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Serving As Your Voice of the Nikkei Community Since 1902
Vol. 63, Issue 15 / April 2, 2008
Japan Into America 2
Is Japanese Pop Culture a Part of American Culture?
By Shihou Sasaki
The North American Post
CAP: A woman, who goes by the handle "nolwyn," enjoys wearing a costume from Japanese fantasy animation, Chrono Crusade.
Photo by Shihou Sasaki/ The North American Post
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People wearing costumes, making poses, not being afraid of having photos taken by strangers, the Downtown Seattle atmosphere changed during a three-day anime convention last weekend.
Over 10-thousand fans of Japanese pop culture gathering at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center might not have known each other before the event, but now they became fellows.
It was a spring Halloween celebration in the 11th annual Sakura-Con hosted by the Asia-Northwest Cultural Education Association (ANCEA). They are all fans of animations, comics, games and other Japanese pop culture aspects.
Anthony Loony wore one of the biggest stuffed toys in the convention. He said he is a big fan of games but not anime or comics. A woman, who goes by the handle "nolwyn," said that she likes Japanese culture but she is more interested in fantasy from all over the world. She wore a costume from Japanese fantasy animation, Chrono Crusade.
How to get inspired by the cultural aspects is different for each participant. But they were willingly sharing the "Otaku" world.
Author of "Japanamerica" and a guest of the Sakura-Con, Roland Kelts sees a big difference between Japanese and U.S. anime conventions in that the U.S. citizens have more enjoyment in wearing costumes and creating the festival for its community while Japanese focus more on business.
As the oldest and biggest anime convention in the Pacific Northwest, it is still surprising to see how the originally Japanese entertainment has quickly spread out. Compared to the other Japanese aspects including traditional culture, food or even religion, Japanese pop culture is different in that it has rapidly become popular to the U.S. society.
Kelts pointed that the biggest change of the Japanese pop culture in the United States occurred in 1998 when Pokemon debuted on U.S. television. And this mega-hit made the U.S. media use the Japanese word "Anime" as an English term.
"Kids collected the card, played the game, and saw every episode on TV," he said. "And when they get older, they want more in style, color, illustration or crazy stories."
Now, the first generation of Pokemon fans are late teenagers and having more interest in the pop culture as well as other Japanese cultural aspects including the language.
Yoshitaka Inoue, a Japanese instructor at Kamiak High School, says many students have been influenced by Japanese pop culture to start studying the Japanese language. The technology improvements including the Internet expansion allowed students to learn more depth of the Japanese aspects in everyday life.
"Students might be able to learn more Japanese outside than they study in the classroom," Inoue said in Japanese. "Students' interest is much higher than what you expect, so we teachers also need to keep tracking what the students are seeking."
As a council member of National Council of Japanese Language Teachers (NCJLT), Inoue found Japanese is a high ranked language to be learned in schools in Washington compared to the other states. Washington Association of Teachers of Japanese (WATJ) has about 80 members, and the total number of institutes offering Japanese language education is much more, he added.
The 25th annual Japanese Language Speech & Skit Contest by Hyogo Business and Cultural Center held on Mar. 7 gathered 149 students from 25 high schools in Washington. The annual Japanese language immersion camp at Camp Don Bosco in Carnation, Wash., also gathered nearly 100 students to experience the Japanese-language-only camp on Mar. 22 and 23.
Last month, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Doraemon, one of the most famous Japanese animation characters, became the first anime ambassador to promote Japanese culture abroad.
"Not only traditional cultural elements such as Chado, Ikebanac, but also we think the pop culture is very important as a Japanese culture," Consul General Mitsunori Namba said in Japanese. "We want to use this as a diplomatic tool to give everyone an opportunity to know what Japan is."
This was Namba's first appearance at the Sakura-Con, and he was surprised at the passion, energy and excitement from thousands of participants from the northwest region. The event was really beyond what he imagined and expected, the diplomat added.
In Sakura-Con, participants could see several Japanese words becoming English words including "Manga," "Anime," or even "Otaku" and "Hentai." But latter two words are not appropriately used socially in Japan.
Living in Tokyo as a university lecturer and journalist, Kelts understands how some Japanese words have been used differently in the states, but the "mistake" is still acceptable for him as a part of cultural exchange.
"It's a way to share languages, a part of cultural history of exchange," he said. "When the cultures borrow words, they often change them to make it more local. And maybe in the future, some American kids study Japanese, go to Japan and will say 'Oh, that's the wrong word. We must change.'"
Now the question is, is this a part of the American culture?
Looking around at the Sakura-Con participants wearing costumes, Kelts answered smilingly.
"It's a hybrid culture," he said. "It's like a Toyota Prius, different from the others.
"It's a Japan-America."
CAP: Roland Kelts speaks about the Japanese pop culture
Photo by Sugako Toda/ The North American Post
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