Yuki- Images of Japanese people


I have talked about this topic with the students who visited from America.
They said the image of Japan is "ninja","shinobi" and "animation".
I thought this is very interesting, so I researched about this topic.


What do you want foreigners to know about Japan?
1. History (temple/ Japanese garden/ bonsai)
2. Food (sushi/ sukiyaki/ sake)
3. Art (ukiyoe/ kabuki/ rakugo)

What kinds of images are wrong?
1. Samurai/Ninja
2. Geisha girl
3. Rich

These surveys were done by livedoor research on May 27, 2008.
They show us that how Japanese people think about images of Japan.
So, how about people abroad? What kind of images do they have?
Here are results from a survey done in the US on September 2, 2005.

What is the images of Japan?
1. Technology/Electronics
2. Sushi
3. Car
4. World War II/Atom bomb
5. Animation/TV game

It says that the No.1 image of Japan is Technology/ Electronics.
but, this survey dates from 2005, so maybe it's a little changed these days,
because many animations and TV games have been produced.
The following question was asked to students in the US who study Japanese.
Please see the difference.

Why do you study Japanese?
1980's   Business
2005     Culture/ Animation

I think this is very interesting, because it has changed so much.
Now Japan is not only seen as a business partner by American people.

Why do they have these images?
I would like to say it's because of 'media'.

News
There are not so many Japanese news items on TV in the US.
There is the Asian Channel, but normaly we can just see news
about disasters or which is involved with the US only.
We rarely see the Japanese domestic news.

Documentary
There are not many documentaries either.
The popular documentary is the 'Samurai documentary',
which shows spirits seen to be related to samurai, for example kamikaze in WWII.

Pop culture
There are many Japanese pop culture TV programs.
Dragon ball Z, Pokemon, Iron Chef, Hey Spring Trivia! etc.
But we hardly see the true Japan from those programs.
They are dubbed into English and names are changed into English names.
So, some children believe those TV programs are American.

Media companies show those programs because they would like to get good audience ratings.
This can also be said to be the case in Japan.