December 02, 2007

Japanese military ranks

Rewatching Shingu I suddenly became interested in the Japanese names for military ranks. They translate Weinul's rank as "lieutenant", but since he's navy I had been assuming he was an O-3. Actually, it turns out his rank is shoui, which means he's an O-1. They should have translated his rank as "ensign".

So I did a google search for "shoui chuui kuui" and turned up nothing but word lists. No one had a page about Japanese officer rank names. Thus: 

Level Japanese US Army US Navy
O-1 å°‘æ…° shoui 2nd Lieutenant Ensign
O-2 中尉 chuui 1st Lieutenant Lieutenant junior grade
O-3 空尉 kuui Captain Lieutenant
O-4 少佐 shousa Major Lieutenant Commander
O-5 中佐 chuusa Lt. Colonel Commander
O-6 空佐 kuusa Colonel Captain
O-7 准将 junshou Brigadier General Rear Admiral (lower half)
O-8 å°‘å°† shoushou Major General Rear Admiral (upper half)
O-9 æµ·å°† kaishou Lt. General Vice Admiral
O-10 大将 taishou General Admiral

At least that's what the dictionary says. I think there's a mistake on the kanji for the first one. Symmetry suggests it really should be å°‘å°‰. æ…° means "consolation, amusement, make sport of". Clearly that isn't right.

Which gets me curious about the kanji, since the pattern is so regular. chuui is 中尉 which means "middle officer". Isn't that interesting? 少 means "little". 空 means "sky"; presumably implying "top".

For O-4 we have 少佐 "little assistant". And then middle and big.

For O-7 we have 准将 "associate leader". O-8 is "little leader". O-9 is "sea leader". And O-10 means "big leader". Some of those obviously don't make much sense taken literally, but our rank names don't, either. (Especially the confusion about the use of "lieutenant" and "captain".)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Japanese at 11:41 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 282 words, total size 3 kb.

1

æ…° means "consolation, amusement, make sport of". Clearly that isn't right.

Considering the way O-1s are thought of (in ANY military organization), 'amusement' makes perfect sense. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 03, 2007 05:52 AM (dGuAN)

2 The wikipedia article on Pumpkin Scissors has a table of Japanese rank and insignia prior to 1945, and 1st lieutenant is listed as 少尉 - shou i. It only goes up to Major, but it includes Warrant Officer (准尉 - jun i), Sergeant Major (曹長 - sou chou), Corporal (伍長 - go chou), and Private First Class (上等兵 - joutou hei). These come from The International Encyclopedia of Uniform and Rank Insignia Around the World. The Japan entry has different names for the modern Ground Self Defense Force and Maritime Self Defense Force, which is probably why you couldn't find a page for them. Today, O-1 would be 2等海尉 (nitou kai i).

Posted by: Jim Burdo at December 03, 2007 06:21 AM (o4YY8)

3 U. S. Navy rank system gets weird with the modular Admiral - which half of an Admiral's rear do you salute?

Commodore was a perfectly good rank (O-7) long before it was a computer, but then the Navy decided flotillas were obsolete, and the rank designated for command of flotillas, the Commodore, vanished.

Posted by: thornharp at December 03, 2007 09:59 AM (OO+l8)

4

The British call O-7 "Brigadier" and "Commodore" and they're not flag ranks.

For a long time a US Navy O-7 wore two stars, even though an Army O-7 wore one. That was always really stupid, and it's been changed.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 03, 2007 10:10 AM (+rSRq)

5

Odd, because thinking back through most of the animé I've seen, the word I've heard most often for captain seems to be "kanchou" (phonetic spelling, no idea what the correct romanji is).

 

Posted by: ubu at December 03, 2007 11:11 AM (dhRpo)

6 That word denotes the captain of a military vessel, but it's not a rank term. Analogous to "skipper". There's a different word, "senchou" IIRC, for captains of civilian vessels.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at December 03, 2007 11:28 AM (LMDdY)

7

As Avatar says, "kanchou" isn't a formal rank. One place you heard it was Banner of the Stars, where it was used to address Lafiel. Her actual rank in the Imperial Navy is jusshouchou. But you'll hear Jinto and Samson call her kanchou which, as noted, translates quite well as "skipper".

The difference is that it isn't quite as informal as "skipper"; using it isn't considered excessively familiar.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 03, 2007 12:30 PM (+rSRq)

8 So kanchou could be used for a shousa if he's the person in charge of a ship (such as a DE or even a DD, WWII era) then. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 03, 2007 03:43 PM (dGuAN)

9 I'm now going to have to go back to watching Irresponsible Captain Tylor to try to pick up the ranks.  I guess I'm used to the differences between the Captain rank and the Captain position on a ship that I wasn't confused hearing Lt. Cmdr. Tylor addressed as Captain / "kanchou".

My father tells stories of causing confusion at when he was stationed at San Diego navy base decades ago whenever he was addressed as Captain and everyone turns around and he's this young Army officer.

Posted by: Civilis at December 03, 2007 04:43 PM (VgEMC)

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