21. Idol Culture

If you watched anime for long enough, you might have noticed the constant presence of cute young singers who talk about becoming “idols”. There are entire Anime series covering that ground, such as “Key, The Metal Idol”. Even old school Anime such as “Bubblegum Crisis” had in the group Priss, a rock singer. The series started up in the rhythm of her rock show from the very beginning.

As you can imagine, singing is a Japanese passion, as well as a daily social activity. It is very common for people of all ages to come to karaoke (which means “Empty Orchestra” in Japanese) parlors and spend hours having microphone fun after work or school. The idol industry in Japan produces ready-made and packaged idols every once in a while to feed this national phenomenon and the record sales business. My all-time idol is Iwasaki Hiromi, who began her singing career in the early 70’s and rocketed sky-high ever since to success with her magical voice and talent. She still sings to the date, although no longer as pop-singer, but as a more mature end elaborated Jazz performer. Iwasaki-san is now married and raising  her kids, but I am still crazy about her endless singing talent! I hope she will never quit!

The idol culture ever since the mid 80’s no longer required much singing talent from the young candidates — they just have to be C-U-T-E and be able to dance. As a matter of fact, Japanese women get very excited about cute boys—more than comparing to adult men. Guess which of them will become idols?

Very few female idols can actually survive more than a year or so in this industry, usually having a short-lived singing career. There are exceptions, though, and one of the most notorious is Matsuda Seiko, who began as a very cute and timid teenager singer in the 80’s and still sings to the date. Aw, and lets not forget my beloved Iwasaki Hiromi!! Actually, she tried to retire permanently after getting married about 10 years ago, but her fans brought her back through a constant campaign that lasted for many years! She matured as a singer, and brought her magic to a yet much higher level — so much that sometimes it feels like she is a whole new incredible singer I never heard before. Let me stop here before I write a book about her! Hahaha… idol culture galore!

22. Sci-Fi is Everywhere

You may have noticed how much of Anime turns around science fiction. A lot, isn’t it? But it has not been always like this. Sci-Fi had a rather poor start in Japan, when the average Sci-Fi shows would turn around good versus evil, where good always wins all the time. Shows like this wouldn’t last for very long on TV, and the genre was quickly dropping in popularity.

It is important to notice how much Star Wars has influenced Anime from the early days. A few years before Star Wars first played (before 1977), the Sci-Fi genre was not very popular in Japan.

With Star Wars, the theme was still “good vs evil”, but evil was not completely evil and good was not completely good. Even one that now is evil was once part of the group of good ones. And since Star Wars borrowed heavily from Japanese themes, from the story and characters (“Kakushi Toride no San Akunin”, The Hidden Fortress, 1951) to the wardrobe (Jedi dressed Japanese kimonos and wielded swords), and makeup (Queen Amidala’s geisha makeup and Darth Maul’s Japanese No Drama-like mask), the general Japanese public felt comfortable with this new and reinvented Sci-Fi genre.

Sci-Fi Anime series that were in production by then were fated to fail, if it weren’t for Star Wars’ new injection to revive the public enthusiasm about it. One of the most notorious Sci-Fi shows that were influenced by Star Wars is Mobile Suit Gundam. Carrying several elements from George Lucas’ cult movie, this Anime series quickly started a phenomenon that is best described as the “Star Trek of Japan”, which has been playing through countless seasons up to the current day.

Several other Anime series benefited from Star Wars’ Sci-Fi renascence, such as “Space Battleship Yamamoto”, by Leiji Matsumoto. It started playing before Star Wars, but only got popular after it. From that came cult Anime characters, such as Captain Harlock, who has a striking similarity with Star Wars’ Hans Solo, who was also a notorious rogue captain. Harlock got so popular that even nowadays there are still new Anime series being created for him, such as “Harlock Saga” (2002) and “Gun Frontier” (2004).

After this rather rough beginning, there is no doubt Sci-Fi has dominated quite a chunk of the Anime scenario. Ever since, it would be easier to remember how many Anime series were NOT about science fiction! And thanks to Star Wars, Mobile Suit Gundam has now been playing in Japan for a quarter of a century already!

23. No Straight Answers

One of the things that is often lost in translation is the vast number of ways one can avoid giving a straight answer to a question in Japanese. When living in such a small country with so many people, it is inevitable that conflicts would rise pretty quickly if there were no rules of social engagement. One of the primaries is never to tell others what you really think, but to instead give vague answers that actually mean nothing at all. That is actually what people expect.

Those rules of social engagement are called "Jyoushiki", best translated as "Japanese common sense". Jyoushiki dictates human behavior and relationships in Japan. It is a term often used to declare something that is expected to be obvious, but only to a Japanese.

So if someone asks you what do you think about something, there are many ways of saying something without really replying to the question. Those constructs are built into the Japanese language to offer quite a variety of terms used to mean nothing. This can cause quite some confusing when dealing with the Japanese because a "no" may mean "yes" and vice-versa. It depends on the context.

For example, one day in the office I worked for in Japan, one of the girls liked the new wristwatch I just bought and asked if I could get her one like that. Later that day I searched the store for another wristwatch but they only had different colors. The next day I asked the girl if it was Ok to buy another color, and she said yes. But that actually meant "no". The reason why she would say "yes" instead was that she didn't want to burden me with it - but was not allowed to say so because of jyoushiki. Next day I bought her the wristwatch and I was the only one who didn't understand why she looked so sad.

You will see this kind of empty dialogs quite often in Anime and manga, where questions are answered with "null constructs" that don't answer the question at all. Telling you opinion to others may be inconvenient to them, so learning how to know when to do it or not may take some practice and experimentation.

As I said, it's complicated.

24. Fatalism

Also because of the Japanese jyoushiki (see #23 above), avoiding conflicts may also mean conforming to an idea one may not agree with. Japan is a country where conflicts are avoided at all costs, up to the point where there are nearly no lawyers in the country. Suing another person in Japan is nearly never seen because people will prefer to get things resolved in a more discrete way.

Coming from that one can imagine that quite so often both parts loose something in a dispute because none of them is willing to confront the other. Conforming to this mentality has been embedded into the Japanese language in the form of expressions that are meant to make people more comfortable with a loosing situation.

Such expressions can be roughly translated to:

• It's fate

• It's destiny

• It was meant to be

• Nothing can be done about it

• That's too bad

where all of them imply comforting to a situation without fighting it or giving it much thought.

If you pay attention to the original Japanese dialogs in Anime, you will see those expressions being used over and over again all over the story for one reason or another. If one hero wins, it was because it was his destiny to win. But if he looses, it was because he was meant to loose. It's fate!

In a small country like Japan where you have to be close to a lot of people everyday, avoiding conflicts has been established as jyoushiki (Japanese common sense). So you can see it as a good or a bad thing, but to a Japanese fatalism is an established institution.

In the Urusei Yatsura TV series, nurse Sakura's uncle Sakurambo often told people one of his Buddhist monk fatalist sentences like "It's was fate" just to make everybody mad. Chances are that this fatalism has been embedded into every single Anime or manga ever published in Japan. So get used to it - it's fate!

25. Superstition

Whenever a Japanese moves to another house, it is custom to hire a Shinto priest to "purify" the place and spook the bad spirits away. When choosing the name for a newborn, it is custom to consult a kanji writing expert to only pick names that contain the "right" number of strokes and that has a proper meaning according to astronomy rules. Some buildings in Japan have no 4th floor, no presents are given in sets of 4 and nothing is manufactured in sets of 4 (the number 4 sounds like "shi", which means death). When renting apartments in Japan, the 4th floor is often the cheapest because nobody wants to live there.

I could keep going and make a huge list about how superstition rules the Japanese behavior in daily life. The list could be long enough to write a book! And those things are universal in Japan, even in the industry. For example, I have a Canon PowerShot IS3 digtal still camera, and the next model released by Canon was the PowerShot IS5 - note the model #4 was skipped as expected - and you bet there will never be one.

There are also lucky and unlucky ages for both men and women, where even the years directly before and after are considered dangerous enough to avoid any bigger plans. Silly things like sticking your chopsticks vertically into the rice is extremely bad luck and should never be done, except if the rice is offered to a deceased person during a ceremony.

During seasonal festivals (matsuri) it is tradition to write your wishes on paper, fold it into a thin stripe and then tie it to a tree branch from a Shinto temple. Shinto priests can also read your luck from a local temple/shrine, which is similar to picking up a random fortune cookie to read what's written on in. Horoscope is also strong in Japan, where some people still take it very seriously.

As you can see, Shinto priests and priestesses are very busy people in Japan! That's why you see so much of them in both Anime and manga - there is always a reason to call them.

26. The Swastika

It is quite common to find what appears to be the Nazi swastika symbol on nearly all city maps in Japan. And what's more, they appear to mark the location of temples and shrines. The fact is that the Swastika has been used as a religious symbol for hundreds of years, way before the German Nazi adopted it for it's own purposes. From Sanskrit, "svatikah" actually means "good luck", which is typically associated with ancient Japanese temples and Shinto shrines.

On the other hand, the Japanese alliance with the Nazi Germany is a historical fact, and there are many Anime series depicting a Japanese Nazi society and using the same Nazi symbols as those of WWII. Those Anime series may be offensive to a lot of people out there, but they still make sense from a historical perspective.

27. Lots of Smoking and Drinking

A remarkable feature of the Japanese (and Korean) cultures is what happens after business hours are over. Instead of going straight home, it is tradition to go drink in bars with your working collegues. This happens everyday in both Japan and Korea, and has a special meaning in both work and social relations.

The Japanese go to those bars not only to drink, but also to smoke and talk about life and business. It is common agreement (jyoushiki) that nobody will remember what was said and done when people get drunk. In the next day people will behave like nothing happened or like they have "forgotten"  whetever inconveniences were said or done the night before.

It is important to note that the Japanese have little tolerance to alcohol and will easily get drunk with as little as a cup of beer. Therefore it is common to find drunk men and women getting into the trains after the rush hours, sometimes causing inconveniences to others. Only more recently it has become unlawful in Japan for drunk men to molest women in the train stations. That's why so many Anime series depict women being molested by men inside trains during the rush hours.

In Japan all men (and some women) must smoke cigarettes. Inside Japanese companies, the break room is actually called the "smoking room" for the obvious reason - everybody smokes in it. Not drinking or smoking in Japan can mean a lot of social problems because there is no place for such people. The rule is that everybody drinks and everybody smokes. This is so important and established that most job promotions happen not in the company, but instead at the bars where people go to drink and smoke after work. Therefore a non-drinker and/or a non-smoker may never get promoted.

Despite of having some of the healthiest food in the planet, the Japanese drink and smoke alarming amounts everyday. So much that the train tracks get covered with cigarette butts everyday in the stations, and everybody go to bars to get drunk before going back home - everyday.

28. Don't Touch me!

This is perhaps something that often frustrates westerners when watching romantic Anime comedies and dramas. Not only people can't say what they think (see #23) but they also cannot touch other people in public. That means no handshakes, no hugs and no kisses. In short, the Japanese don't like to be touched.

This can be a problem with romantic comedies because the lovers cannot even hold hands without a lot of ceremonial courts. In the Maison Ikkoku TV series, Godai took no less than 30 episodes just to hold Kyoko's hand.

In addition, a man cannot call a woman by her first name unless they have some level of intimacy. The same is valid for a woman towards a man. In some Anime series, we see a man or a woman forcing their way towards another person by calling him/her by their first name in public to imply some intimacy that they don't actually have. This can be quite embarrassing to the point of feeling harassed, and cannot be translated with subtitles.

In comparison, holding hands or calling somebody else by their first name is quite compromising at the same level. From this you can imagine why the Japanese don't like  shaking hands because of the deep implications the act represents.

29. Gay Characters

It is very seldom when an Anime series doesn't have a gay character. They serve a double purpose - they can either be the comic relief or the female trap. Japanese women find gay men quite sexy, and as a matter of fact gay men are the predominant subject in manga stories written for women in Japan.

Sometimes male characters can look both macho and effeminated at the same time. That is called the "bishounen" stereotype aimed for the female public. They are often very tall and thin characters with long legs, arms and fingers. Their faces have delicate features, typically with long hair. They dress in exotic fashion, often with equally exotic hair styles. Their personalities are often conflicted and marked with unresolved traumas.

In some cases they are effeminated lady-killer Don Juans, while in others the show no interest in women at all. In both cases their beauty comes from androgynous looks that can even make it hard to tell them apart from being a woman. Sometimes they look like a woman and the only notion you have from it is that their voices sound male, like a woman talking with a male voice.

As it comes out, the more effeminated these men are, the more women will feel attracted to them. Chances are that women feel less threatened by effeminated men, and that gives them a sense of ease when close to the opposite gender. There is also the fact that many men find lesbians sexy, and it may be that women feel the same way about gay men.

I was initially thinking that this would only work for Japanese women, but more recently I came to know that quite a number of westerner women actually feel very attracted to gay men. I don't know if it has always been like this (and they don't like to talk about it), or if it turned out like this because of Anime influence, but the fact is that gay men seem to have grown in popularity among women.