I personally believe the reason for non-western fiction gaining so much mainstream traction is quite simple: it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
Even simple scenarios, like running a small store or living life in a rural village, are so different from our usual experiences that it provides a way for our brains to release some of the pressure that comes from our busy day-to-day lives.
The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead.
I was putting a lot of thought into this just yesterday, talking with some friends about the "Thing: Japan" phenomenon
It's important to recognize that any discussion about Japanese media outside of Japan is more or less only receiving the media that Japan is exporting to the world. Yes there are exceptions to this, people going out of their way to fan sub shows and such, but for the majority of Western people who are experiencing Japanese media it is very mainstream popular stuff like Studio Ghibli films and the most popular anime
With that said, I think the approach Japan has towards making media is very different than Western studios, especially when it comes to depictions of real world Japan
American TV and writing is very cynical about America. Consider the common depictions of rural America in most American media (rednecks, racist, boring, dirty) to the common depictions of rural Japan in Japanese media (idyllic, colorful, spiritual, friendly)
Even compare how a fictional Japanese city is depicted in the Yakuza game series (where you play a criminal doing crimes) and how a fictional American city is depicted in the Grand Theft Auto series (where you play a criminal doing crimes)
I really think Japanese creators like Japan more than American creators like America, and it shows through their work by smoothing over a lot of the rough edges of Japanese society
> Yes there are exceptions to this, people going out of their way to fan sub shows and such,
I agree that the well known works are usually the better productions, but that detail is wrong. Crunchyroll puts out almost everything that's currently being released, including complete nonsense like reincarnated as a vending machine
And while I'd agree that most Japanese authors seem to have gigantic pride for their culture, it does get old because it's become such a trope to introduce Japanese culture/food as the best thing ever created...
I mean I'm more likely to watch an anime then the woke garbage the west is currently producing, but I think the main reason is because our own productions have so massively dropped in quality.
There just hasn't been another series such as Dexter, Breaking Bad etc in over 10 yrs now... If there were, I think anime would be a lot less relevant right now.
> I agree that the well known works are usually the better productions, but that detail is wrong. Crunchyroll puts out almost everything that's currently being released
Japan produces a lot more media than just anime, the west does not see most of it. When was the last time you saw a live action Japanese procedural crime show localized to English? Or really any live action Japanese shows that aren't something like Kamen Rider or Godzilla?
Also, arguably the only reason Crunchyroll even exists today is because of dedicated fan subs making Japanese media available for decades
That's true, my mind just instantly jumped to anime because of the word fansub.
I think most people would also agree that anime, manga (and games as a distant third) are the main cultural exports of Japan, while life action movies/series are often centered around American productions
"It's important to recognize that any discussion about Japanese media outside of Japan is more or less only receiving the media that Japan is exporting to the world"
Which is a really just a long winded way of saying "The majority Japanese media we are exposed to is anime, manga and games"
Biggest reason is simply quantity, Japan churns out hundreds of animated stories from new authors every year, the west do barely anything in comparison.
When you create that much content some of them do become hits, and it also encourages more authors to create more content, while western studios only invests in franchises they can control themselves to create another marvel, while Japan just churns out content while the authors retain the rights.
Edit: Many western authors writes about other worlds etc, they just don't get anything animated since it is so hard to get anyone to invest in your story.
There seems to be some progress in the western animation scene. Dungeon Crawler Carl and Cradle are both getting animated adaptations.
The biggest tragedy is that even incredibly popular authors like Brandon Sanderson don't get a chance of having their own animated series. Mistborn would work perfectly as an anime adaptation.
Marvel and DC historically created way too much consolidation which really limited creative output. And by this point people seem pretty fed up with 'capeshit'. Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers, especially when compared to managa where you can just pick up the story and binge read the whole thing without having to pick up a million other things.
>Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
I agree with this if we are talking American superhero comics, but the European scene is decidedly different. Franco-Belgian comics are usually very pick-up-and-go, as are a great many of the homegrown UK ones. I think we're coming off a decade-ish where the massive investment in Marvel/DC 'verses have been eating up all the oxygen in the room for large comic book adaptions. Or just for general public consciousness attention for comics.
I am pretty confident that it's gonna turn around, but it might take a while on the large scale projects.
Things have definitely come a long way since the nineties where you would read a book or comic and wonder about how great it will be when the property will get adapted and reach a wider audience. It's kind of like listening to a band before they became popular or maybe rain on Arrakis. We got what we wanted and the thing that we anticipated isn't nearly as special anymore. Dinniman and Brandon Sanderson definitely deserve their wider audiences but it just seems anticlimactic as these shows and movies inevitably roll out.
Just a handful of Western comics you can pick up and read today:
The Sandman (Netflix show), The Best We Could Do, Pride of Baghdad, Superman American Alien, Superman Red Son (animated), I Hate Fairyland, Bone, Epileptic, Paper Girls (turned into an live action show), Monstress, Saga, The Watchmen (turned into a terrible movie, an adaptation show, and an animated show), Stumptown (also got a show I believe), Daytripper, Maus, Berlin…
I'm not at all involved in the industry so here's an armchair opinion; western animation is too expensive for anything but guaranteed hits or kid's shows. Arcane is one of the best western animations of today, but it cost $250 million for just two seasons.
Wages in Japan for animators are much lower, if not exploitative.
Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
In my experience, it is easy to just pick up a trade paperback, one shot, subscribe to a limited series, etc. Even if you want to just jump in to an ongoing series, the writing and storylines are simple enough that you can usually pick it up in a few issues or just wait for a new arc.
The Cradle adaptation is only an animatic, sadly. Best case scenario is that it generates enough buzz for a Netflix or an Amazon to pick it up for a full series, but then I'd be worried it would get butchered like Rings of Power or Wheel of Time have been.
America is not the whole West, HN readers often forget it. Ditto with thinking on "Dragon Ball in the West" ended in the 00's when we the Europead finished it on mid 90's and began to watch Dragon Ball GT in 1999.
None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation, we're talking about literary fiction here as opposed to more pop fiction like light novels which exist more as mass commercial enterprises.
No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday, let alone progress to literature, in the same way as how somebody watching the MCU is unlikely to progress to Infinite Jest.
Geographical distinctions don't really make sense in deciding preference, you start with genre elements and pick from there, regardless if it's Western or Japanese. Ignoring a work because it comes from X country would just be bizarre. As a sci-fi or fantasy fan I don't make distinctions between Japanese or Korean or Western works, nor do I see other fans doing so. For example, I wouldn't be comparing Satoshi Hase's Beatless in the context of "Japanese" works, I'd be comparing it to other AI works. The only limiting factor is translation.
But cross-genre pollination doesn't really happen nowadays, most shounen readers will never go or even avoid mecha, and so forth. Otaku culture especially is much more fragmented today than in the early 2010s.
> No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday
You realize Umeniko got an anime? Yes, some of the people who watched that anime probably went to read the books, is that really so hard to believe? Authors who got their works animated see a lot more book sales as well. Then as they read those books they might want more so they look for adjacent books, fueling the entire industry.
Well, the Umineko anime was pretty bad... But I illustrated the disprecancy between the VN culture and larger Anime culture for reason that the VN subculture is already very close to Anime subculture yet receives much less attention. Of course a few individuals can "graduate", but we can observe statistically most don't. Majority of AoT fans aren't going into MuvLuv.
Contemporary Literary Fiction as in the article is separated by far more cultural layers, there is virtually no cross pollination with the otaku subculture. You are far more likely to get someone who reads Westen literature to expand to Japanese works than an otaku to do so.
No, not all start as light novels. In many cases the light novels come afterwards as a way to capitalise (eg Demon Slayer, the manga finished a while ago, so while the anime is still running light novels are coming out).
Apothecary Diaries started as a light novel, but JJK, AoT and many others start as Manga
Also, the article is about animes as well. Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example. It talks a lot about books, but it isn't only about books. I thought that was obvious.
> No, not all start as light novels
Many are though, many of the animes that came out for a few years I had already read the LN for. That so many novels becomes animes is likely a big reason why there are so many novels being written along those styles.
> The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
> Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead
When people draw conclusions like this it often seems like they're making apples to oranges comparisons. Most "isekai" stuff is light novels. The appropriate comparison with stuff published in the US would might be YA books which also have lots of stuff that does not "take place within our existing world".
I think there might be some confusion about how common different types of fiction are in Japan because people are comparing US literary fiction with Japanese genre fiction because Japanese "pure literature" fiction doesn't tend to receive attention in the US, but in reality I'm not sure the US and Japanese fiction markets are that different overall.
This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature, I think some posters just took off from the title only?
You're right that if we are comparing the wider body, there isn't really a distinction between "Western" or "Japanese", at least for enthusiasts, what matters alot more are the individual authors.
Literary fiction is a genre with tropes of its own. It's just one that its fans get extremely snobby about. But doesn't Murakami count as literary fiction?
There's a ton of great western fiction that does the same thing, it's just not usually gonna show up on traditional channels. Heck, that's not even entirely true since Travis Baldree's slice of life Legends & Lattes won Nebula and Hugo awards last year.
If you go on Royal Road there's tons of great fantasy stories. The West is just missing the Japanaese pipeline of web serials -> light novel -> manga -> anime -> live action movie. Although there's companies like WebToons that seem to be trying to get such a pipeline going by making comics based on popular western web serials.
I've read my fair share of both Western and Japanese light novels, and you can definitely find quality content everywhere. In Japan they just do a better job at capitalizing on success by giving every slightly popular light novel series a try with an anime season or two. As someone who usually checks out 1 or 2 episodes of most seasonal anime, I can tell you that most of it ends up being barely memorable slop though.
It's worth noting that the West seems to be catching up, a few popular series are getting animated series. Two big ones that come to mind are Cradle by Will Wight, and Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.
I think there are also issues of scale of investment and revenue splits - I can't find right now, but there was a rant tweet from a Japanese comic author that apparent typical compensation for webtoons was below labor cost of his team by couple digits, and I also remember seeing similar rants on topic of AI training materials that were off by even larger magnitudes(like $.25 per dozen images one-time vs $1k per use recurring).
So authors seem to be getting paid more, and that leads to an obvious question of how. One possible answer to that is maybe Japanese media contents - be it images or anime or light novel or classical novel - are still heavily subsidized by its strong and isolate domestic consumption. Average household expenditure on reading is about $120 per year in US and $325 in Japan[1], which IMO roughly coincide with this hypothesis.
If there actually is such a situation... maybe what's missing in Western media is just accelerated consumption. It's weird to think that Americans and Europeans might not be consuming enough media, but that could be it.
1: at current rate of 150 yen/dollar; raw value is 50k yen or ~1% average yearly income
A sort of joke is that many anime episodes are a 30 minute ad for the soundtrack CD. If you look at the anime by itself the numbers very clearly make no sense, but shows are financed by integrated production companies that make their money on side merchandise.
Murakami's works, at least, feel quite westernised. They are filled with references to western music and other art, the protagonists generally have jobs that are also common in the west, and (not sure whether this is down to Murakami or his translator) the characters always sound very American in dialogue. Nothing about them feels particularly alien to a western reader, except the surrealism itself (and, perhaps, certain aspects of his portrayal of women that is sometimes considered problematic in the west).
The point you make here is exactly why I often prefer to watch *anime. I think it also applies to my preferences for British period pieces.
As an American, British period pieces[0][1][2] obviously present a different world. I imagine they are more palatable to someone in my demographic because we are relatively disconnected from British culture, society, and history. Recently I became aware of the UK's New Man / New Lad gender stereotypes[3] and realized that the main characters of these shows fit. As a result of this awareness, I can no longer enjoy these shows without being reminded of cultural conflicts of the present day. A story about a social issue set in the 1960s used to be just that, but now it's more apparent to me that the narratives are meant to shape present-day perception of these issues.
It was nice not being reminded of the political struggles we face on a daily basis. Now I'm unsure if media consumers who lack this awareness are the lucky ones or the sheep. I wonder if British people have always felt this way about these shows and I'm only just catching up now. I also wonder if this dynamic is mutual with other cultures - for example, is Rings of Power considered non-controversial in SE Asia due to the cultural disconnect?
* My preference for anime has waned as certain tropes have become quite overused and tiresome.
There does seem to be a unique form of escapism in the aesthetics. I often think of it when I think about the jazz cafe phenomenon that is popular in Japan. It's warm and cozy but it can also be a cozy sterility (but hey we have cats!) that a lot of societies seem to be going through now (in the West as well). A sleepy existential crisis that plays itself out in quotidian surrealism. It's not unpleasant but also feels somehow like a miss on both an individual and civilizational level.
I think most attempts to rationalize why media from an entire culture is popular are going to fall short, and while this is better reasoning that usual it's still overthinking the problem. At the end of the day, every culture produces media, some percentage of that is going to be really good, and sometimes other groups end up really enjoying it because of quality and novelty.
Video games, yes, but anime (aside from a couple things that played on normal channels, like dragon ball—seeking out more, though...) and especially manga were things only certain kinds of dorks enjoyed, among those whose high school years were in the '90s and '00s. Toward the veeeeery end of the '00s (as the kids right behind that group started reaching high school) it was changing, and what's remarkable now is how entirely normal it is, even manga. It's no longer unusual for the popular kids to like it.
It was kinda hard to even get anime in that time period, if it wasn't one of the few played on TV. Hell, even US TV shows had only recently started coming out as complete DVD sets, most still weren't available that way, and publishers were all over the place on what they thought a season was worth. You pretty much had to be into Internet piracy to be a fan, or know someone who was and would get stuff for you.
>it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
The entirety of western entertainment seems to have forgotten that the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality. Japanese entertainment by and large is precisely that escape, the pressure valve to let loose and be just happy for a while.
A lot of people here take offense when western entertainment is called "woke", with a common rebuttal being that "woke" isn't well defined. Well tell you what, I'll help define it: "Woke" entertainment is entertainment that incorporates or outright is real life and particularly specific facets of real life, often with no reason for that incorporation or nature insofar as leisure is concerned. The obligatory black man or the obligatory powerful(?) woman to check the boxes, for some examples.
Japanese entertainment has none of that bullshit, even if it otherwise is rife with tropes. Entertainment that constantly shouts at you about real life is shitty entertainment.
Conversely, Japanese entertainment would die overnight if literally anyone else produces decent and simply enjoyable entertainment. Japanese entertainment is devoid of innovation now, a lot of it is rehashes upon rehashes and the isekai genre being as long-lived as it is is a huge symptom.
I don't know if that was your intention, but I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with. Yes all new British and American productions are ticking these two boxes, but it's not shouting at all of us.
I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
>I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
The 15th of each month is a big day for 36-year-old Yoshihiro Nozawa: it is the day he gets paid.
But every month, he hands over his entire salary to his wife Masami.
She controls the household budget and gives him a monthly pocket money of 30,000 yen ($381; £243). Despite being the breadwinner, that is all the money he can spend on himself over the next 30 days.
"The last five days from the 10th of each month are usually the toughest," says Yoshihiro.
[...]
47-year-old Taisaku Kubo has been getting 50,000 yen a month from his wife Yuriko for the past 15 years.
He has tried to negotiate a pay rise each year but his wife makes a presentation to explain why it cannot be done.
"She draws a pie chart of our household budget to explain why I cannot get more pocket money," says Taisaku.
[...]
So why don't men start controlling the household budgets themselves?
"I don't think many men hand over their entire salaries happily," says career consultant Takao Maekawa of FeelWorks.
"But they feel it's their obligation to earn money for the family even if it means they have to suffer themselves."
Imagine a world where literature was preoccupied with height. A character is always slotted in who's explicitly the token short character, and the storyline is always, subtly or not, written to highlight how the world is biased against short people. Authors are very cautious about depicting a short person with any negative trait; when they do, a direct line is drawn between the social circumstances they encountered and their future actions.
This would be exhausting, and people would rightly start to roll their eyes at it. And it would be fine for readers to object to it, even as short people are a component of reality. It wouldn't mean the complainant finds short people objectionable in themselves, but simply that they don't think height is a defining part of reality that all of literature is obligated to address.
> Imagine a world where literature was preoccupied with height.
Smart of you to have picked one of the few human characteristics that hasn't been used to justify discriminations and very unfortunate historical events... In our world it's not just literature that is very preoccupied with skin colour and gender.
> It wouldn't mean the complainant finds short people objectionable in themselves, but simply that they don't think height is a defining part of reality that all of literature is obligated to address.
You have it reversed, if it's not a defining part of someone's reality, why would one even care whether it's addressed in fiction or not? The person I was answering to does care, a lot, to the point that swinging one way or another can ruin their experience.
Not getting into how we define what are valid complaints vs invalid, because that's besides the point.
You'd find it exhausting. People similarly find the race and gender preoccupation exhausting. Your justification for the different treatment seems to be "for these categories, people are obligated to not find them exhausting, but not for other categories." But that's not well-motivated.
In a height-preoccupied literary world, can you imagine objecting to the height preoccupation? If you did, how could you justify it, if it's not a defining part of your existence?
"one of the few human characteristics that hasn't been used to justify discriminations"
Of course it has. That notions like “Napoleon complex” circulate in pop culture, suggests that society broadly considers short-statured people to be somehow disadvantaged and, moreover, it can be funny when the short-statured kick against the pricks. Also, the demand that a suitable male partner ought to be over six feet tall, is absolutely widespread, both in match-seeking profiles on online-dating platforms and in dating fora where women give advice to each other. (Or, if you want to reverse the sexes, Truffaut’s gag in Baisers volés about dating a tall girl, wouldn’t work if people broadly didn’t feel that there was something weird about this.)
>I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with.
They were just examples, I'm deeply annoyed at anything concerning acute political/social activism in entertainment because it's simply not what I wanted to spend my leisure time on.
Isn't being annoyed at something sociopolitical and expressing that feeling, sharing your concerns with anyone who will listen, itself a sociopolitical act?
Because it is.
I'm not trying to gaslight you, insofar as reason itself agrees with my proposition.
I agree, it's a sociopolitical demand to stop shitting up my leisure time.
There's a good way and a bad way to have elements in entertainment. Using the "black man" example again, a good example are the Redguards in The Elder Scrolls games. I wasn't annoyed, the Redguards were a natural and very good part of the world building and lore and served to better entertain me.
A bad example on the other hand is literally any of the "obligatory black man" now seen everywhere. He doesn't serve any purpose other than to say that there's a black man.
I want more Redguards in my entertainment, not obligatory black men.
I'm not Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Sending your complaints of mainstream culture to me will not result in your political representation and its voice being heard. I am unable to effectively sponsor and defend your proposed alternative dynamics.
But! If I am like a techno-angel sent from the Heavens above, then what I can do is suggest to you that exit, as opposed to voice, is a sociopolitical act that you should consider. Exit from the mainstream culture is your best bet.
The token characters and checkboxes are a symptom of design-by-committee corporate culture anyways and even without them, the quality isn't going to be any better because again, it's corporate slop.
This only means that there's a pervasive cultural synagogue/cathedral that has infected behavior through pedagogical means. Namely, education itself has been made to serve the interests of all possible economics that can occur within the borders of global liberal democracy.
This also only means that any sociopolitical exit from the zombie invasion must at least be as high as considering a departure from common epistemology.
I choose not to watch most American-made entertainment because I share this sentiment, however, I'd like to point out that it goes much deeper than that. All media is a construction and projection of a certain viewpoint on reality. Until American entertainment can project a view that is wholesome, I must always consider it to be less valuable than media that does. This is not only for entertainment's sake, but also for the mental health of viewers. We need shows to show people how to be polite and how to behave, not shows that denigrate and debase. We should all put less emphasis on shows that align with political views and more emphasis on shows that align with moral ones.
That is about as uneducated a take as one could possibly have.
Keep in mind "isekai" as a genre also exists in western entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Chronicles of Narnia are some prominent and famous examples. Are those specifically for shut-ins and nerds too?
When we talk about isekai in modern contexts we do commonly refer to the post 2015 Narou-Isekai where one certainly draws a distinction between isekai before 2015 or after.
The thing about "old" isekai is that they exist more as fantasy stories with specific messages and themes, where Narou-Isekai can be specifically placed in the context of the latest evolution of the Otaku after the failure of sekai-kei and the increasing self-indulgence from CGCDT, Battle-Harems all the way to Isekai.
Sorry if I struck a nerve, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but why do you think I'm uneducated? I also should have said I was specifically referring to anime since I think that's what most people think of when they hear "isekai".
> the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality
To claim that escapism is the sole purpose of art is certainly a bold statement. Why bother reflecting on human society when we can just do our best to jam our fingers in our ears and ignore it?
I value entertainment that demonstrates how to thrive more than "entertainment" that demonstrates struggle. Struggle is important and necessary, but it should never be an end unto itself. True entertainment should uphold the dignity of as many people as possible.
If capitalism wasn't the leviathan that it was, then I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to escape the life that capitalist neo-colonialism has brought into existence. Pretty soon, at this rate, life itself will be a subordinate of the democratic global capital project.
For comics, I believe this partially originates from Stan Lee's view of including something relatable from real life in their works of art and media. The problem with that view is that it doesn't really integrate into all forms of media well.
And I don't know if Japanese entertainment would fall over that easy. Media has a way of sticking around in our heads.
"the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality"
I get that you don’t like woke, but that is too blanket a claim. There has just been too much popular literature across America and Europe that has directly dealt with dire social and political trends of the day. Even when it comes to the issue of American race relations and the impact of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the all-time bestselling books of the 19th century, so fiction readers clearly weren’t interested only in escape.
This take is in the "Why did they put politics into my Metal Gear?!" category. Japanese fiction continues to win over people precisely because it's more than just pure entertainment. Japanese creators still manage to challenge audiences intellectually, politically, even aesthetically. Metaphor: ReFantazio, probably one of the best Japanese game releases this year is very political, not shying away at all from tackling class, race and even the literal point of this post, media dumbed down to escapism.
Maybe you don't realize it, but we're on the same side.
Japanese entertainment isn't In Your Dumb Face about things unlike western entertainment, it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense. You're not being talked down to, your ability to just pick another (better) product to be entertained with and walk away is respected; and it's an escape from the rest of the world shouting at you about something.
I've been on a Japanese literature kick for a while now.
For me the characters are the main difference from American literature. The article mentions this briefly, but I find that in the novels I've read (admittedly translated), Japanese novel characters have much more depth. They're flawed people often with selfish motivations, and it's much more reflective of real life.
Plot structure is very different as well with most of these novels not having a true setting > rising action > climax > falling action style plot like American literature tends to have. The books often just end without much resolution at all.
Probably the biggest reason I've been reading them though is that I'm just tired of "young adult" books that have so much popularity here in America. It's like a tag you can throw on to shield your bad writing. It feels like everything popular here is written with 6th grade grammar. Maybe this phenomenon exists in Japan too, but we have the filter that translation provides. Presumably most translated novels are at least somewhat successful and well written, or else they wouldn't have been translated.
For reference, of the translated fiction I've read, I'd recommend -
Lady Joker by Takamura
Devotion of Suspect X by Higashino
Out by Kirino
Breasts and Eggs, Ms Ice Sandwich, and Heaven by Kawakami
Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings by Murata
The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and Kafka By The Shore by Murakami
Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy was excellent. The second entry in the series, Runaway Horses, is in my opinion the 20th century's best novel. The fourth, with its surprising conclusion, was also astounding.
Much to my surprise, I've found that the books actually read better in English translation than they do in Japanese. Mishima was inordinately fond of using complicated, and sometimes archaic, Chinese-style (kanji) characters that even native Japanese readers have trouble with. His books flow a little bit more smoothly in English, and they don't seem to lose much in translation.
It has been years since I read the Sea of Fertility, but I remember one Western scholar of Japan claiming that the fourth volume was a shoddy work compared to the previous three, written hastily as Mishima was preparing for his death. Since the English version didn’t obviously strike me as so flawed, I wondered if the translator had done some rescue work. Sadly, I’ll probably never be able to read the book in its original Japanese.
I saw nothing wrong with the fourth book -- and I preferred it to the first, which was perhaps a little bit too saccharine and tinged with nostalgia for a lost world, and the third, which was a little bit too sedate. (Especially after the wild vitality of the second.)
Public opinion turned on Mishima after his death. Westerners, by and large, took offense at his final actions. The Japanese found it embarrassing and endeavored to forget all about it. I'd venture a guess that your critic could be influenced by feelings that have nothing to do with the book as a thing in itself.
I've read a few of Murakami's books (including Wind Up Bird) and enjoyed them. They certainly have their flaws and if you ever browse through a thread in a books subreddit, they will be pointed out with glee by one person after another. The primary complaint seems to be how he writes women.
You'd think a books subreddit would be a place for people to celebrate books and writers but it mostly seems to be a place for people who dislike particular books in particular ways to vent and rant. They don't like book X and they don't want you to either.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to check them all out.
The primary complaint I have seen about Murakami in internet books forums, is how repetitive his writing ultimately became. His treatment of women that strikes many as problematic, is just one of the things that get repeated.
I think one reason that Japanese fiction is beginning to see pickups in western audiences is because Japanese companies are improving their skills at exporting culture to the west. One aspect of this is translation, where they spent decades building a workforce that is capable of quality translations. Another aspect is that of this is that Western culture is beginning to inspire Japanese creators. This allows Japan to create cultural artifacts that more resonate with Western audiences and inspire them. This is a virtuous cycle, which is good for business, international relations, and human creativity.
> Another aspect is that of this is that Western culture is beginning to inspire Japanese creators.
I just want to mention that "beginning to" is selling it short a bit
Japan has been influenced heavily by Western culture for a very long time
Dungeons and Dragons was huge in Japan for a while and inspired things like Record of Lodoss War. Famous composer for Final Fantasy Nobuo Uematsu has talked about one of his biggest inspirations being Elton John. Many episodes of Cowboy Bebop are titled after popular American classic blues-rock songs, and the whole show is very "American". After all, Cowboys and Blues Rock are very American
This may be becoming more prevalent as time goes on but it's been a shift that is happening for a long while
I agree "beginning to" is the wrong phrase. After all, Pokemon is 25 years old and among the most popular fictional worlds. I actually mean they are increasing their consistency in being able to successfully export media.
When I'm at the used bookshop, I always look for a Murakami book, Haruki or Ryu. I especially recommend Haruki's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for this crowd, as data encryption plays a role. Ryu is probably best known for his horror novel Audition because it was adapted for film by Miike Takashi. Both would be classified as surreal. Haruki's novels famously always have a cat in them, but not always in a major role.
> Murakami and Yoshimoto have something else in common: both were criticised in a 1990 essay by Kenzaburō Ōe, the Japanese Nobel prize-winning author. Their works, he said, “convey the experience of a youth politically uninvolved or disaffected, content to exist with an adolescent or post-adolescent subculture”.
I don't know the context of the quote and this wouldn't be the first time the Guardian puts a weird spin on something, but is there a problem with politically uninvolved protagonists?
Reminds me a bit of the latest video of Chris Niebauer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Dq5512MIE where he talks about the mind wandering upgrade through smart phones and social media. with the help if these tools the brain can offload the task of simulating/imagening things into the real world.
They aren't trojan horses for activism and ESG scores (yet, they are working on it). Just look at the closest comparable western equivalent, comics compared to mangas. The difference in sales numbers and impact on pop culture even in the west is monumental.
I agree, but it's worth considering that all media is a "trojan horse" projecting and shaping a certain view of the world. We must do more than object to agendas driven by media. Take control of your attention. Create your own narratives.
Your entire comment history is ragebait with an extreme focus on a particular and peculiar set of narratives. Your very first comment started out with this and it's basically been downhill from there.
I don't think OP, or anyone else, needs to explain your positions and motivations for you.
Indeed, I don't even think you're looking to truthfully engage here. Here's another part of the thread where someone asks clear questions and once you realize you're in a pickle you just throw out some rhetorical trash to upend the conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42245873
I'm not a search engine but ESG is basically corporate and government funding to include current year real world activism into media which is the antithesis of fiction.
Alright, so the search engine told me that "ESG" is a set of criteria to rate sustainability of corporations/investments, where E stands for environment (ressource efficiency/non-pollution, ...), S for social (worker safety, non-discrimination, ...) and G for governance (risk management, compliance, anti-corruption). Please correct misconceptions.
You are suggesting that government pays writers to show those kinds of sustainability in a overly positive way?
How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light? How can you be sure that the mismatch here is from goverment/corporate influence on writers, and not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
> How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light?
The Boys does this, but ironically - but a lot of people apparently miss the point of it being ironic / a pisstake.
Authors especially comic ones are usually part of big publisher like Marvel or DC that own the IP and call the shots. They also have ESG scores and they decide which activism to include that increases the score and raises more investor or government funding.
A lot of authors are commissioned though, basically given a brief of what to write. More often than not in more commercial franchises though, e.g. Marvel, Warhammer, video game adaptations / tie-ins, Minecraft, Manning books, etc.
But that goes into the realm of commercial media, vs "artistic" media where authors can just do whatever they want, and maybe they'll find a publisher and get successful.
expecting corporate publishing to be a source of good art is a mistake. of course a corporation will adapt to the market. seems like you have a problem with the free market which is exploiting the desire for wokeness in culture.
>Are western comics "trojan horses for activism and ESG scores"?
At times they can get very preachy, which is the problem. The reason is irrelevant, be it ESG investments or personal activism or what have you.
Japanese media can (and often does) include elements that are considered progressive, but it's rare for those to be crudely inserted for the sake of inserting them. Characters or themes that would be bemoaned in western media are appreciated because they are actually done in interesting ways, rather than acting as a political vibe check for the reader.
Which, in all honesty, is how I feel about this comment thread too. I simply do not believe anymore that people don't know what others mean when they say "woke". Not at this point. Yes it's hard to give a specific definition, but so is the case for fascism and the word is so, SO overused in political discourse that, funny enough, it has almost lost its meaning. Rarely does anyone go around saying "define fascism". And so comments are laid as bait, lest someone take a misstep which allows them to be branded as a series of -ists.
Whatever "woke" is, it is a thing. And many people are exhausted from it.
You raise a completely valid point that "fascism" is used in exactly the same way by the left political spectrum.
But this does not make the use of woke as a generic accusation any better.
> I simply do not believe anymore that people don't know what others mean when they say "woke"
The insiduous thing about this is: Different people do mean different things with this.
Some people are maybe against depicting women in leadership roles; others might not want to normalize homosexuality. Another group might want to keep any mention of transgenderism away from their kids. Someone else might just want to see more racist jokes about Mexicans. All those views are radically different; a lot of those "anti-woke" views would not even agree with each other.
By allowing weasely standpoints like that in a debate, you make it very easy for people to claim broad support for stupid and bigoted views without having to justify them.
So, in the context of western comics, what does "too much woke" mean to you?
Is this factually correct or can you simply not recognise the politicaly activism in the Japanese productions because of the cultural differences, or because they're more subtle or integrated into the story?
I mean that last one is a good thing; I think that instead of pearl-clutching and yelling "woke11!111" on the internet for a new Netflix production, it's more intellectually honest to criticize poor writing.
I wouldn't put it this quite this way but I think you're onto something.
Japanese novels are almost uniformly un-woke...yet they don't come off conservative. It's hard to find novels in the West that seem so politically detached, and it's always nice when you do.
They always have been, the X-Men were a metaphor on exploited minorities. Also, you don't understand what's actually Evangelion about. Is not about just metaphysics and philosophy,
but a satire and puns on womanizing otakus.
The X-Men are the superhero comic version of the ACLU.
Comics have a huge impact on pop culture. They form the basis for some of the biggest budget TV shows and movies which last for a long time in our collective consciousness: The Dark Knight series, Watchmen, the Avengers, etc.
Several just on their own are huge cultural juggernauts: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, XKCD, Penny Arcade, etc.
I don't know why you think comics are. Trojan Horse for ESG/activism. Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time, the best perceived way to do that was to diversify those offerings. Even if that didn't end up working (assuming your POV in good faith), that doesn't mean it was a "Trojan horse for activism" anymore than the rise and fall of the shonen genre in manga was a subversive attempt to inject masculinity into the populace.
What you term as ESG and all is not a shadowy cabal to force people to think a certain way. It's just companies trying to do what sells. You forget that in the beginning it did work, which is why it caught on.
> Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time,
Unfortunately this trends towards stretching out their characters and plotlines to utter absurdity and diluting storyline quality.
And I'm not sure if the ESG storyline angles even sell. Maybe we can pick a sample comparison; I remember a time when X-men had a feminism angle in their storylines. Then I read the recent X-men House/Rise-Of-X and it was so much better since it refocused on a new setting and their future instead of referencing ongoing real life politics.
Recent? FFS, they _always_ have been a reference for marginalized races/ethnics/disabled people, among the Teen Titans. Have you been living under a cave for 50 years?
Damn it, please, take a look on Charles Xavier. He's a disabled guy with mental powers. And OFC Magneto and his band are a metaphor on Malcolm X and radicalized Black people.
The X-Men from his birth it's basically Marvel:ACLU.
Some time ago somebody pointed out to me how the superhero genre really took off after 9/11 and I can't stop thinking about that because I think it says a lot about how people think, what they want and also how consent is manufactured.
9/11 pierced America's sense of safety. Perhaps Pearl Harbor was similar. Historically the Gauls sacking Rome in the 4th Century BCE was probably similar. So people were attracted to media where somebody would save them, protect them.
At a higher level, the superhero genre feeds into pushing an idealism narrative. Idealism here simply means some people are the good guys and other people are the bad guys. Inherently. Compare this to materialism, which is a philosophy that there is a feedback loop between a person and their environment, of each affecting the other. There is no good or evil. People simply respond to their circumstances. A Song of Ice and Fire (the books more than the TV show, particularly the later seasons) is a superb example of materialism in fiction.
So what does the rising popularity of Japanese literature (note: the article is about that and not about anime as I think some who simply read the headline assume) say about society?
I think we have a crisis of despair in society. The cost of living, particularly housing, is out of control. You have a generation who thinks they'll never own a home or ever be able to retire. They don't feel like they have the security to have children. Is it any wonder that escapism thrives when the real world seems so bleak?
I see this as yet another symptom of the crisis in capitalism. Sure there's a fascination with Japanese culture. This isn't new. But why? We're also seeing more Chinese fiction (eg Three Body Problem). It's hard for me not to see this trend as anything other than a failure in our society to provide hope to people whose dreams are very mundane.
Likewise, Japanese media was affected massively by WW2 and the nukes hitting Hiroshima / Nagasaki; think Godzilla as the most famous one, starting as an anti-nuclear message - although in recent iterations, Godzilla is a protector against similar monsters.
WW2 had a similar impact on both the US media - as heroes, liberators, etc - and European media - often more historical in nature.
People often consider the 2000 X-Men film to kick off the explosion of superhero films in the new millennium, and that was pre-September 11, so I’m not sure that correlation is causation here. Moreover, a lot of European artists in the early–mid 1960s remarked how superheroes were oddly prominent in American pop culture, and at that point the USA was still on top of the world and hadn’t been shamed by Vietnam.
Then you had Don Quixote where the Enlightened materialism made fun on the old-fashioned, Middle Ages' idealist Don Quixote (and vice-versa on Sancho Panza, a common hick) until they complement each other along the journey.
I personally believe the reason for non-western fiction gaining so much mainstream traction is quite simple: it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face. Even simple scenarios, like running a small store or living life in a rural village, are so different from our usual experiences that it provides a way for our brains to release some of the pressure that comes from our busy day-to-day lives. The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead.
I was putting a lot of thought into this just yesterday, talking with some friends about the "Thing: Japan" phenomenon
It's important to recognize that any discussion about Japanese media outside of Japan is more or less only receiving the media that Japan is exporting to the world. Yes there are exceptions to this, people going out of their way to fan sub shows and such, but for the majority of Western people who are experiencing Japanese media it is very mainstream popular stuff like Studio Ghibli films and the most popular anime
With that said, I think the approach Japan has towards making media is very different than Western studios, especially when it comes to depictions of real world Japan
American TV and writing is very cynical about America. Consider the common depictions of rural America in most American media (rednecks, racist, boring, dirty) to the common depictions of rural Japan in Japanese media (idyllic, colorful, spiritual, friendly)
Even compare how a fictional Japanese city is depicted in the Yakuza game series (where you play a criminal doing crimes) and how a fictional American city is depicted in the Grand Theft Auto series (where you play a criminal doing crimes)
I really think Japanese creators like Japan more than American creators like America, and it shows through their work by smoothing over a lot of the rough edges of Japanese society
> Yes there are exceptions to this, people going out of their way to fan sub shows and such,
I agree that the well known works are usually the better productions, but that detail is wrong. Crunchyroll puts out almost everything that's currently being released, including complete nonsense like reincarnated as a vending machine
And while I'd agree that most Japanese authors seem to have gigantic pride for their culture, it does get old because it's become such a trope to introduce Japanese culture/food as the best thing ever created...
I mean I'm more likely to watch an anime then the woke garbage the west is currently producing, but I think the main reason is because our own productions have so massively dropped in quality.
There just hasn't been another series such as Dexter, Breaking Bad etc in over 10 yrs now... If there were, I think anime would be a lot less relevant right now.
> I agree that the well known works are usually the better productions, but that detail is wrong. Crunchyroll puts out almost everything that's currently being released
Japan produces a lot more media than just anime, the west does not see most of it. When was the last time you saw a live action Japanese procedural crime show localized to English? Or really any live action Japanese shows that aren't something like Kamen Rider or Godzilla?
Also, arguably the only reason Crunchyroll even exists today is because of dedicated fan subs making Japanese media available for decades
That's true, my mind just instantly jumped to anime because of the word fansub.
I think most people would also agree that anime, manga (and games as a distant third) are the main cultural exports of Japan, while life action movies/series are often centered around American productions
Yeah, which is why in my original post I wrote:
"It's important to recognize that any discussion about Japanese media outside of Japan is more or less only receiving the media that Japan is exporting to the world"
Which is a really just a long winded way of saying "The majority Japanese media we are exposed to is anime, manga and games"
Arguably? Crunchyroll started as a pirate streaming site that hosted fansubs before they went legit.
Biggest reason is simply quantity, Japan churns out hundreds of animated stories from new authors every year, the west do barely anything in comparison.
When you create that much content some of them do become hits, and it also encourages more authors to create more content, while western studios only invests in franchises they can control themselves to create another marvel, while Japan just churns out content while the authors retain the rights.
Edit: Many western authors writes about other worlds etc, they just don't get anything animated since it is so hard to get anyone to invest in your story.
There seems to be some progress in the western animation scene. Dungeon Crawler Carl and Cradle are both getting animated adaptations.
The biggest tragedy is that even incredibly popular authors like Brandon Sanderson don't get a chance of having their own animated series. Mistborn would work perfectly as an anime adaptation.
Marvel and DC historically created way too much consolidation which really limited creative output. And by this point people seem pretty fed up with 'capeshit'. Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers, especially when compared to managa where you can just pick up the story and binge read the whole thing without having to pick up a million other things.
>Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
I agree with this if we are talking American superhero comics, but the European scene is decidedly different. Franco-Belgian comics are usually very pick-up-and-go, as are a great many of the homegrown UK ones. I think we're coming off a decade-ish where the massive investment in Marvel/DC 'verses have been eating up all the oxygen in the room for large comic book adaptions. Or just for general public consciousness attention for comics.
I am pretty confident that it's gonna turn around, but it might take a while on the large scale projects.
Things have definitely come a long way since the nineties where you would read a book or comic and wonder about how great it will be when the property will get adapted and reach a wider audience. It's kind of like listening to a band before they became popular or maybe rain on Arrakis. We got what we wanted and the thing that we anticipated isn't nearly as special anymore. Dinniman and Brandon Sanderson definitely deserve their wider audiences but it just seems anticlimactic as these shows and movies inevitably roll out.
Just a handful of Western comics you can pick up and read today:
The Sandman (Netflix show), The Best We Could Do, Pride of Baghdad, Superman American Alien, Superman Red Son (animated), I Hate Fairyland, Bone, Epileptic, Paper Girls (turned into an live action show), Monstress, Saga, The Watchmen (turned into a terrible movie, an adaptation show, and an animated show), Stumptown (also got a show I believe), Daytripper, Maus, Berlin…
I'm not at all involved in the industry so here's an armchair opinion; western animation is too expensive for anything but guaranteed hits or kid's shows. Arcane is one of the best western animations of today, but it cost $250 million for just two seasons.
Wages in Japan for animators are much lower, if not exploitative.
Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
In my experience, it is easy to just pick up a trade paperback, one shot, subscribe to a limited series, etc. Even if you want to just jump in to an ongoing series, the writing and storylines are simple enough that you can usually pick it up in a few issues or just wait for a new arc.
The Cradle adaptation is only an animatic, sadly. Best case scenario is that it generates enough buzz for a Netflix or an Amazon to pick it up for a full series, but then I'd be worried it would get butchered like Rings of Power or Wheel of Time have been.
>Western.
America is not the whole West, HN readers often forget it. Ditto with thinking on "Dragon Ball in the West" ended in the 00's when we the Europead finished it on mid 90's and began to watch Dragon Ball GT in 1999.
None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation, we're talking about literary fiction here as opposed to more pop fiction like light novels which exist more as mass commercial enterprises.
> None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation
This is wrong btw, I looked up one and "Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat" was an anime. This is about animes as well, not just books.
Anime gets people started, then they start reading other things from Japan. The west doesn't have such a pipeline to make casual persons into readers.
Edit: Anyway, the culture of celebrating authors in general rather than trying to create franchises helps a lot for all sorts of books.
No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday, let alone progress to literature, in the same way as how somebody watching the MCU is unlikely to progress to Infinite Jest.
Geographical distinctions don't really make sense in deciding preference, you start with genre elements and pick from there, regardless if it's Western or Japanese. Ignoring a work because it comes from X country would just be bizarre. As a sci-fi or fantasy fan I don't make distinctions between Japanese or Korean or Western works, nor do I see other fans doing so. For example, I wouldn't be comparing Satoshi Hase's Beatless in the context of "Japanese" works, I'd be comparing it to other AI works. The only limiting factor is translation.
But cross-genre pollination doesn't really happen nowadays, most shounen readers will never go or even avoid mecha, and so forth. Otaku culture especially is much more fragmented today than in the early 2010s.
I agree with your points, but to be honest Bungo Stray Dogs got me interested in Osamu Dasai and Akutagawa...
> No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday
You realize Umeniko got an anime? Yes, some of the people who watched that anime probably went to read the books, is that really so hard to believe? Authors who got their works animated see a lot more book sales as well. Then as they read those books they might want more so they look for adjacent books, fueling the entire industry.
Well, the Umineko anime was pretty bad... But I illustrated the disprecancy between the VN culture and larger Anime culture for reason that the VN subculture is already very close to Anime subculture yet receives much less attention. Of course a few individuals can "graduate", but we can observe statistically most don't. Majority of AoT fans aren't going into MuvLuv.
Contemporary Literary Fiction as in the article is separated by far more cultural layers, there is virtually no cross pollination with the otaku subculture. You are far more likely to get someone who reads Westen literature to expand to Japanese works than an otaku to do so.
Did you even read the article?
churn animated stories? WTF has that do do with an article about fiction books - NOT manga? or even anime?
You realize most of those stories were originally books? They turn books to mangas and then to animes.
No, not all start as light novels. In many cases the light novels come afterwards as a way to capitalise (eg Demon Slayer, the manga finished a while ago, so while the anime is still running light novels are coming out).
Apothecary Diaries started as a light novel, but JJK, AoT and many others start as Manga
Also, the article is about animes as well. Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example. It talks a lot about books, but it isn't only about books. I thought that was obvious.
> No, not all start as light novels
Many are though, many of the animes that came out for a few years I had already read the LN for. That so many novels becomes animes is likely a big reason why there are so many novels being written along those styles.
> The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
> Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead
When people draw conclusions like this it often seems like they're making apples to oranges comparisons. Most "isekai" stuff is light novels. The appropriate comparison with stuff published in the US would might be YA books which also have lots of stuff that does not "take place within our existing world".
I think there might be some confusion about how common different types of fiction are in Japan because people are comparing US literary fiction with Japanese genre fiction because Japanese "pure literature" fiction doesn't tend to receive attention in the US, but in reality I'm not sure the US and Japanese fiction markets are that different overall.
This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature, I think some posters just took off from the title only?
You're right that if we are comparing the wider body, there isn't really a distinction between "Western" or "Japanese", at least for enthusiasts, what matters alot more are the individual authors.
> This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature,
No it isn't, did you even read it? It mentions animes as well, not all of the works mentioned are books.
Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example.
Edit: They adapted that anime to a book, but a book adapted from an anime is hardly "pure literature", it is definitely pop literature.
The article is referring to the recently released book and calls She and Her Cat a book the only two times it references it.
Literary fiction is a genre with tropes of its own. It's just one that its fans get extremely snobby about. But doesn't Murakami count as literary fiction?
There's a ton of great western fiction that does the same thing, it's just not usually gonna show up on traditional channels. Heck, that's not even entirely true since Travis Baldree's slice of life Legends & Lattes won Nebula and Hugo awards last year.
If you go on Royal Road there's tons of great fantasy stories. The West is just missing the Japanaese pipeline of web serials -> light novel -> manga -> anime -> live action movie. Although there's companies like WebToons that seem to be trying to get such a pipeline going by making comics based on popular western web serials.
I've read my fair share of both Western and Japanese light novels, and you can definitely find quality content everywhere. In Japan they just do a better job at capitalizing on success by giving every slightly popular light novel series a try with an anime season or two. As someone who usually checks out 1 or 2 episodes of most seasonal anime, I can tell you that most of it ends up being barely memorable slop though.
It's worth noting that the West seems to be catching up, a few popular series are getting animated series. Two big ones that come to mind are Cradle by Will Wight, and Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.
I think there are also issues of scale of investment and revenue splits - I can't find right now, but there was a rant tweet from a Japanese comic author that apparent typical compensation for webtoons was below labor cost of his team by couple digits, and I also remember seeing similar rants on topic of AI training materials that were off by even larger magnitudes(like $.25 per dozen images one-time vs $1k per use recurring).
So authors seem to be getting paid more, and that leads to an obvious question of how. One possible answer to that is maybe Japanese media contents - be it images or anime or light novel or classical novel - are still heavily subsidized by its strong and isolate domestic consumption. Average household expenditure on reading is about $120 per year in US and $325 in Japan[1], which IMO roughly coincide with this hypothesis.
If there actually is such a situation... maybe what's missing in Western media is just accelerated consumption. It's weird to think that Americans and Europeans might not be consuming enough media, but that could be it.
1: at current rate of 150 yen/dollar; raw value is 50k yen or ~1% average yearly income
A sort of joke is that many anime episodes are a 30 minute ad for the soundtrack CD. If you look at the anime by itself the numbers very clearly make no sense, but shows are financed by integrated production companies that make their money on side merchandise.
Murakami's works, at least, feel quite westernised. They are filled with references to western music and other art, the protagonists generally have jobs that are also common in the west, and (not sure whether this is down to Murakami or his translator) the characters always sound very American in dialogue. Nothing about them feels particularly alien to a western reader, except the surrealism itself (and, perhaps, certain aspects of his portrayal of women that is sometimes considered problematic in the west).
He provides a portal to the west as a Japanese person would imagined it to be, akin to an otaku romanticizing japanise culture.
To be fair, Japan is westernized
The point you make here is exactly why I often prefer to watch *anime. I think it also applies to my preferences for British period pieces.
As an American, British period pieces[0][1][2] obviously present a different world. I imagine they are more palatable to someone in my demographic because we are relatively disconnected from British culture, society, and history. Recently I became aware of the UK's New Man / New Lad gender stereotypes[3] and realized that the main characters of these shows fit. As a result of this awareness, I can no longer enjoy these shows without being reminded of cultural conflicts of the present day. A story about a social issue set in the 1960s used to be just that, but now it's more apparent to me that the narratives are meant to shape present-day perception of these issues.
It was nice not being reminded of the political struggles we face on a daily basis. Now I'm unsure if media consumers who lack this awareness are the lucky ones or the sheep. I wonder if British people have always felt this way about these shows and I'm only just catching up now. I also wonder if this dynamic is mutual with other cultures - for example, is Rings of Power considered non-controversial in SE Asia due to the cultural disconnect?
* My preference for anime has waned as certain tropes have become quite overused and tiresome.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foyle%27s_War
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_George_Gently
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midsomer_Murders
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Man_(gender_stereotype)#
There does seem to be a unique form of escapism in the aesthetics. I often think of it when I think about the jazz cafe phenomenon that is popular in Japan. It's warm and cozy but it can also be a cozy sterility (but hey we have cats!) that a lot of societies seem to be going through now (in the West as well). A sleepy existential crisis that plays itself out in quotidian surrealism. It's not unpleasant but also feels somehow like a miss on both an individual and civilizational level.
I think most attempts to rationalize why media from an entire culture is popular are going to fall short, and while this is better reasoning that usual it's still overthinking the problem. At the end of the day, every culture produces media, some percentage of that is going to be really good, and sometimes other groups end up really enjoying it because of quality and novelty.
Honestly I don't remember any time when Japanese manga/anime/video games weren't popular.
90s kids grew up watching Dragon Ball & playing Metal Gear Solid and Super Mario 64.
Video games, yes, but anime (aside from a couple things that played on normal channels, like dragon ball—seeking out more, though...) and especially manga were things only certain kinds of dorks enjoyed, among those whose high school years were in the '90s and '00s. Toward the veeeeery end of the '00s (as the kids right behind that group started reaching high school) it was changing, and what's remarkable now is how entirely normal it is, even manga. It's no longer unusual for the popular kids to like it.
It was kinda hard to even get anime in that time period, if it wasn't one of the few played on TV. Hell, even US TV shows had only recently started coming out as complete DVD sets, most still weren't available that way, and publishers were all over the place on what they thought a season was worth. You pretty much had to be into Internet piracy to be a fan, or know someone who was and would get stuff for you.
Maybe in the US, Europe has been into manga since the 80's.
Ah, yeah, US perspective for sure.
>it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
The entirety of western entertainment seems to have forgotten that the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality. Japanese entertainment by and large is precisely that escape, the pressure valve to let loose and be just happy for a while.
A lot of people here take offense when western entertainment is called "woke", with a common rebuttal being that "woke" isn't well defined. Well tell you what, I'll help define it: "Woke" entertainment is entertainment that incorporates or outright is real life and particularly specific facets of real life, often with no reason for that incorporation or nature insofar as leisure is concerned. The obligatory black man or the obligatory powerful(?) woman to check the boxes, for some examples.
Japanese entertainment has none of that bullshit, even if it otherwise is rife with tropes. Entertainment that constantly shouts at you about real life is shitty entertainment.
Conversely, Japanese entertainment would die overnight if literally anyone else produces decent and simply enjoyable entertainment. Japanese entertainment is devoid of innovation now, a lot of it is rehashes upon rehashes and the isekai genre being as long-lived as it is is a huge symptom.
I don't know if that was your intention, but I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with. Yes all new British and American productions are ticking these two boxes, but it's not shouting at all of us.
I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
>I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19674306
The 15th of each month is a big day for 36-year-old Yoshihiro Nozawa: it is the day he gets paid.
But every month, he hands over his entire salary to his wife Masami.
She controls the household budget and gives him a monthly pocket money of 30,000 yen ($381; £243). Despite being the breadwinner, that is all the money he can spend on himself over the next 30 days.
"The last five days from the 10th of each month are usually the toughest," says Yoshihiro.
[...]
47-year-old Taisaku Kubo has been getting 50,000 yen a month from his wife Yuriko for the past 15 years.
He has tried to negotiate a pay rise each year but his wife makes a presentation to explain why it cannot be done.
"She draws a pie chart of our household budget to explain why I cannot get more pocket money," says Taisaku.
[...]
So why don't men start controlling the household budgets themselves?
"I don't think many men hand over their entire salaries happily," says career consultant Takao Maekawa of FeelWorks.
"But they feel it's their obligation to earn money for the family even if it means they have to suffer themselves."
Imagine a world where literature was preoccupied with height. A character is always slotted in who's explicitly the token short character, and the storyline is always, subtly or not, written to highlight how the world is biased against short people. Authors are very cautious about depicting a short person with any negative trait; when they do, a direct line is drawn between the social circumstances they encountered and their future actions.
This would be exhausting, and people would rightly start to roll their eyes at it. And it would be fine for readers to object to it, even as short people are a component of reality. It wouldn't mean the complainant finds short people objectionable in themselves, but simply that they don't think height is a defining part of reality that all of literature is obligated to address.
> Imagine a world where literature was preoccupied with height.
Smart of you to have picked one of the few human characteristics that hasn't been used to justify discriminations and very unfortunate historical events... In our world it's not just literature that is very preoccupied with skin colour and gender.
> It wouldn't mean the complainant finds short people objectionable in themselves, but simply that they don't think height is a defining part of reality that all of literature is obligated to address.
You have it reversed, if it's not a defining part of someone's reality, why would one even care whether it's addressed in fiction or not? The person I was answering to does care, a lot, to the point that swinging one way or another can ruin their experience.
Not getting into how we define what are valid complaints vs invalid, because that's besides the point.
You'd find it exhausting. People similarly find the race and gender preoccupation exhausting. Your justification for the different treatment seems to be "for these categories, people are obligated to not find them exhausting, but not for other categories." But that's not well-motivated.
In a height-preoccupied literary world, can you imagine objecting to the height preoccupation? If you did, how could you justify it, if it's not a defining part of your existence?
"one of the few human characteristics that hasn't been used to justify discriminations"
Of course it has. That notions like “Napoleon complex” circulate in pop culture, suggests that society broadly considers short-statured people to be somehow disadvantaged and, moreover, it can be funny when the short-statured kick against the pricks. Also, the demand that a suitable male partner ought to be over six feet tall, is absolutely widespread, both in match-seeking profiles on online-dating platforms and in dating fora where women give advice to each other. (Or, if you want to reverse the sexes, Truffaut’s gag in Baisers volés about dating a tall girl, wouldn’t work if people broadly didn’t feel that there was something weird about this.)
>I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with.
They were just examples, I'm deeply annoyed at anything concerning acute political/social activism in entertainment because it's simply not what I wanted to spend my leisure time on.
Isn't being annoyed at something sociopolitical and expressing that feeling, sharing your concerns with anyone who will listen, itself a sociopolitical act?
Because it is.
I'm not trying to gaslight you, insofar as reason itself agrees with my proposition.
I agree, it's a sociopolitical demand to stop shitting up my leisure time.
There's a good way and a bad way to have elements in entertainment. Using the "black man" example again, a good example are the Redguards in The Elder Scrolls games. I wasn't annoyed, the Redguards were a natural and very good part of the world building and lore and served to better entertain me.
A bad example on the other hand is literally any of the "obligatory black man" now seen everywhere. He doesn't serve any purpose other than to say that there's a black man.
I want more Redguards in my entertainment, not obligatory black men.
I'm not Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Sending your complaints of mainstream culture to me will not result in your political representation and its voice being heard. I am unable to effectively sponsor and defend your proposed alternative dynamics.
But! If I am like a techno-angel sent from the Heavens above, then what I can do is suggest to you that exit, as opposed to voice, is a sociopolitical act that you should consider. Exit from the mainstream culture is your best bet.
The token characters and checkboxes are a symptom of design-by-committee corporate culture anyways and even without them, the quality isn't going to be any better because again, it's corporate slop.
This only means that there's a pervasive cultural synagogue/cathedral that has infected behavior through pedagogical means. Namely, education itself has been made to serve the interests of all possible economics that can occur within the borders of global liberal democracy.
This also only means that any sociopolitical exit from the zombie invasion must at least be as high as considering a departure from common epistemology.
I choose not to watch most American-made entertainment because I share this sentiment, however, I'd like to point out that it goes much deeper than that. All media is a construction and projection of a certain viewpoint on reality. Until American entertainment can project a view that is wholesome, I must always consider it to be less valuable than media that does. This is not only for entertainment's sake, but also for the mental health of viewers. We need shows to show people how to be polite and how to behave, not shows that denigrate and debase. We should all put less emphasis on shows that align with political views and more emphasis on shows that align with moral ones.
Isekai (anime) slop is bad on purpose. The target demo is hikikomori and otaku males. I don't think it's that deep.
That is about as uneducated a take as one could possibly have.
Keep in mind "isekai" as a genre also exists in western entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Chronicles of Narnia are some prominent and famous examples. Are those specifically for shut-ins and nerds too?
When we talk about isekai in modern contexts we do commonly refer to the post 2015 Narou-Isekai where one certainly draws a distinction between isekai before 2015 or after.
The thing about "old" isekai is that they exist more as fantasy stories with specific messages and themes, where Narou-Isekai can be specifically placed in the context of the latest evolution of the Otaku after the failure of sekai-kei and the increasing self-indulgence from CGCDT, Battle-Harems all the way to Isekai.
Sorry if I struck a nerve, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but why do you think I'm uneducated? I also should have said I was specifically referring to anime since I think that's what most people think of when they hear "isekai".
> the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality
To claim that escapism is the sole purpose of art is certainly a bold statement. Why bother reflecting on human society when we can just do our best to jam our fingers in our ears and ignore it?
I value entertainment that demonstrates how to thrive more than "entertainment" that demonstrates struggle. Struggle is important and necessary, but it should never be an end unto itself. True entertainment should uphold the dignity of as many people as possible.
excuse me why are you browsing hn which is a leisure activity instead of fighting world hunger? Why are you ignoring starving people?
Relevant username?
If capitalism wasn't the leviathan that it was, then I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to escape the life that capitalist neo-colonialism has brought into existence. Pretty soon, at this rate, life itself will be a subordinate of the democratic global capital project.
For comics, I believe this partially originates from Stan Lee's view of including something relatable from real life in their works of art and media. The problem with that view is that it doesn't really integrate into all forms of media well.
And I don't know if Japanese entertainment would fall over that easy. Media has a way of sticking around in our heads.
"the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality"
I get that you don’t like woke, but that is too blanket a claim. There has just been too much popular literature across America and Europe that has directly dealt with dire social and political trends of the day. Even when it comes to the issue of American race relations and the impact of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the all-time bestselling books of the 19th century, so fiction readers clearly weren’t interested only in escape.
This take is in the "Why did they put politics into my Metal Gear?!" category. Japanese fiction continues to win over people precisely because it's more than just pure entertainment. Japanese creators still manage to challenge audiences intellectually, politically, even aesthetically. Metaphor: ReFantazio, probably one of the best Japanese game releases this year is very political, not shying away at all from tackling class, race and even the literal point of this post, media dumbed down to escapism.
Maybe you don't realize it, but we're on the same side.
Japanese entertainment isn't In Your Dumb Face about things unlike western entertainment, it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense. You're not being talked down to, your ability to just pick another (better) product to be entertained with and walk away is respected; and it's an escape from the rest of the world shouting at you about something.
> it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense
I wouldn't make the pedestal too high. There's plenty of very disturbing, low-brow stuff published in Japan.
I've been on a Japanese literature kick for a while now.
For me the characters are the main difference from American literature. The article mentions this briefly, but I find that in the novels I've read (admittedly translated), Japanese novel characters have much more depth. They're flawed people often with selfish motivations, and it's much more reflective of real life.
Plot structure is very different as well with most of these novels not having a true setting > rising action > climax > falling action style plot like American literature tends to have. The books often just end without much resolution at all.
Probably the biggest reason I've been reading them though is that I'm just tired of "young adult" books that have so much popularity here in America. It's like a tag you can throw on to shield your bad writing. It feels like everything popular here is written with 6th grade grammar. Maybe this phenomenon exists in Japan too, but we have the filter that translation provides. Presumably most translated novels are at least somewhat successful and well written, or else they wouldn't have been translated.
For reference, of the translated fiction I've read, I'd recommend -
Lady Joker by Takamura
Devotion of Suspect X by Higashino
Out by Kirino
Breasts and Eggs, Ms Ice Sandwich, and Heaven by Kawakami
Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings by Murata
The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and Kafka By The Shore by Murakami
Snow Country by Kawabata
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Kawakami
No Longer Human by Nazai
I am a Cat by Netsuke
The Memory Police by Ogawa
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a startling book with a rather disturbing wartime scene that has haunted me for years.
Currently I'd recommend Yakumo Koizumi and Natsume Soseki for more old school Japanese writings.
Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is another great read, despite the author being an extremely disagreeable person.
Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy was excellent. The second entry in the series, Runaway Horses, is in my opinion the 20th century's best novel. The fourth, with its surprising conclusion, was also astounding.
Much to my surprise, I've found that the books actually read better in English translation than they do in Japanese. Mishima was inordinately fond of using complicated, and sometimes archaic, Chinese-style (kanji) characters that even native Japanese readers have trouble with. His books flow a little bit more smoothly in English, and they don't seem to lose much in translation.
It has been years since I read the Sea of Fertility, but I remember one Western scholar of Japan claiming that the fourth volume was a shoddy work compared to the previous three, written hastily as Mishima was preparing for his death. Since the English version didn’t obviously strike me as so flawed, I wondered if the translator had done some rescue work. Sadly, I’ll probably never be able to read the book in its original Japanese.
I saw nothing wrong with the fourth book -- and I preferred it to the first, which was perhaps a little bit too saccharine and tinged with nostalgia for a lost world, and the third, which was a little bit too sedate. (Especially after the wild vitality of the second.)
Public opinion turned on Mishima after his death. Westerners, by and large, took offense at his final actions. The Japanese found it embarrassing and endeavored to forget all about it. I'd venture a guess that your critic could be influenced by feelings that have nothing to do with the book as a thing in itself.
I've read a few of Murakami's books (including Wind Up Bird) and enjoyed them. They certainly have their flaws and if you ever browse through a thread in a books subreddit, they will be pointed out with glee by one person after another. The primary complaint seems to be how he writes women.
You'd think a books subreddit would be a place for people to celebrate books and writers but it mostly seems to be a place for people who dislike particular books in particular ways to vent and rant. They don't like book X and they don't want you to either.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to check them all out.
The primary complaint I have seen about Murakami in internet books forums, is how repetitive his writing ultimately became. His treatment of women that strikes many as problematic, is just one of the things that get repeated.
I think one reason that Japanese fiction is beginning to see pickups in western audiences is because Japanese companies are improving their skills at exporting culture to the west. One aspect of this is translation, where they spent decades building a workforce that is capable of quality translations. Another aspect is that of this is that Western culture is beginning to inspire Japanese creators. This allows Japan to create cultural artifacts that more resonate with Western audiences and inspire them. This is a virtuous cycle, which is good for business, international relations, and human creativity.
> Another aspect is that of this is that Western culture is beginning to inspire Japanese creators.
I just want to mention that "beginning to" is selling it short a bit
Japan has been influenced heavily by Western culture for a very long time
Dungeons and Dragons was huge in Japan for a while and inspired things like Record of Lodoss War. Famous composer for Final Fantasy Nobuo Uematsu has talked about one of his biggest inspirations being Elton John. Many episodes of Cowboy Bebop are titled after popular American classic blues-rock songs, and the whole show is very "American". After all, Cowboys and Blues Rock are very American
This may be becoming more prevalent as time goes on but it's been a shift that is happening for a long while
I agree "beginning to" is the wrong phrase. After all, Pokemon is 25 years old and among the most popular fictional worlds. I actually mean they are increasing their consistency in being able to successfully export media.
When I'm at the used bookshop, I always look for a Murakami book, Haruki or Ryu. I especially recommend Haruki's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for this crowd, as data encryption plays a role. Ryu is probably best known for his horror novel Audition because it was adapted for film by Miike Takashi. Both would be classified as surreal. Haruki's novels famously always have a cat in them, but not always in a major role.
> Murakami and Yoshimoto have something else in common: both were criticised in a 1990 essay by Kenzaburō Ōe, the Japanese Nobel prize-winning author. Their works, he said, “convey the experience of a youth politically uninvolved or disaffected, content to exist with an adolescent or post-adolescent subculture”.
I don't know the context of the quote and this wouldn't be the first time the Guardian puts a weird spin on something, but is there a problem with politically uninvolved protagonists?
Reminds me a bit of the latest video of Chris Niebauer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Dq5512MIE where he talks about the mind wandering upgrade through smart phones and social media. with the help if these tools the brain can offload the task of simulating/imagening things into the real world.
They aren't trojan horses for activism and ESG scores (yet, they are working on it). Just look at the closest comparable western equivalent, comics compared to mangas. The difference in sales numbers and impact on pop culture even in the west is monumental.
I agree, but it's worth considering that all media is a "trojan horse" projecting and shaping a certain view of the world. We must do more than object to agendas driven by media. Take control of your attention. Create your own narratives.
Are western comics "trojan horses for activism and ESG scores"? What do you mean by this (activism and ESG)? Who is "they"?
> Who is "they"?
All the people GP disagrees with
EDIT, this "they": "(yet, they are working on it)"
Could you please elaborate how I disagree with Japanese fiction? Thx :)
Your entire comment history is ragebait with an extreme focus on a particular and peculiar set of narratives. Your very first comment started out with this and it's basically been downhill from there.
I don't think OP, or anyone else, needs to explain your positions and motivations for you.
Indeed, I don't even think you're looking to truthfully engage here. Here's another part of the thread where someone asks clear questions and once you realize you're in a pickle you just throw out some rhetorical trash to upend the conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42245873
They (Japanese fiction) aren't trojan horses.
I'm not a search engine but ESG is basically corporate and government funding to include current year real world activism into media which is the antithesis of fiction.
Alright, so the search engine told me that "ESG" is a set of criteria to rate sustainability of corporations/investments, where E stands for environment (ressource efficiency/non-pollution, ...), S for social (worker safety, non-discrimination, ...) and G for governance (risk management, compliance, anti-corruption). Please correct misconceptions.
You are suggesting that government pays writers to show those kinds of sustainability in a overly positive way?
How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light? How can you be sure that the mismatch here is from goverment/corporate influence on writers, and not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
Its not just these three goals. Like the Patriot Act names rarely tell the full story.
>not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
Because they only done this since its socially and commercially profitable?
> Because they only done this since its socially and commercially profitable?
You still did not tell me what those trojan horse writers are doing except that it is outside of the definition of "ESG score" that I provided.
What has become socially and commercially profitable?
Read a recent comic or do more than superficial googling or Wikipedia. If you can't tell then nothing I will say will help.
> How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light?
The Boys does this, but ironically - but a lot of people apparently miss the point of it being ironic / a pisstake.
ESG is for corporates. Authors are individuals. This is just "anti-woke" whinging by another (dimly related) name.
Authors especially comic ones are usually part of big publisher like Marvel or DC that own the IP and call the shots. They also have ESG scores and they decide which activism to include that increases the score and raises more investor or government funding.
A lot of authors are commissioned though, basically given a brief of what to write. More often than not in more commercial franchises though, e.g. Marvel, Warhammer, video game adaptations / tie-ins, Minecraft, Manning books, etc.
But that goes into the realm of commercial media, vs "artistic" media where authors can just do whatever they want, and maybe they'll find a publisher and get successful.
expecting corporate publishing to be a source of good art is a mistake. of course a corporation will adapt to the market. seems like you have a problem with the free market which is exploiting the desire for wokeness in culture.
>Are western comics "trojan horses for activism and ESG scores"?
At times they can get very preachy, which is the problem. The reason is irrelevant, be it ESG investments or personal activism or what have you.
Japanese media can (and often does) include elements that are considered progressive, but it's rare for those to be crudely inserted for the sake of inserting them. Characters or themes that would be bemoaned in western media are appreciated because they are actually done in interesting ways, rather than acting as a political vibe check for the reader.
Which, in all honesty, is how I feel about this comment thread too. I simply do not believe anymore that people don't know what others mean when they say "woke". Not at this point. Yes it's hard to give a specific definition, but so is the case for fascism and the word is so, SO overused in political discourse that, funny enough, it has almost lost its meaning. Rarely does anyone go around saying "define fascism". And so comments are laid as bait, lest someone take a misstep which allows them to be branded as a series of -ists.
Whatever "woke" is, it is a thing. And many people are exhausted from it.
You raise a completely valid point that "fascism" is used in exactly the same way by the left political spectrum.
But this does not make the use of woke as a generic accusation any better.
> I simply do not believe anymore that people don't know what others mean when they say "woke"
The insiduous thing about this is: Different people do mean different things with this.
Some people are maybe against depicting women in leadership roles; others might not want to normalize homosexuality. Another group might want to keep any mention of transgenderism away from their kids. Someone else might just want to see more racist jokes about Mexicans. All those views are radically different; a lot of those "anti-woke" views would not even agree with each other.
By allowing weasely standpoints like that in a debate, you make it very easy for people to claim broad support for stupid and bigoted views without having to justify them.
So, in the context of western comics, what does "too much woke" mean to you?
Is this factually correct or can you simply not recognise the politicaly activism in the Japanese productions because of the cultural differences, or because they're more subtle or integrated into the story?
I mean that last one is a good thing; I think that instead of pearl-clutching and yelling "woke11!111" on the internet for a new Netflix production, it's more intellectually honest to criticize poor writing.
I wouldn't put it this quite this way but I think you're onto something.
Japanese novels are almost uniformly un-woke...yet they don't come off conservative. It's hard to find novels in the West that seem so politically detached, and it's always nice when you do.
They always have been, the X-Men were a metaphor on exploited minorities. Also, you don't understand what's actually Evangelion about. Is not about just metaphysics and philosophy, but a satire and puns on womanizing otakus.
The X-Men are the superhero comic version of the ACLU.
> The X-Men are the superhero comic version of the ACLU.
That's definitely what they are intended to be; however, I think that in practice they're closer to the superhero comic version of the NRA.
* Unlike real minorities, they have the power to quickly kill or maim those around them
* They're fiercely opposed to having to register their powers
* A lot of their stories are about how the only thing that can stop a bad guy with mutant powers is a good guy with mutant powers.
Comics have a huge impact on pop culture. They form the basis for some of the biggest budget TV shows and movies which last for a long time in our collective consciousness: The Dark Knight series, Watchmen, the Avengers, etc.
Several just on their own are huge cultural juggernauts: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, XKCD, Penny Arcade, etc.
I don't know why you think comics are. Trojan Horse for ESG/activism. Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time, the best perceived way to do that was to diversify those offerings. Even if that didn't end up working (assuming your POV in good faith), that doesn't mean it was a "Trojan horse for activism" anymore than the rise and fall of the shonen genre in manga was a subversive attempt to inject masculinity into the populace.
What you term as ESG and all is not a shadowy cabal to force people to think a certain way. It's just companies trying to do what sells. You forget that in the beginning it did work, which is why it caught on.
> Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time,
Unfortunately this trends towards stretching out their characters and plotlines to utter absurdity and diluting storyline quality.
And I'm not sure if the ESG storyline angles even sell. Maybe we can pick a sample comparison; I remember a time when X-men had a feminism angle in their storylines. Then I read the recent X-men House/Rise-Of-X and it was so much better since it refocused on a new setting and their future instead of referencing ongoing real life politics.
Recent? FFS, they _always_ have been a reference for marginalized races/ethnics/disabled people, among the Teen Titans. Have you been living under a cave for 50 years?
Damn it, please, take a look on Charles Xavier. He's a disabled guy with mental powers. And OFC Magneto and his band are a metaphor on Malcolm X and radicalized Black people.
The X-Men from his birth it's basically Marvel:ACLU.
https://archive.fo/MDeKf
There is no mention of ranobe or light novels which is where a significantly large portion of the Japanese fiction movement is spawning therefrom.
I highly recommend checking some out if you need to decompress some stress. :)
"book, japan" (˚0˚)
Some time ago somebody pointed out to me how the superhero genre really took off after 9/11 and I can't stop thinking about that because I think it says a lot about how people think, what they want and also how consent is manufactured.
9/11 pierced America's sense of safety. Perhaps Pearl Harbor was similar. Historically the Gauls sacking Rome in the 4th Century BCE was probably similar. So people were attracted to media where somebody would save them, protect them.
At a higher level, the superhero genre feeds into pushing an idealism narrative. Idealism here simply means some people are the good guys and other people are the bad guys. Inherently. Compare this to materialism, which is a philosophy that there is a feedback loop between a person and their environment, of each affecting the other. There is no good or evil. People simply respond to their circumstances. A Song of Ice and Fire (the books more than the TV show, particularly the later seasons) is a superb example of materialism in fiction.
So what does the rising popularity of Japanese literature (note: the article is about that and not about anime as I think some who simply read the headline assume) say about society?
I think we have a crisis of despair in society. The cost of living, particularly housing, is out of control. You have a generation who thinks they'll never own a home or ever be able to retire. They don't feel like they have the security to have children. Is it any wonder that escapism thrives when the real world seems so bleak?
I see this as yet another symptom of the crisis in capitalism. Sure there's a fascination with Japanese culture. This isn't new. But why? We're also seeing more Chinese fiction (eg Three Body Problem). It's hard for me not to see this trend as anything other than a failure in our society to provide hope to people whose dreams are very mundane.
Likewise, Japanese media was affected massively by WW2 and the nukes hitting Hiroshima / Nagasaki; think Godzilla as the most famous one, starting as an anti-nuclear message - although in recent iterations, Godzilla is a protector against similar monsters.
WW2 had a similar impact on both the US media - as heroes, liberators, etc - and European media - often more historical in nature.
People often consider the 2000 X-Men film to kick off the explosion of superhero films in the new millennium, and that was pre-September 11, so I’m not sure that correlation is causation here. Moreover, a lot of European artists in the early–mid 1960s remarked how superheroes were oddly prominent in American pop culture, and at that point the USA was still on top of the world and hadn’t been shamed by Vietnam.
Then you had Don Quixote where the Enlightened materialism made fun on the old-fashioned, Middle Ages' idealist Don Quixote (and vice-versa on Sancho Panza, a common hick) until they complement each other along the journey.