
Archie[]
In the Archie continuity's Midnight Sun, Part 2, Chien Khan is seen telling the brainwashed Warrior Dragon in an ancient dialect of the Japanese language to smash the Hiroshima nuclear power station.
IDW[]
In the IDW continuity, the Hamato sons were native speakers of Japanese in their past lives in feudal Japan. After they and their father Hamato Yoshi were reincarnated as turtles and a rat and then subsequently mutated, only Yoshi's reincarnation Splinter had full recall of his past life's memories, and the Ninja Turtles themselves could only speak English.
But in the mini-series Secret History of the Foot Clan, Michelangelo surprises both himself and his brothers by incidentally demonstrating his fluency in Japanese, as he flipped through the pages of the Ashi no Himitsu and could read and understand it effortlessly.
In a later mini-series, Turtles in Time, Mikey's brothers could still not speak or understand Japanese, and he had to interpret for them when they time traveled to feudal Japan and encountered the family of their own past lives.
This linguistic arrangement reappeared in the Usagi Yojimbo crossover story Namazu or the Big Fish Story, when initially only Mikey could communicate with Miyamoto Usagi and Kakera, until Kakera cast a spell that allowed everyone to understand each other's languages as if they were their own.
In embracing his Japanese fluency, Mikey became a collector of untranslated Japanese manga.
2012 TV series[]
In the 2012 TV series, all four Ninja Turtles are fluent in Japanese, but are almost never shown speaking it. In the season 1 episode "Karai's Vendetta", April O'Neil mentions having learned some conversational Japanese from "her brothers" which she speaks occasionally with Mr. Murakami. The Ninja Turtles' fluency is not fully implied until "Tale of the Yokai", when they time travel to meet Tang Shen in the days before her death, and are covert witnesses to the Hamato Clan's fall to Oroku Saki and the Foot Clan. All scenes involved, however, are depicted in English.
Japanese dialogue is generally rare in the series, save mostly for the Japanese commands Splinter speaks to his children. But Splinter himself occasionally says Japanese words like "nani?" when startled or "mōshi mōshi" when answering the Cheese Phone and in episodes such as "The Manhattan Project, Part 1". Among other characters not specifically (or immediately) linked to Splinter's backstory, Karai and Tiger Claw are also shown to be fluent in Japanese, which is unsurprising as both are natives of Japan.
Amazing Adventures[]
The Amazing Adventures comics series, which is a separate continuity originally based on the 2012 TV series, the story departs with the TV series in establishing early on in the story arc Zodiac that the Ninja Turtles cannot immediately understand Splinter and the Shredder when they briefly speak to each other in Japanese, and are only understood with the help of translation software on Donatello's T-Phone.
2014 film series[]
In the 2014 film series, Splinter and Oroku Saki speak Japanese occasionally, the latter more than the former. Eric Sacks' fluency stems from him being born and raised in Japan. Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo each wear Japanese characters on themselves, Raph on his carapace, bandana, and right shoulder, and Leo and Mikey on their carapaces.
Rise of the TMNT[]
In Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Splinter doesn’t speak Japanese (aside from saying "ninja") until more than halfway through season 1 in “Shadow of Evil” and during the infrequent times the Ninja Turtles speak Japanese, they are only ever heard saying basic vocabulary such as "teacher" and "goodbye" and don’t otherwise exhibit an understanding of spoken nor written Japanese. Splinter and the Ninja Turtles also seem to only watch Japanese Lou Jitsu films in their English dubs as well as shown in their viewing of Teriyaki Shakedown in “Origami Tsunami”. Overall, Japanese is not part of their household’s language.[2][3] Foot Recruit is among the series' characters that speaks Japanese most frequently, but her level of fluency is currently unknown.
Japanese increases in relevancy in the season 2 finale with the introduction of the phrase "Anata wa hitori ja nai".
2023 film series[]
In the 2023 film series, it was stated in August 2023 by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem script coordinator Andrew Joustra in a Tweet that, "I don’t know this for certain but my guess would be that Donnie probably knows a little [Japanese] from anime and trying to teach himself. The others probably don’t know any."[4]