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  If handled casually or cynically, this scene would not carry half the power it does. Instead, it’s a cue to the audience that, despite the hurdles Ryo has to face, both athletically and personally, right will prevail.7 It’s a reassurance that the audience needs to hear more and more, ironically enough, as it gets older and has to cope with the complexities of Japanese society.

  1. See Toren Smith, “Princess of the Manga,” Amazing Heroes 165 (May 15, 1989): 23.

  2. This is the 1999 made-for-television series, revisiting the OAV series of the 1980s directed by Katsuhito Akiyama.

  3. From an interview with Geoffrey Tebbetts, Animerica 7, no. 8: 15, 33.

  4. Frederik L. Schodt, Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1983), 62.2.

  5. http://www.nnanime.com/megumi-toon/mgbk022.html.

  6. An illustration of this gesture is an episode of the manga Maison Ikkoku. Due to a misunderstanding, Godai has checked out of the boarding house; by the time that error is cleared up, another one pops up and Kyoko refuses to rent his old room back to him. His search for someplace to stay takes him to the apartment of his college friend Sakamoto. Godai knocks on the door; he hears some running and thumping inside the apartment. The door opens a crack to show Sakamoto’s face and his hand with outstretched pinky. The message is clear: “I’ve got a girl in here and we’re a little busy right now . . .” It would be awkward to have to say that in so many words, and an embarrassment to the girl. With a gesture, the meaning is communicated wordlessly.

  7. The personal arena alone can get quite complicated; a mere romantic triangle is rather simple geometry these days. In Princess Nine, for example, Ryo soon finds herself having to choose between the Boy Next Door and the Baseball Phenom at the high school that has recruited her; the Baseball Phenom, meanwhile, is being set up in the media to be the beau of the school’s Tennis Phenom . . . and so it goes.

  The Social Web and the Lone Wolf

  Everyday life in Japan is a complex web of family relationships, social roles, and even language. The popular culture, including anime, helps keep society on track, even when it focuses on noble and heroic loners.

  Every culture has its dominant myths, core beliefs that are almost a secular religion. American culture, for instance, deviates from its European roots in several respects, notably the American belief—almost an article of faith—that the unsophisticated common people possess an innate wisdom unequaled by the upper-class power elite. This has manifested itself in a variety of ways, from America’s first independent act of political dissent (the Whiskey Rebellion, 1794) to books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Several television series have been based on this belief in the triumph of mother wit over sophistication and civilization: The Beverly Hillbillies, The Real McCoys, The Waltons, The Andy Griffith Show, The Simpsons, and even Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But the American mythos is a topic for another book.

  Japan’s mythos has been polished and refined, since Japanese culture is about ten times as old as America’s. Influences on Japan’s cultural mythology range from religion to politics, but it could be argued that the dominant force is real estate.

  Togetherness

  Take half of the population of the United States (or about 135 million people) and confine them to the three states on the western seaboard: Washington, Oregon, and California. This crunch reflects what life is like in Japan. Much of the total area of this island nation is taken up by mountainous land unsuitable for agriculture or commerce, and more green space is lost each year. Consequently, the concept of “privacy” in Japan has always been very different from that in the West. People in Japan have historically lived up close and personal with each other, with a tradition of architecture that commonly used light wood and paper for interior walls, so there has never been a sense of really being alone. In this culture, a person’s identity comes from being part of a group, rather than just a free-standing ego.

  The Home Front

  This starts with the family. The family name comes first in Japan, and this symbolizes the importance of family membership. Marriages in the old days were a negotiation between clans as often as they were a love-match between two individuals. Even in the face of modernization, group membership is a major part of one’s life in Japanese society. Every affiliation, from the school one attended to the fan clubs one joins, becomes part of a formula for life summed up in the words on (obligation) and giri (honor). “Each group,” writes T. R. Reid, “is entitled to loyalty from its members, and these various loyalties essentially define a Japanese life. The groups you belong to make up who you are.”1 Good deeds become part of the common currency of social interaction rather than acts done for the sake of some morality or other. If someone does right by you, you have an obligation to return the favor; if you don’t, you are dishonored. This has ethical consequences that make daily life in Japan a different matter from life in the West, where group affiliation is supposed to take second place behind the free will of the individual.

  Japanese can be generous to a fault, once a connection has been established; on the other hand, some concepts—including coeducation for girls and equal rights for people with disabilities—had to be introduced to Japan from the West.

  This is not to say that Japanese are cold; far from it. As most of the examples in this book will illustrate, Japanese have a preference in their pop culture for stories that are driven more by emotion than by action. A distinction is made between “wet” and “dry,” the former implying emotional intimacy, the latter, “keeping a discreet distance.”2 When it comes to social interaction, things stay pretty “dry” unless a bond has been established over time, or such intimacy seems natural to the circumstances.

  Two examples from Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku illustrate this perfectly. In one episode, Godai—against house rules—brings a kitten into his room.3 His friend Sakamoto is going home for the holidays, and Godai agreed to take care of his cat, which Sakamoto named Kyoko, since he’s a big fan of the actress Kyoko Mano. Godai worries about what would happen if he calls the cat by name, since his building manager is also named Kyoko. Sakamoto’s remedy is simple: don’t call the cat by name.

  Of course, this is easier said than done, and when one of the residents overhears Godai talking to Sakamoto on the telephone about “Kyoko,” without using the polite suffix “-san” (an impolite form of address known as yobisute), he sounds like he’s on overly familiar terms with his building manager.

  When he’s overheard telling Sakamoto that “every night Kyoko crawls into my futon and sleeps with me,” Godai’s worries about the name problem take a disastrously comic turn.

  At the other end of the scale is the final episode, “P.S. Ikkoku-kan,” in which Godai marries Kyoko after a seven-year courtship.4 At a reception after the traditional Shinto ceremony, Godai gives the expected speech thanking everyone for coming and talking about the couple’s hopes for the future. As the speech ends, in a gemlike moment that marks manga at its best in summing up the workings of Japanese society as well as the human heart, Godai starts to tell the guests that “I and Kyoko-sa . . .” when he stops, realizes what he was saying, and changes it to, “I and Kyoko.”

  This is no small bridge that has just been crossed; until this moment, even when addressing her directly, he has usually called her kanrinin-san (“building manager,” plus the polite suffix), following a common Japanese custom of referring to people by their job titles. Again, this is a case of definition by group membership, in this case, by one’s trade or career. And even in the passionate throes of premarital sex, he still calls her “Kyoko-san.” Similarly, in the afterglow, Kyoko kisses Godai and tells him, “Honto wa ne, zutto mae kara, Godai-san no koto suki datta no” (The truth is, for a long time now, I’ve been in love with Godai-san). Not only does she refer to him by his family name (she never in the manga uses his first name, Yusaku), but she addresses him in the third person. This may seem odd to us in the casual, rough-and-tumble
informality of the West, but in Japan, it is a very natural way of speaking.

  Politeness levels—and how an unaware Westerner would deal with them—are part of the dynamics of the Eva pilots in Evangelion. Shinji Ikari is the son of Gendo Ikari, the commander of the Eva project. His two fellow pilots—both girls roughly his own age—address him in different ways, which can be attributed to their nationality. The mysterious Rei Ayanami calls him “Ikari-kun.”5 (By the way, there’s no chance of confusing Shinji with his father with such a reference; the father would be referred to by his title, as Commander Ikari.) Asuka Langley, however, of half-German parentage and raised partly in America, doesn’t bother with such niceties. She usually goes straight for “Shinji-kun” if she’s feeling generous; otherwise it’s “baka Shinji” (“Shinji, you idiot”).

  Asuka doesn’t need to call Shinji an idiot to be rude; just using his first name is enough. “In Japan,” as Reid points out, “you might use the given name for somebody who is about your age and who you have known from preschool days. But, generally, in that decorous society, it is much too intimate . . . to refer to somebody you’ve known for only a decade or so by his first name.”6 “Shinji-kun” is bad enough for a new acquaintance; dropping the -kun is a textbook example of yobisute.

  In an interview with Animerica magazine, shojo manga (girls’ comic) artist Chiho Saito, part of the Be Papas team that created Utena, offers a philosophy of life that is almost nihilistically individualist—except that at the last minute it veers back to Japan’s traditional cognizance of the way others affect one’s life, and vice versa:

  When I was a child, I thought the world was a solid place—I was living in it, and all I did was experience the existing world. But later on I realized that there were people in authority that were trying to change the world according to their own desires. This is true not only in a small world like a household, but also true in as large an entity as society. Those authorities can alter the world’s ethics and morals, and use them as their tools. So, at the point that I realized that morality was altered by those in authority, I felt released. Since the restrictions on me as a woman were imposed by people rather than the universe, I realized I didn’t have to be restricted by them. So as a human being, I will do what I need to do to pursue happiness regardless of others’ restrictions—it’s in the pursuit that I become a contented person. I can’t act however I want, because I have to communicate with other people and interact with society, but if you take other people into account, you can find your own way to happiness.7

  Even revolution, it seems, has its limits.

  Don’t Just Say “No”

  The fact that maintaining politeness in all social interaction is supposed to be a given in Japan has led to some misunderstandings. President Clinton met with Russia’s President Yeltsin in 1994. In a now-famous gaffe, when the subject of the Japanese Prime Minister came up, Clinton warned Yeltsin that “He says ‘yes’ when he means ‘no.’” Japan is not, needless to say, a nation of hypocrites, as a statement like that would suggest. But it is a place where the word “no” is sometimes regarded as too blunt.

  Of course, Japanese has a word for “no,” but its use is governed by the web of social obligations. This web points to one of the hardest things for many Westerners to understand when learning Japanese: that vocabulary, and even grammar, can change according to one’s age, one’s gender, and one’s social position relative to the other party in the conversation. These “politeness levels” are not taught as such to the Japanese, either, but then they don’t have to be; they are constants in society and are learned, like bowing, by example from the cradle.

  The Nissan car company issued a series of books titled Business Japanese that sought to explain Japan’s corporate culture as well as its language. The Western negotiator is cautioned that, although he/she may think “your counterparts give you so little indication all along about just how the negotiation is progressing,” the signals are in fact clear to one who understands them. Phrases such as “Well, I don’t know . . .” or “It is not possible for our department alone to decide on these points . . .” or even a dead silence have the same meaning: no. The negotiator shouldn’t assume that the decision was vetoed on the spot, either: true to the collective ethic, the veiled no “reflects [the opinion] of superiors consulted at length prior to the meeting.”8 This consensus approach is exemplified in an episode of the 1995 anime based on Wataru Yoshizumi’s teen romance manga Marmalade Boy. This story is about the blossoming romance (and the obstacles along the way) between Yu and Miki. The set-up to this whole story, though, is especially unusual, and could have served Cole Porter as the basis for an entire musical.

  Even though Yu and Miki knew each other, their parents had never met. At least, not until they all went on vacation to Hawaii. In a twist of fate that had to unsettle all concerned, both Yu’s and Miki’s parents decide to divorce, in order to remarry the spouse of the other family! Even worse, they decide when they get back to Japan that it would be best for all of them to live in one big house!

  This novel arrangement hits Miki the hardest: Yu is now her stepbrother as well as her housemate, which complicates any blossoming romance. The grownups note her unhappiness and decide to act. They stage an elaborate fight, which threatens to tear the families apart. Of course, when things look as if they’ll fall apart, Miki decides that she really didn’t mind the unorthodox living arrangements, and peace is restored.

  The goal, after all, is harmony, or wa. This is why the grownups didn’t simply order Miki to accept the grownups’ rules or the will of the majority. Wa is not about democracy or majority rule; it is about consensus, about all group members working in concert toward the same goal. There would always be a problem if Miki had a hidden agenda, if her dissatisfaction with the new living arrangements was never confronted. By bringing her back into the fold, harmony is achieved.

  Harmony, however, cannot be forced, and attempts to do so may bring about more harm than good. This is one of the subplots of the girls’ baseball anime Princess Nine. Of all the various players recruited for the Kisaragi Girls’ High School’s pioneering baseball team, the last backstory the audience learns is that of left fielder Yuki Azuma. Quiet and detached, she’s a brilliant batter and fielder, but she hardly says a word or even smiles. She barely seems to be attached to reality. Eventually, we find out why.

  Back in junior high school, Yuki was the star of her team in the Junior High Softball Championship and was voted the Most ValuablePlayer on the Kanto team. She was talented, jubilant in her abilities, and this upset her teammates. She had an innately shy nature, but this was taken to mean that she was “full of herself.” The teammates considered themselves part of a winning team, but Yuki didn’t seem to want to share her joy in the game, much less the victory. Once the championship was over, the team shredded Yuki’s uniform and told her she was off the team.

  Yuki talked to her father, who turned out to be self-absorbed and cold; his reaction was to ask if Yuki wasn’t imagining things. In despair despite her talents, Yuki attempted suicide, at which she failed. Her parents’ reaction was to complain that having a “neurotic” daughter was shameful. Yuki’s only salvation was Fifi, an extraterrestrial who appeared to her one day, telling her that it would be her friend. Fifi is, to everyone else, a doll made of pipe cleaners, but Yuki believes it to be her only friend. When the Kisaragi team goes to a mountain resort for a training weekend, Yuki loses the doll in the woods. She almost shuts down again, until the other team members convince her that they had all become friends in the process of becoming a team. While Yuki felt herself alone in the past, she learns that her teammates are willing to help her, and that they would trust her to help them if the tables were turned. We know that Yuki learns this lesson by several clues: she has a vision of Fifi, her mission accomplished, returning to her home world; in their first pivotal championship game, Yuki has repeatedly been walked, but in her final at-bat, she turns to the other girls and smi
les; and, even though the pitcher tries to hit her with a bean-ball, Yuki, the one-time softball phenom, bunts. It’s the least glamorous play in baseball, but it’s what the team needs as the go-ahead runner on third steals home.

  Watch Your Language

  The emphasis on social propriety has given rise to another Western misperception, as misleading as the “yes means no” stereotype: that Japanese has no swear words. This may seem very strange, especially if one is watching an anime dubbed into English and some macho character is swearing like a drunken sailor. In fact, there are words for certain body parts and functions that are not generally used in Japanese society. On the other hand, there are words that are “swear words” but are not as socially forbidden in Japan as in the West; kuso, for example, is both the literal and figurative equivalent of “shit,” but doesn’t carry the weight of the Western s-word. An actor or an anime character can say kuso on Japanese television with almost no repercussions. However, given the Japanese emphasis on politeness, the culture has developed other ways of insulting people that don’t depend on four-letter words (or their equivalents).

  Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997) contains an excellent case in point. The monk Jiko is first seen having soup at a roadside restaurant, and he complains in the original script that “this tastes like hot water.” Both the grammar and the vocabulary are bluntly insulting to Japanese ears, yet author Neil Gaiman, who adapted the film into English, felt that the line by itself wasn’t blunt or insulting enough for American ears. His version of the line has Jiko comparing the soup to “donkey piss.” That change probably says more about Gaiman’s culture than it does about Miyazaki’s.