[News page-Taiwan Strait Net].
According to Japan's Mainichi Shimbun on January 9, stenographers are "craftsmen" who use special symbols to record the content of parliamentary deliberations. The familiar scenes that have continued since the first Imperial Diet in 1890 have also come to an end due to the digital process and other factors. In November 2023, the House of Councillors of the Japanese Diet officially ended the use of handwritten shorthand at the meeting site. What did the stenographers who ushered in a turning point in history think?
In late December, this reporter met stenographers Yuki Nakanishi and Kanae Omura at Nagatacho, Tokyo.
The combination of dots and lines represents 'Prime Minister', which in this case represents 'Japan'. Nakanishi said, quickly writing down a series of characters with dots and lines interlaced on the paper.
Shorthand is the technique of using simple symbols such as dots and lines to quickly record conversations. In addition to the 50-syllable charts, the symbols used by stenographers also include "abbreviations" that represent more than 5,000 commonly used words. Sometimes stenographers would design ways to arrange and combine frequently occurring words according to their own habits, and the technique has continued to evolve in the 130 years since the time of the Imperial Diet.
At the time of the meeting, the stenographer writes down everyone's speeches on a piece of paper with marks, and then re-enters them into the computer to retain the funds to form a meeting record. Because the proceedings are repeatedly quoted by later generations, the stenographer can also be said to be the "recorder" of history.
Both houses of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly have specialized training institutions for stenographers, but in January 2007 they closed their respective training institutions due to advances in digital technology and increased demands for efficiency. Nakanishi and Omura were hired in 2006, and it can be said that they also became the "last stenographers" of the Diet.
According to Nakanishi, she wanted to become a stenographer mainly because she was left-handed. Since shorthand is written from left to right, it is not friendly to left-handers, and "there is never even a hearing in constitutional history of left-handers as stenographers". But China and the West have become the only one.
Currently, there are about 80 stenographers in the House of Councillors, and in the future, minutes will be taken mainly by computer, and Nakanishi and Omura will no longer use handwritten shorthand. Regarding the fact that the job he once longed for no longer exists, Omura said, "It's a bit sad that a piece of history is over, because I can't participate in it anymore." (Compiled by Liu Lin).
*: Refer to the news network).