Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Westerners Make Assumptions About Japan Because of Anime?
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TdFern 87
Posts: 255 |
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Well it is hard for people to understand a country's culture and history, given most people can't travel due to costs, work, and other factors. However given the rise with the digital age and the Internet, it wouldn't hurt to look things up about any country, in fact YouTube makes videos about countries, however you feel like there is so much more you want to know and it is hard, given speaking to a actual person from said country and "what is it like" is very uncommon. Anime can say somewhat a lot about Japan but not the entire picture.
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1122 Location: Puget Sound |
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The relative sizes of land area are somewhat misleading though. Effectively, Canada is a country that's 1,500 miles wide and 100 miles tall with some colonies and outposts to the north of them. (90% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of their border with the US.) The majority of it's land area is inhabited so sparsely as to be essentially uninhabited. Huge swathes of the country are practically uninhabitable for large portions of the year, if not year round, due to climatic conditions. |
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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Again when you talk about Japan's portrayal of America I think of the OVA series Mad Bull 34 which had New York being a crime ridden hell hole, though I know it was based on tons of American action movies released during the 80s.
And I pretty much take yes the portrayal of Japan in anime with a grain of salt as already a lot of the shows include fictional things like magical powers, psychic powers, monsters etc or take place in a complete fantasy or future world/alternate timeline. Now there are times I might think it semi-realistic and that was Genshiken as I could possibly see some of those characters existing in Japan, possibly not quite as exaggerated though in character. But no I hope no one watches Initial D and thinks that some gas station attendants and workers in Japan work in secret street racing teams. Or Ben-To which has teenagers and college students brawling in grocery stores over bento meals. Or take Japanese history lessons from Sengoku Basara. Last edited by Codeanime93 on Wed Oct 18, 2017 3:49 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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digitalninja
Posts: 1 |
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I have lived in hong kong for 8 years and japan for 2 years so my understanding of those cultures is a lot stronger than people that are just learning about them from anime or tv show/dramas or movies. That being said there are just some things that, even with an understanding of the culture, are just odd.
For example I saw that the chinese movie "mermaid" was critically acclaimed and I simply couldnt get the sense of humor. Same with some japanese shows ... I have seen Gintama is rated incredibly high by viewers but I cant get past the first few episodes. What if what all Japanese people learned about the west was from The A Team or Dukes of Hazzard =P. That being said Japan is easily one of the best places I have ever lived. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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Nah, that's just what it was like in the '80's. Escape from New York was actually a reasonable premise at that point. |
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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You forget I grew up with the clean 90s/00s image of New York. This also reminds me of how Riding Bean/Gunsmith Cats and some Lupin the 3rd TV specials from the 90s portrayed American police as constantly trigger happy (in retrospect not far from the truth) and yes in Riding Bean/Gunsmith there was a lot of owning guns and using them because this is America and a general air of unlawfulness. Also we have an American Zenigata named Percy who is basically Zenigata on crack and even more demented,deranged and mentally unstable apparently. Lupin the 3rd had a TV special that I liked that really messed with American history, it was Alcatraz Connection which had a whole chunk of revisionist American history to the main plot and references to Columbo even to it. Then again Lupin the 3rd messed with a lot of history and revised as well. |
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FlowerAiko
 Posts: 223 |
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As a Canadian, the vast majority of the north is frozen over and no one travels up there or lives there. Even skiers generally stay more southern than you'd expect. So the actual parts of Canada with things to do and see is a lot smaller than you'd think. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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And even then, because of social and climate diversity, traveling to Texas or California is a "foreign environment" for people traveling from NYC or Boston. We've got enough at home to keep us busy. The stereotype that Americans don't travel abroad much because "they expect other countries to speak English", and don't see why they're too lazy to learn  , isn't much different from the Japanese perspective of visiting abroad.
Again, Japan is a much smaller country with a major population, a feeling of claustrophobia has been part of the national character for generations, as is the basic xenophobia of a country that literally had forgotten the rest of the world existed before Admiral Perry arrived--And that, little more than a hundred and fifty years ago. In Japan, there's a curiosity that your perception of being a Global Citizen has awoken if you're yuppie-rich and curious enough to escape the island, but even then...you're afraid to actually GO anywhere. There's the "Foreign dream" that All Good West is Europe, and All Europe Is France, where everyone wears Victorian dresses and parasols and sips coffee, and the image that if you visit North America, it's easier to get to Hawaii, unless you're brave enough to visit Miami or New York, from the TV shows. In the Persona 5 game, the school trip wonders "What's in Los Angeles, anyway?" where the other school trip went when our heroes went to Hawaii ("This is boring, nobody around here but other Japanese tourists!"), and in one Daa^3 episode, our heroine gets to visit her parents working at NASA in Florida, and is literally disappointed when she's told that Florida doesn't have the Hollywood sign, the Statue of Liberty or the Grand Canyon. 
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Hell, 5 cm didn't feel like a long distance relationship when they could make the trip in a day to see each other on a normal train, when I'm used to people talking about relationships that takes planes to meet. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2118 |
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Speaking of travel, one should also keep in mind.
In places like North America and Europe and other better developed countries, things like toilets, food etc. have strong health inspections and regulations. It is far safer for people of other nations to travel here, than it would be for people here to travel there. Getting sick and food poisoning and other problems from lack of proper water is not to be underestimated. Therefore travelling to these places is usually for those who are more adventurous. Also there is the language barrier. Other countries make it a necessity to learn English. Americans, not so much... The easiest thing in these cases is therefore chartered tours, but these can get pricey versus doing stuff on your own. And of course cost is an issue... Travelling is expensive. And many people don't have the privilege of going abroad, and even if they could, many people also don't find travelling by air for long periods comfortable and a BIG part of this is the condition of American Airlines versus Airlines from other countries. If I were you I'd recommend paying more and taking another more comfortable airline with better food and more comfortable seats. And let's also face it... it's likely the majority of Canadians have passports strictly for travelling to the US. And the majority of Canadians going abroad are usually of immigrant background who like to travel and are used to their place of birth/ancestral home. Travel does help you become exposed to other people, but unless that travel is of you staying there for an extensive period of time and living like daily people there do, the 1-2 week tour with your own local group being bused from hotel to tourist attraction, is not really going to do a lot more... It helps, but it's not definitively going to inform you about the typical lives of people there. |
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Shaterri
Posts: 173 |
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America is mostly safe. You're substantially more likely to be killed in an auto accident or by your diet than by any of the above. Violent crime is a real issue, and I don't want to minimize it, but it has to be kept in perspective. |
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fathergoat
Posts: 90 |
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The stereotypes go both ways. I've had some Europeans come here(indiana) thinking we all carried guns and had shootouts on a regular basis. Then when they got comfortable they wanted me to take them to detroit. I told them that's where the shootouts do happen. So I guess the stereotype is kind of true, just not in the cowboy sense. Oh, and we don't all ride horses.
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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I have a financial response, versus a social one, to that: Historically, countries like Canada have had a stronger middle class than the US; A higher percentage of the population has steady income and socialized medicine to help ease the pressure on their wallets.
As a Canadian, um, no. Just no. We are travelers, Big-Time. Canadians travel everywhere and in many ways, from school trips to cruises to snow-bird flights to sabbaticals. Yeah, a large immigrant population means we have a lot of people going to old country to see family but immigrants love to travel elsewhere, too; Many immigrants to Canada now have the sort of money they've never had before and travel is high on many people's list of things to spend that on. |
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epicwizard
Posts: 420 Location: Ashburn, VA |
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I can't either. I found some of the jokes funny, but I'm not really attached to the stories or the characters to keep watching it. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Nothing remarkable there. If all you have to base your view of a nation on is what's presented in news and entertainment media, you get a very warped idea of it, if it resembles reality at all.
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