It consists of four main islands and countless smaller accessory islands. It covers 145,925 square miles of land and as of 2012, has an estimated population of 126,659,683. The currency is measured in yen ¥ or en 円, and drives on the left side of the road. What is it?
Japan. To many anime and manga fans in the west, it's a magical place of insanity and wonder.
To many Japanese, anime fans are overgrown man-children who live in their parents basements and shower annually.
Wait, what?
Anime and manga are literally "cartoons and comics." Outside of "The Big Bang Theory" How many grown men in America are diehard fans of these things? It's just not "cool." (Although Hollywood has been reviving the genre with popular movies like Spiderman 1, 2, 3, The Amazing Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, endless X-men reboots, all of the Avengers and their individual movies and sequels...)
Hmm, maybe another example. Who do you know who still plays Magic: The Gathering? How about Dungeons and Dragons?
I am a fan of Japanese comics and cartoons. They're what got me into Japan as a country, but many people fail to look past this and either obsess over how Japan is the Mecca for shoelace eating insanity, or obsess over obscure shows that lived and died in the 90s. (See: Plastic Little, Gundam Wing, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Weiss Kreuz.)
Note: I love all of those things. But they are not "Japan."
Sailor Moon was my gateway drug to all of these fabulous, WTF shows, and I adore them. But Japan is more than its cartoons.
To me, Japan is tatami mats, kotatsu (which is inferior to the Korean ondol, but I'll cover that later.) Sliding doors, rice paddies, kyudo, ninjas, yukata, samurai, kendo, katana, weird flavors of Pepsi, kimono, geisha, and probably 9000 other things that just...appeal to me on a visceral level.
It's thousands of years of history, and a culture unique to its borders. It's a language that said "fuck making sense, we need three alphabets." It's making the most out of what you have, and being respectful to your superiors. It's honour, a concept that died in America with the civil war.
Japan is not perfect. It's a racist, cramped, technologically outdated place, and it's a country that, should I ever succeed in arriving and making a life for myself, I will never belong to.
But I love it.
I see why you chose Japan.
ReplyDeleteI also love Japanese anime and manga and Japanese culture too. For me Japan is the country that can keep their old culture aliving while developing so many technologies (though it's less than other countries now.)
It's kind of impressive to me that it seems like they live among the gap between old and new eras and they can keep balance well. That's why I feel like to know them more.
I didn't choose Japan, Asia chose me.
DeleteSo, this is where I ask you what shows you're into, since anime is experiencing a decline in recent years. The old fans are holding on, but new fans are few and far between. And I agree with your statement about keeping old and new. In Korea, only the very old citizens still wear traditional clothes regularly, and for the younger generation, hanbok is reserved for holidays, or children. In japan it's totally normal to see people of all ages still wearing kimono. And japan does indeed develop technology (no one can deny that they're on the forefront of the robotics race) but according to what I've heard, most japanese still rely on outdated technology such as fax machines. It's an interesting blend of old and new, as you said, and one of the things that appeals to me as a fan.
The show I mostly into is 24Hours Television (24時間テレビ), it's a charity show which will be on-aired on every August of every years. You I always watch it every year.
ReplyDeleteSorry, fir the lated replying. I forgot to check e-mail.