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> Now the Japanese people are understandably concerned about maintaining their traditions in the face of massive Western cultural influences. I lived in Japan

> Now the Japanese people are understandably concerned about maintaining their traditions in the face of massive Western cultural influences. I lived in Japan for some time and this sentence is a gross generalization. Some right-wingers in Japan are attempting to maintain their traditions, but the rest of the population either couldn't care less, or has fully embraced western culture. You don't have to look hard (or at all, really) to see the evidence. Speaking English is (and has been) considered "cool" and you can find popular music artists dropping the occasional English words in songs, in their mangas, anime or in their dramas. A walk around any city with over 20k people and you can see western influence quite literally everywhere. Nobody is rushing to tear it down or even denounce it. There are a few extreme right-wing nationalists who might, but they're the fringe. They're smaller in size than America's Tea Party and should not be taken seriously. > Thus, when Japan sent troops to Korea and annexed it in 1910, Japanese military leaders celebrated the annexation as the restoration of the legitimate arrangement of antiquity. No, this is incorrect. At the very least, it's extremely misleading. China and Japan were fighting and both countries attempted to snatch up Korea as part of the first Sino war. It had nothing to do with their "restoration of legitimate arrangement of antiquity". That may have been their reasoning long after but it's not something any historians worth his salt would say was the reason for China and Japan's interest in Korea. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War#Conflict_in_Korea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War#Conflic... This paper is actually probably one of the best papers I've read on the reasons behind Japan's imperialism during that time: http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/papers/imperialism.htm http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/papers/imperialism.htm It goes over all of the possible reasons. The most likely of which, is that they were straight up emulating the West.

agumonkey 12y ago
Western culture had a weird influence long before. Their children animation series were western looking characters. I don't know how much of it was a marketing strategy or a form of praise for westerners. I also noticed the trend for English lines (Ai Robu Iou) in anime theme songs.
- zhemao 12y ago
  > Their children animation series were western looking characters. It's because Osamu Tezuka, widely considered the father of modern anime and manga, was heavily inspired by Disney's animation style. He drew his characters with "Mickey Mouse"-style eyes, which evolved into the over-sized "anime eyes" we see today.
- krapp 12y ago
  Osamu Tezuka (credited for inventing anime/manga as a genre) was indeed influenced by Disney character animation. And anime itself is a loanword from the French word for animation. There's nothing weird about one culture influencing another. Japanese culture does seem to think that English 'sounds cool,' but how many US companies choose Japanese names for their products for the hip factor, and how many people get kanji tattoos despite barely knowing what they mean? The phenomenon definitely goes both ways, sometimes recursively: Nintendo of Japan reskinned Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros. 2 for the US market, then resold it domestically as "Super Mario USA."
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    I ... really can't think of any brand using japanese names. I'm curious, enlighten me. It's true DDP was rebranded as SMB2 but I don't think it reflects any kind of japan culture love, IMO it was just a cheap strategy to release a Mario sequel at low cost.
    - krapp 12y ago
      I might have thinking more about startup names and software names in the first instance, where words like 'zen' and 'origami' do seem trendy.
    - kombucha2 12y ago
      Ginsu knives, Matsui (UK) those were the ones I came up with.
coldtea 12y ago
>* A walk around any city with over 20k people and you can see western influence quite literally everywhere.* Of course. It's 2014, and "western influence" includes things like technology and pop culture. That doesn't mean that "attempting to maintain their traditions" is confined to some right wingers. You probably conflate people trying to maintain their traditions actively (as most Japanese do) to vocal ideologists about maintaining traditions. Maintaining traditions is not about that.
kazinator 12y ago
As a generalization, the Japanese are quite interested in other cultures all over. They assimilate artifacts from other cultures, making them Japanese in the process and therefore acceptable in a way to those who are conservative. Foreign loanwords pass easily into Japanese. They get transliterated into the mora sounds (sometimes beyond easy recognition) and written in katakana. A foreign verb instantly becomes a verb in Japanese with the affixation of -suru/-shimasu (and variations like -itashimasu). So "take-it-easy-shimasu" ("I'm taking it easy") is possible, although the "take-it-easy" part becomes something like テイクイットイージー　(teikui tto iijii). Foreign nouns slip in just as easily, and with the -na affix, foreign adjectives can be used easily. "Wonderful" becomes ワンダフル (wandafuru). Now add -da/-desu and you can say that something is wonderful: "wandafuru desu". Switch to a -na (な)and you have an adjective. ワンダフルな公園 (wandafuru-na kouen: wonderful park) (Just made that up, but Google finds quite a few results for it in quotes). Because the phonetics is Japanese and is veneered over with a Japanese writing system, it is assimilated into Japanese and thereby somehow becomes non-invasive and acceptable. There is a lot of "Japanese English": words and phrases based on English which either don't have English cognates, or the obvious cognates have different meanings. For instance マイペース (maipe-su) is derived from "my pace", and one of its meanings is the obvious one: at one's own pace. But it also means "in one's own way": one's manner of doing things, of living, whatever. Your "pace" could be that you dye your hair purple or whatever, because nobody analyzes what "pace" actually means in real English.
e12e 12y ago
I agree with most of what you say, but regarding: > There are a few extreme right-wing nationalists who might, but they're the fringe. They're smaller in size than America's Tea Party and should not be taken seriously. The one does not follow from the other. Japan has a terrible history when it comes to fascism, the collusion of government (the temporary US one, and before/after Japanese), gangsters and the far right in union busting, and general nastiness (not to mention oppression of foreigners, especially non-white foreigners). So "should not be taken seriously" doesn't sit right with me. It's a little like saying neo-nazis shouldn't be taken seriously in Scandinavia, because they've been so successfully worked against over the last year -- but one should not ignore history. These kind of groups breed hatred and bigotry, influence mainstream politics (both in Sweden, Denmark and Norway) -- and in general, if ignored and left alone, will fester and become a problem for any healthy democracy. See also: France.
- mahranch 12y ago
  > So "should not be taken seriously" doesn't sit right with me. If you're a Japanese citizen, of course you should take them seriously. However, none of us are Japanese citizens. We can afford to not take them seriously because there is quite literally nothing we can do about it. My claim that they should not be taken seriously is more in the context of our own media. They tend to take what those fringe right-wingers say as representative of the entire country. They do it all the time in fact. You'll hear things like "Japan is racist", they haven't apologized for WW2, or that they're trying to rewrite their history. No, they're not. None of those things are even remotely true. Their right-wing fringe would like some of those things to happen but they're not even close to being successful in their attempts. See here for how Japan is actually one of the top 20 least racist countries in the world: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15... And as far as ignoring their war crimes go, their history text books actually the least nationalistic in Asia, and even less nationalistic than Americas. For proof, see this study done by Stanford University: http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/ http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/ All that history revisionism nonsense is just that, nonsense. But the fact remains that you have major news organizations reporting the views of these right wingers and portraying them as something that's common in Japan. It's not remotely close to reality. In my experience (from living in Japan for a brief stint), it would be like the BBC interviewing and taking the KKK seriously, then trying to portray America as racist. It's actually a pretty huge issue that I think needs to be addressed (the way western media portrays "wacky Japan") and I've been thinking about doing a piece on it myself.

agumonkey 12y ago

Western culture had a weird influence long before. Their children animation series were western looking characters. I don't know how much of it was a marketing strategy or a form of praise for westerners. I also noticed the trend for English lines (Ai Robu Iou) in anime theme songs.

zhemao 12y ago
> Their children animation series were western looking characters. It's because Osamu Tezuka, widely considered the father of modern anime and manga, was heavily inspired by Disney's animation style. He drew his characters with "Mickey Mouse"-style eyes, which evolved into the over-sized "anime eyes" we see today.
krapp 12y ago
Osamu Tezuka (credited for inventing anime/manga as a genre) was indeed influenced by Disney character animation. And anime itself is a loanword from the French word for animation. There's nothing weird about one culture influencing another. Japanese culture does seem to think that English 'sounds cool,' but how many US companies choose Japanese names for their products for the hip factor, and how many people get kanji tattoos despite barely knowing what they mean? The phenomenon definitely goes both ways, sometimes recursively: Nintendo of Japan reskinned Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros. 2 for the US market, then resold it domestically as "Super Mario USA."
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I ... really can't think of any brand using japanese names. I'm curious, enlighten me. It's true DDP was rebranded as SMB2 but I don't think it reflects any kind of japan culture love, IMO it was just a cheap strategy to release a Mario sequel at low cost.
  - krapp 12y ago
    I might have thinking more about startup names and software names in the first instance, where words like 'zen' and 'origami' do seem trendy.
  - kombucha2 12y ago
    Ginsu knives, Matsui (UK) those were the ones I came up with.

coldtea 12y ago

>* A walk around any city with over 20k people and you can see western influence quite literally everywhere.* Of course. It's 2014, and "western influence" includes things like technology and pop culture. That doesn't mean that "attempting to maintain their traditions" is confined to some right wingers. You probably conflate people trying to maintain their traditions actively (as most Japanese do) to vocal ideologists about maintaining traditions. Maintaining traditions is not about that.

kazinator 12y ago

As a generalization, the Japanese are quite interested in other cultures all over. They assimilate artifacts from other cultures, making them Japanese in the process and therefore acceptable in a way to those who are conservative. Foreign loanwords pass easily into Japanese. They get transliterated into the mora sounds (sometimes beyond easy recognition) and written in katakana. A foreign verb instantly becomes a verb in Japanese with the affixation of -suru/-shimasu (and variations like -itashimasu). So "take-it-easy-shimasu" ("I'm taking it easy") is possible, although the "take-it-easy" part becomes something like テイクイットイージー　(teikui tto iijii). Foreign nouns slip in just as easily, and with the -na affix, foreign adjectives can be used easily. "Wonderful" becomes ワンダフル (wandafuru). Now add -da/-desu and you can say that something is wonderful: "wandafuru desu". Switch to a -na (な)and you have an adjective. ワンダフルな公園 (wandafuru-na kouen: wonderful park) (Just made that up, but Google finds quite a few results for it in quotes). Because the phonetics is Japanese and is veneered over with a Japanese writing system, it is assimilated into Japanese and thereby somehow becomes non-invasive and acceptable. There is a lot of "Japanese English": words and phrases based on English which either don't have English cognates, or the obvious cognates have different meanings. For instance マイペース (maipe-su) is derived from "my pace", and one of its meanings is the obvious one: at one's own pace. But it also means "in one's own way": one's manner of doing things, of living, whatever. Your "pace" could be that you dye your hair purple or whatever, because nobody analyzes what "pace" actually means in real English.

e12e 12y ago

I agree with most of what you say, but regarding: > There are a few extreme right-wing nationalists who might, but they're the fringe. They're smaller in size than America's Tea Party and should not be taken seriously. The one does not follow from the other. Japan has a terrible history when it comes to fascism, the collusion of government (the temporary US one, and before/after Japanese), gangsters and the far right in union busting, and general nastiness (not to mention oppression of foreigners, especially non-white foreigners). So "should not be taken seriously" doesn't sit right with me. It's a little like saying neo-nazis shouldn't be taken seriously in Scandinavia, because they've been so successfully worked against over the last year -- but one should not ignore history. These kind of groups breed hatred and bigotry, influence mainstream politics (both in Sweden, Denmark and Norway) -- and in general, if ignored and left alone, will fester and become a problem for any healthy democracy. See also: France.

mahranch 12y ago
> So "should not be taken seriously" doesn't sit right with me. If you're a Japanese citizen, of course you should take them seriously. However, none of us are Japanese citizens. We can afford to not take them seriously because there is quite literally nothing we can do about it. My claim that they should not be taken seriously is more in the context of our own media. They tend to take what those fringe right-wingers say as representative of the entire country. They do it all the time in fact. You'll hear things like "Japan is racist", they haven't apologized for WW2, or that they're trying to rewrite their history. No, they're not. None of those things are even remotely true. Their right-wing fringe would like some of those things to happen but they're not even close to being successful in their attempts. See here for how Japan is actually one of the top 20 least racist countries in the world: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15... And as far as ignoring their war crimes go, their history text books actually the least nationalistic in Asia, and even less nationalistic than Americas. For proof, see this study done by Stanford University: http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/ http://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a00703/ All that history revisionism nonsense is just that, nonsense. But the fact remains that you have major news organizations reporting the views of these right wingers and portraying them as something that's common in Japan. It's not remotely close to reality. In my experience (from living in Japan for a brief stint), it would be like the BBC interviewing and taking the KKK seriously, then trying to portray America as racist. It's actually a pretty huge issue that I think needs to be addressed (the way western media portrays "wacky Japan") and I've been thinking about doing a piece on it myself.