There’s a huge bias in the US towards taking niche cultural phenomena in Japan and putting them on a pedestal.
In the US, how many current animated shows can you name? I can name a decent fraction of cartoons from the late 90s, but am completely unable to name anything since then--at least until I got a nephew and am now getting acquainted with the relevant demographic shows. That's a 20 year gap in shows.
Compare other media. How many classical composers can you name? I doubt many people, even erudite people, could push well beyond the basic frontier of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Recognition of well-known tunes (such as Pachelbel's Canon, whose name my spellchecker doesn't appear to recognize) is going to far exceed their name, let alone the composer's name.
The most recognizable anime to a layperson in Japan is likely to be the big mega-blockbusters of various eras. I'd be more shocked if you said that no one had heard of Mobile Suit Gundam, Dragonball, Naruto, or Attack on Titan [which one they'd pick up on depends on their age] than any of the shows you've mentioned. Hell, the only thing you listed that I'd think people in the US with a passing familiarity with anime might know would be Cowboy Bebop.
Really? He listed Akira!
From Wikipedia:
> The film had a production budget of ¥700 million ($5.5 million), making it the most expensive anime film at the time
> The film had a significant impact on popular culture worldwide, paving the way for the growth of anime and Japanese popular culture in the Western world
As an aside, I was a performer in this performance piece: https://www.artbasel.com/news/messeplatz-alexandra-pirici-gl...
It uses "gestures and sounds which are taken from both natural and popular media sources, Pirici renders disparate forms of heritage and cultural memory, conceiving Aggregate as a time capsule in which fragments of vernacular culture, art history, and everyday life are given new, living embodiments."
I was surprised when out of a diverse selection of materials from world culture, the choreographer also chose to include the theme song from Ghost in the shell.
But it seems very popular, out of the top ten highest grossing films in Japan, 5 are anime (Spirited Away, Demon Slayer, Your Name, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle), and the top two are Spirited Away and Demon Slayer.
In North America's top ten you will only find one animated feature, Incredibles 2, and it is at position ten.
Sailor Moon?
Two decades later, a followup might compare the Sailor Moon phenomenon with the fascination among adult American men for the Western series My Little Pony.
The top two highest grossing films in Japan are both anime; Spirited Away and Demon Slayer. Titanic follows at a distant third. Forth is Frozen, which you could argue is basically anime.
I live in Japan, and most anime is not really my thing, but its huge and definitely mainstream here.
That specific outlier aside; I get the impression that cartoons in Europe and the US picked up quite a bit of slack in the adult demographic with shows like Archer and Rick & Morty in the past decade, building on what Adult Swim prepared in the US. In Japan this niche was already much more explored, although it is not a pass-time most adults flaunt. While I never got the impression that adult viewers of anime were anything more than a (sizeable) minority, they are certainly a target demographic, and manga (comics) even more so. One example that always stuck out to me was former prime minister Asō Tarō who openly admitted to being quite well-read in manga.
Studio Ghibli also released all their posters and stills [3] from its animations.
[1] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvslsD9F0bk [3] https://www.ghibli.jp/info/013344/
I'm not a fan of manga or "anime" per se, there's a ton of mediocre and mass-produced stuff. But as someone of Japanese heritage, I feel fortunate to have experienced some of the history and culture of manga books and animated films, as they blossomed after WWII - on occasions they achieve sublime expression as visual story telling.
Do you have a source for this claim? I have a hard time believing the average Japanese person has that much difficulty reading literature in their own language.
Japanese folks lag behind in education simply because their language requires them to spend far longer mastering reading. This significantly delays their progress.
EDIT: I see the URL seems offensive but it's clickbait, the article is actually serious.
That is not exactly an academic source and it's from someone living in Japan that doesn't read Japanese very well (check the comment section where they admit that themselves) so this is far from authoritative as a source.
I heard that after WWII the US occupation administered a national literacy test to see if Japanese people were as literate as their US counterparts, as it was becoming a serious idea to replace the existing writing system with the US alphabet. It was found that their literacy level was comparable so they didn't change anything so drastically.
Consider that learning to read kanji is much different from (easier than) learning to write them. There are a ton of contextual clues when reading, and furigana inserted by the publisher if the kanji would be hard to read for the target demographic. There is also the option of just substituting kana for hard-to-read kanji. Publishers and writers will obviously add furigana to any kanji that are hard to read as they have a monetary motivation to make their content as accessible as possible.
So you tend to pick up a lot of kanji based on these contextual clues and furigana over the years if you read anything, similar to how English speakers learn spellings of words when they read a word they've only "heard" before.
Writing is harder because when writing you will sometimes struggle to remember the correct kanji to use, or sometimes forget a small portion of the kanji. This is the why schools need to spend so much time teaching kanji as a subject of itself.
About a year ago, I read a study (which I wish to hell I could locate again) that made the case that children raised with more phonetic languages, such as Spanish and Finnish, had a notable advantage over children whose native language is English, because they learned to read and write much earlier. While American, British, and Australian children puzzle over words like “plough,” “epitome,” and “Worcestershire,” children in Spain are steadily progressing through more and higher-level books, enabling them earlier access to advanced skills such as reasoning, synthesis, and discussion. They simply read at a higher level than English speakers of the same age.
Spanish speakers are expected to read arbitrary words and write (albeit with lots of spelling mistakes) by (optimistically) kindergarten or early first grade. The written-spoken language is very regular so it's very easy so "sound out" words. This is in contrast to what I hear is like to teach English speaking children. So yes, the author's hypothesis seems plausible to me.
I think it's a big stretch to assume that Japanese people can't even read books on the train because their literacy is so low.
The best way I could put it is, "the Japanese writing system is pretty cumbersome and in turn the people on average are less drawn to literal mediums and more drawn towards visual media".
And that's just the opinion of an english teacher in japan after all.
> The written-spoken language is very regular so it's very easy so "sound out" words.
I remember once in middle school I elicited a laugh from my classmates when during group reading, I mispronounced "awry" (I had put the stress on the wrong syllable as well as pronounced the "y" as "ee"). However, I had a very good idea of what it meant at that time. OTOH, in that same class, it was a very unusual occurence for the teacher to interrupt group reading and confirm everyone knew what a word meant, so I believe many misunderstood words were glossed over routinely.
I'm not saying being phonetic is a net loss, of course, just that "understanding" is a tricky thing to gauge, and may be harder as a side effect of some language being phonetic.
The pronunciation of something is secondary to its definition. But with a phonetic language, it's easy to fool yourself as well as others of an understanding that is not very deep.
My theory is that most in Japan people get exposed to manga and anime at their school period but not many have time for it afterwards, resulting in them only knowing older series and possibly quite a bit of nostalgia.
Actually reminds me a bit of the current resurgence of retro gaming here in the West a bit.
The manga adult readers consume is not like the stuff we enjoy, like One Piece. Adult manga appears to fulfill the same role for Japanese that "airport fiction" does for us, and is broadly similar in genre: spy thrillers, workplace dramas, romance, etc. The art style is also way different, more mature and realistic with less broad caricature and more emphasis on adult rather than young/teenage characters.
Let me see- without asking the internet, off the top of my head:
Tchaikovsy
Wagner
Verdi
Vivaldi
Brahms
Schubert
Musorgsky
Skalkotas
Soshtakovich (spelling?)
Satie (sp?)
Rostropovich (sp.?)
The guy who wrote Hungarian Dances?
The guy who wrote Per Gynt?
The guy who wrote the opera Amleto?
Edit: OK, after looking up stuff, Brahms wrote Hungarian Dances but I was thinking of Béla Bartók; Grieg wrote the _Peer_ Gynt suite (not Per Gynt); and Franco Faccio wrote Amleto. Correct spellings: Shostakovich; Satie is correct; and Rostropovich was a musician, but not a composer X)
Oh, crap- I forgot Dvorák. How could I fogret Dvorák?
I think the above is more evidence of my memory needing more coffee, than my knowledge of classical composers.
... but I think you'd be surprised how many classical composers people who don't consider themselves particularly erudite will know. I don't think you're right. I have many friends who play classical music instruments and who listen to classical and love it and know the composers' names almost as well as I know the names of obscure black metal bands :)
I am no musician, but my parents knew a fair bit about it, my wife does, and friend is into early music.
The US puts late night anime on a pedestal, stuff that fans focus on. That's a big market in Japan, but not ubiquitous by any stretch if the imagination - and the names that become popular in the US are often very different to the names popular here, and often only after they've fallen out in Japan. Takeda-san doesn't know about FLCL.
Anime is part of daily culture in Japan and everyone knows about it, but for household names you need to go to long-running, popular shows that run in kid-friendly slots. Stuff like Pokemon, Precure, Detective Conan, etc. It is those long-running shows that become part of the collective consciousness, because everyone watched some of that when they were kids. Same with Ghibli movies and anything by Shinkai Makoto (Your Name, Weathering with You, etc). That, and truly impactful stuff like Evangelion, the Gundam franchise, Naruto, etc.
Then there's the fads. Everyone in Japan knows about Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) right now because they're doing tie-ups with seemingly every shop and business under the sun. Walk into any convenience store and they'll have branded snacks. Whether that series will survive to become something that people remember or not, time will tell.
Is "Takeda-san" the Japanese Joe Schmoe?
My Japanese textbook always had a Suzuki-san conversing with a Tanaka-san, who I guess were the equivalent of the stock characters "Marc" and "Sylvie" I kept meeting when learning French.
Likewise, when they talk about my country they sometimes mention stuff that I barely know!
This is usually good. It shows us what qualities about us are the most visible to other people, to build upon them or fix them.
Most of the others are played relentlessly in corner shops, malls and radio stations. I've heard so many Carpenters songs now I may as well be trapped in the 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles_i...
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_(phrase)
> As recently as 2009, another Carpenters retro album (40/40) reached No. 3 on Japan’s overall charts [1]
http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2013/01/opening-splash-ea...
Old anime, only active fans will know.
Pop culture is a lot more segmented than people realize. Even in the US.
Doraemon is a "cultural icon" and has been for decades.
Evangelion is debatable but the 25th anniversary has been present all year with a plethora of tie-ins.
At the very least, people not interested in Anime will recognize these as "oh that thing from [the konbini/I saw the voice actress on a game show/billboard/my child likes/the picture on my candy wrapper/etc]".
But I'm sure I missed many more adds, tie ins and colabs. :)
yes.
don't know if OP is referring specifically to some anime or anime in general but the 3 of the top 5 grossing films in japan are animes and animation is a fully developed medium for story telling of all ages.
if native japanese don't know about kimetsu i guess it's the same way my parents have definitely not watched a single marvel film, and i'm not sure if they are even aware of their existence.
I don't watch anime but I do love visiting Japan, and that has often stuck out to me with friends.
My point being is it is still a subculture idolizing another subculture. I don't think you can say that is a US wide issue.
Anime programming on TV is a fact of life and not something people need to be "into". But that is to say that there is a lot more dramas and mundane animated programming that wouldn't have an economic rationale outside of Japan. A lot of it falls by the way side and then later turns out to appeal to Western audiences, even more rarely circling back to Japan for a closer look.
The anime subculture is niche in Japan. ie. The niche where people collect merchandise and have whole shelfs on display as a point of pride. That garners the same discomfort from the general population and potential dates as it would in the West.
That being said, the western market is MASSIVE as it is just a larger market and vibrant economy. Something doing "okay" in the US would be the same as shattering records in a Japan-only release. So enterprisers can resyndicate all the crap over to here and see what sticks.
Imagine trying to judge US culture solely on the basis of shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park. These aren't low-quality shows, but they're also nowhere near fully reflective of the entertainment that people consume in the US.
US sees most of the highest budget anime and from the largest studios. US entrepreneurs that started as enthusiasts are basically financing a lot of it directly and through syndication agreements.
But there are tons of IP that is ignored and not syndicated abroad and there are tons more in the manga and book form.
Although many western anime fans are curious about Japanese customs, the west likes the style more and resonates with things that have broader appeal to western interests. Essentially, not-Japan, or resonating with anime-style works from western studios and directors. I’m sure we can think of an exception here or there but anime about mundane life in Japan is not popular outside of a Japan.
USA: focus on, make fun of, pretend niche is bigger than it is
Japan: pretend it doesn't exist, ignore
That may allow some Japanese to indulge in weirder stuff that would not be tolerated in the US, but what Americans may not understand is that this stuff is still seen as weird/non-conforming/shameful by most Japanese.
EDIT: Genuinely interested as to the reason for the downvotes. Plain wrong? Just stupid?