Apparently the language leaders in Japan have identified “taipa” as the word of the year in 2022.

Taipa is used for talking about efficient use of time, and is particularly associated with the members of Generation Z, born roughly between 1995 and 2010. In search of optimum “time performance,” they might watch films and drama at double speed or via recut versions that only show major plot points, and skip to the catchy parts of songs.

I fully agree with Alan Jacobs here. If the only point is to get through as much content as possible, what is the point of experiencing that content in the first place? You’re not using your time efficiently, you’re wasting your time. Maybe you’re only wasting half as much time, but it’s still wasted time.

Still, it must be said: taipa isn’t “efficient use of time.” Instead, it’s about the worstuse of one’s time, especially one’s leisure time, that I can imagine. There are no canons of “efficiency” that apply here unless you think that there’s some kind of value in watching more movies and listening to more music, regardless of quality or interest. And if you think that you’re nuts — as I have recently suggested. As I said in that post: If you’re accelerating the rate at which you listen and watch, what are you trying to get to?

And yet I am convicted, as I have literally said “we need to get through this” TO STUDENTS in my classroom when we get behind, and that reinforces the exact opposite way of relating to literature than I want them to have. We do have a great plan for the year and it does require “getting through” a certain amount of text per week or we’re not going to get to everything. But as good and important as everything planned is, I must change how I talk about it.

We just started The Brothers Karamazov (which I’m swiftly becoming convinced may in fact be the greatest novel ever written) and I’ve been more than idly thinking a good year-long class plan would actually be to read Brothers K…and then read Brothers K again. What are we getting to by getting through it? Reading it again. I don’t think my school would let me do this, but I’m hanging on to the idea anyway.