Re: City Names and Initials

"wataritori" <watari.pg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote ...
I'm curious about a convention I've seen in several
Japanese books (and websites too) when it comes to
referring to city names. Fairly frequently, the name
itself of the city isn't used, but is referred to, e.g., as
Ｎ市 or S市. For example, in the case I was working
through recently, after checking independently from
other sources, it became clear from the context that
Ｎ市 was referring to 沼津 (Numatsu) and Ｓ市 was
referring to the Shizuoka City, the prefectural capital.

I'm just curious why a writer would choose to address
the cities this way, and what is it that drives the
convention? At first, I thought it was to maintain
anonymity, but actually, since the actual names can
be discerned from the context, that doesn't seem to
be the case. Also, writing Ｎ市 instead of 沼津市 isn't
much of a space saver, so it doesn't seem to be much
of an abbreviation, really.

Any ideas?

How about the /pretext/ of anonymity. Or if you prefer
plausible deniability. Same as in games etc. プレステ (Playstation) will be changed into something like プレスタ.
Nobody cares if your WacDonalds golden valley is obviously
a McDonalds golden arch (turned upside down) as long as they haven't got enough reason to go to court.
.

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