1.
modern; stylish; contemporary
Of a stylish, contemporary aesthetic — clean lines, fashionable, up-to-date in look and feel. モダン applies most often to design, architecture, fashion, interiors, and art. Unlike English "modern," which can mean "of the present era" in general, モダン in Japanese is almost always evaluative — implying a sleek, refined, or cosmopolitan style rather than simply "of the current time." For the temporal sense, Japanese uses 現代的 or 現代.
モダンな家具。
Modern furniture.
モダン is a な-adjective from English "modern," used almost exclusively to describe a stylish, contemporary aesthetic in design, architecture, fashion, and the arts.
Common patterns
Common collocations
- モダンな建築: modern architecture
- モダンな家具 / インテリア: modern furniture / interior
- モダンアート: modern art
- モダンジャズ: modern jazz
- モダンダンス: modern dance
- 和モダン: Japanese-modern (a popular hybrid design style)
Similar words
- 現代的: modern, contemporary — the closer match for "modern" in the sense of "of the present era," or "in line with current values." 現代的な考え方 = a modern way of thinking. モダン would be unnatural here.
- スタイリッシュ: stylish — overlaps with the "stylish" reading of モダン, but emphasizes individual chic over period style
- 古風: old-fashioned, classical — typical antonym
- レトロ: retro — explicitly evokes a past era as a style choice
Usage
- Beware of carrying English "modern" directly into Japanese for the time-period sense. "Modern Japan" as a historical era is 近代日本; "a modern smartphone" is 最新のスマートフォン or 現代のスマートフォン, not モダンなスマートフォン.
- The term "モダンボーイ/モダンガール" (often abbreviated モボ・モガ) historically referred to fashionable young men and women of the 1920s-30s — a useful clue to the word's stylistic, cosmopolitan flavor.