General Japanese Culture Thread

ANN is flawed, but "the reviewer didn't like a show for this one reason and not this other reason which is why I disliked the show" isn't a good argument for why the site is bad. And an article that isn't very good is, yeah, not really anything about Japanese culture, it's just an American site missing the mark.

Especially since ANN generally reports on anime stuff and occasionally delves into more cultural stuff, but the cultural stuff isn't really their focus generally.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 21st 2022 at 11:34:00 AM

For me, I only use Anime News Network for information about the cast and crew in an anime because credits are hardly translated, especially in the present.

Now, on that maid cafe story in ANN, which I read, I found it confusing if it was referring to one maid cafe or not that I had to read it twice. The one takeaway I got is that it's only that those working in maid cafes are taking up English classes to deal with foreign tourists. The comments section of that article had one commenter claim that not every maid cafe was to cater to tourists. If there was one thing my family and I wanted to do had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic was to go to Tokyo (the first time I went to Japan was in 2017 but to Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara only) and for me, a maid cafe was what I wanted to go to Tokyo. Was this always the case that not all maid cafes dealt with tourists that learning English was needed?

I mean, considering how the show is a pretty blatant sex metaphor, I think that’s a perfectly sensible thing to focus on.

There is also that. It's very clearly an avenue the show is trying to advance a message on; criticizing that avenue is perfectly valud.

In any case, maid cafes DO have a reputation, and businesses branching out and changing their repertoires to slip that reputation is a perfectly newsworthy topic. Maid cafes beginning to cater more to women is in itself newsworthy.

I've noticed that some Japanese personal and place names that combine two or more kanji involve blending their typical readings together when the reading of one kanji in such a combination ends with a mora that also forms the beginning of the next kanji's reading. Example: Satsuki when written with the kanji 皐月; the only one among the many readings for 皐 that is applicable for this name is satsuki (and yes, the name is often written with just this kanji alone), while 月 has tsuki as its kun'yomi reading. Is there any sort of guideline for when to do that, or is it more or less unregulated?

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 6th 2022 at 7:07:59 PM

Japanese given names don't really have any rules like that. You can write almost anything in any reading you want. The only regulations are that

• You can't put Roman characters or Arabic numbers in the name.
• Any kanji used must be part of the around 3000 kanji approved to be used in names. Which mostly means you can't use archaic versions of kanji or super rare kanji that could be mistaken for more common ones.
• You can't name a kid the exact same name (writing and reading) as their sibling or parent
• Regulatory bodies hold the right to reject a name for being unfit. Mainly for having too negative a meaning, with a particularly publicized example that's often cited being that in 1993 a couple was denied from naming their kid 悪魔 (demon).

So naming rules are really free, and in fact there's a thing in Japan where weird names are called キラキラネーム (kira kira name) or DQNネーム (dokyun name), and it makes for a somewhat common thing to joke about and make fun of. This is usually things like using weird kanji combos with weird readings, names that are overly flashy words (like naming your kid 王子様 (oujisama / prince), which was an actual thing at least once and he legally changed his name at 18), foreign names attached to kanji that sort of make that reading, kanji that are just words but read as an English word (like naming a kid 雷雲 but it's pronounced くらうど), or names that are pop-culture references, which could also fit any of the previous.

Cross-posting and I'm fairly sure this might not be the best place to ask (and it's nearly half-past one in the morning) but here I go:

So, I just started playing Ghost of Tsushima yesterday, I'm a sucker for the open-world stealthing genre like Horizon Zero Dawn and I'm curious: I heard this game is supposed to be pretty unkind to the whole "honor before life" samurai stereotype/fetishizing image and...well, I've only got as far as the first missions in the open-world and so far, it seems to cleave pretty close to that idea?

At least it showed the consequences of such thinking, having Jin get his ass kicked hard by trying to walk in the front gate of Castle Kaneda and bust him out.

Wait, let's get back on-topic: how accurate is it in presentation of the samurai?

In terms of how accurate it actually was? Not very, really. There are three major "periods" of samurai being lionized/mythologized, I would say - you have the times when samurai were actual soldiers, which is from, eh, probably 1000-ish to 1630 (including the Sengoku Period); the native Japanese lionization period, where the samurai clung to their lineage and intangible qualities like warrior spirit and martial mastery that elevated them above commoners and merchants in a period of relative peace that didn't really need them; and the post-Opening lionization, which saw a war between nationalist ideals symbolized by the samurai, and globalizing ideals symbolized by the new trends like Western suits, architecture, and "modern" culture.

Please note that this is all my personal understanding. I'd welcome clarifications or corrections.

Edited by RedSavant on May 23rd 2022 at 12:19:43 PM

Wait, why did duels become a thing?

In general, I imagine it's practically inevitable when you have a social class based (at least theoretically) on military and martial prowess, as well as personal glory and reputation, and give them weapons.

Very late reply, but...

@KuroBaraHime: So such merging of readings is basically a cultural habit in Japanese naming customs that has no specific guidelines whatsoever? Fair enough.

"In general, I imagine it's practically inevitable when you have a social class based (at least theoretically) on military and martial prowess, as well as personal glory and reputation, and give them weapons."

Followed by the rise of professional armies such that the military usefullness of the nobility is significantly undermined.

It happened in Europe, too.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jul 7th 2022 at 6:19:28 AM

So how is the populace handling the crisis at the moment?

Nintendo officially recognizes domestic gay partnerships in their latest annual Cooperate Social Responsibility report.

Which crisis, specifically?

If you mean the assassination, that's probably more appropriate for the East Asian News and Politics thread.

Calling it a crisis is a bit excessive. It's a serious situation but a crisis is a present and ongoing situation, this one has come and gone.

Can anyone explain to me the trope where some villains want to destroy the world to free it from suffering? I know it has something to do with Buddhism but it is something that I was wondering about.

Edited by GAP on Aug 13th 2022 at 5:50:53 AM

Mono no Aware is related, but not quite the same.

That is close but I wonder where this trope came from?

It sounds like pure Buddhism to me (well, filtered through a lens of evil)*. The view goes that life is a transient and fleeting thing, so anything you'll have you'll lose - and getting attached to what you have, and desiring what you don't, are both traps that keep people going back to life, hoping for a better one, not realizing that any life is trapped in that same cycle.

It's like watching someone play a video game they hate. When they get a bad RNG start they spend hours playing through and you can see it makes them miserable, but even when they get a good RNG start and get to cruise through with great loot and easy pickings, as soon as they lose they want to start over, even though they know they likely won't get another start as good as that one. The aim of Buddhism is to get people to put down the controller and stop playing the game, so to extend the analogy, the "destroy the world" type of villain is the sort who wants to smash the console so you have to stop playing.

'*Please note, my knowledge of Buddhism is almost entirely based in classical Japanese Buddhism, not anything more modern.

Edited by RedSavant on Aug 15th 2022 at 6:26:49 AM

I could see the difference between Mono no Aware and "pure" Buddhism. For the former, you get to cherish that one beautiful moment-whether big or small-when it's about to fade away. For the latter, it's basically telling everyone that their lives are hopeless because life itself just comes and goes, and all of things you suffered through are for nought.

Yeah. They're not entirely unrelated (and I'm not the person to say if they are or not, either way), but it's the difference between "this is fleeting, so enjoy it while it's here" and "this is fleeting, and everything will end eventually".

I'm hearing the Japanese govt is getting called out for having recently started a public campaign trying to encourage the current young adult generation to, get this, drink more alcohol.

Apparently those darn youngsters don't drink as much as their parents did (average yearly alcohol consumption dropped from 100 liters/person to only 75 in the past 25 years) and the government is getting less tax revenue from it as a result.

Huh... I just read about that. That does really looks like something you would have read on the Onion, not... I read it in BBC news, so BBC news for me.

Some people who are smarter and know more about Japan than me suggest taking advantage of weakening Yen to attact tourists, bringing revenues and business to Japan. And that suggestion do sounds better and more logical to me than what the Japanese government is currently trying to do.