Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Mrs. D’Brot

English 4

25 March 2011

Japamerica: The Tale of Cultural Exchange

It all started with a very unlikely relationship from the most scarring and terrifying

moment in human history. The United States had just bombed Japan with two of the most

powerful weapons anyone as ever created. From this, a very unlikely alliance began between the

United States and Japan. America established trade with Japan and products were not the only

things being packaged. Along with the products, Japan gave us their cultural ideas while we gave

them ours. Today, people see this cultural exchange as a very evident in the youth and college

students. It’s been changing how we read, interpret media, learn and even work in business

environments. There’s much more to Japanese culture than just their cartoons with large eyes

and ramen. In fact, their culture is quite complicated but Americans are now getting a sense of

how Japanese live and the influence they’ve spread throughout the United States.

The American diet is something many joke about. Americans have a habit of eating

unhealthy foods but this has been changing in the past few years. Americans lately have been

consuming more Asian foods including Japanese products. Japanese products traditionally

contain all of the nutrients that Americans need in their daily diets (“Japanese Cuisine” 5). In

2005, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries (MAFF) estimated there to be over

9,000 Japanese restaurants opened in the U.S. and the numbers continue to grow (4). This rise in

Japanese restaurants gives Japan the opportunity to export more products to the U.S. (3). Today,

a large majority of American teens and college students consume instant noodles and easy-to-

cook Top Ramen. Due to this higher accessibility in Japanese foods and products, we make our
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own Americanized variations of Japanese food such as the Californian roll and Japanese steak

houses (Essman 2). As Americans get more healthy nutrients from Japanese food, it encourages

restaurants and businesses to continue on with their work which will inspire other markets in the

U.S.

Japanese influences are not only evident in markets specializing in Japanese food; it’s

also spreading throughout other businesses of all kinds. Japan has much more to offer than their

business ideas which already have changed the habits of many U.S. businesses. There have been

more Japanese employers in the past years; over 200,000 in the last study (Sherman 1). Those

Japanese employers and Japanese companies are currently employing over 400,000 people in the

U.S. (3). Working with a foreign company often requires the communication with people of their

native tongue. This is the case for most of the 35,000 Americans who are taking college-level

courses in Japanese and enrollment still continues to rise.

Besides Japanese courses, there are other ways the Japanese are making us rethink and

solve our problems with our education system today. In Japanese schools, the teachers meet

together to try their best to find methods that will refine and revise lessons that are shared with

students (Staples 1). These meetings are often done by video and going to conventions (2). Brent

Staples from “The New York Times” wrote that the lesson-study groups are meant to ensure the

student understands of the lesson and that by doing so, the lesson-study groups take steps laying

out the blueprint for teaching particular lessons. People separate from Brent Staples argue these

same ideas about our education and how we can use these ideas and solutions for our teaching

methods in America. Brent Staples argued that our curriculum varies widely by region and that

the countries succeeding us in math and science decide at a national level what students should

exactly learn and when to learn it. Japanese education is providing Americans with knowledge

and solutions on how to fix our education system here in the U.S.
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Most of the Japanese influences in America comes from Japanese media and trends. One

of the most influential trends is the Japanese’s varieties of cartoon entertainment called “anime.”

Anime was first introduced into Japanese culture in 1943 after World War II. The first anime

film was just shy of being feature-length and was titled “Momotaro's Sea Eagles.” This anime

was a dramatization of the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, the first modern and well-known

anime was the famous “Tetsuwan Atomu” or in English, “Astro Boy” (Song 1). It wasn’t until

the 1967 release of “Speed Racer” that anime was first introduced in America. The introduction

of anime in America is credited to the voice director and translator of “Speed Racer,” Peter

Fernandez. The popularity of “Speed Racer” and anime made Japan come to realize that they

could share their cartoons and comics with others around the world. America became more

attracted to this new style of cartoons and more anime classics such as “Kimba the White Lion,”

which Disney’s “Lion King” was based off of (Kung 4), “Akira,” and “Ghost in the Shell” which

the last two also helped anime gross up to $60 million a year in box office and video sales in the

United States (Romero 2). Disney, a huge American and international influence, bought the

rights to anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s works which all together sold over 500,000 copies in

the United States (1). Today, anime is providing teens and college students’ new art forms that

are also helping them better analyze anime’s complex story lines and character designs that

American cartoon styles lack.

Another major media influence in America is Japanese manga and without manga, there

would not be anime. Manga, which literally means “humorous picture,” are Japanese comic

books that go back to the twelfth century, but wasn’t in a form of a graphic novel until 1760 with

the work of Hokusai Katsushika. However, today’s modern manga arose during the same time

anime did after World War II. Most of the anime today are originated as manga before they are

adapted into anime; similar to how Hollywood adapts novels into film. What sets manga apart
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from American comics is how they are drawn. Much like American comics, manga has the

figure or characters, speech balloons, and backgrounds. However, manga adds additional

features such as a large use of onomatopoeias (a word that suggests the source of the sound as

it’s described), and creative use of the frames that are shaped to match the moment of the story

such as the frame of a intense moment would be shaped rather jagged. In Japan, the techniques

of manga give art teachers a chance to apply the developments of students’ visual thinking skills

such as observation, articulation, and critical thinking skills (Toku 4). Masami Toku of

California State University challenges that understanding the influence of the pop-culture in the

Japan’s youths’ artistic development, America might just be able to predict our youth’s artistic

development in the future. In Japan, the children do not stop reading manga even after high

school because manga is still more enticing than any other media like TV shows and movies (3).

This effect can be seen in America with the rise of manga. American high school students who

tend to read manga do not stop reading them when they graduate or when they go to college. The

students and artists used the abilities they’ve learned to create fan-made manga themselves

which are called “doujinshi” and sell their manga to others as well as exchange their ideas (1).

This community of manga fans can also be seen at anime and manga conventions or online

selling their very own pieces of work in America. Manga has been changing how people read

and think for the past few decades. Examining how it changed the minds of the Japanese youth

will allow us to see the changes in America’s youth who also read manga so that we can learn

how these comics affect us and how we can use this to teach America’s youth fresh ideas and

new artistic abilities.

It's not just anime and manga that are influencing how we live our daily lives. Japan has

also influenced American fashion-focused industries and One major factor are the games we

play and most of what we play come fresh from Japan. Sociologists refer to subsets of America's
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Generation X as the “Atari Wave” and later the “Nintendo Wave” because of the rise of gamers

playing Japanese video games (Romero 5). Nintendo has been capturing Americans' hearts even

before the release of Nintendo 64 and still continues to. Another trend slowly entering America

is A Japanese sport called “drifting.” Drifting is a professional motor sport where drivers

compete by taking sharp turns on oval tracks that leave their cars skidding sideways (Palmeri 5).

In popularity of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!,” the toy industry is

booming with Japanese toys. In fact, Manufacturers have started to co-develop toys for the U.S.

and Japanese toy markets (Pameri 2). Japan has an influenced American fashion-focused

industries and because of that, urban residents now wear more colorful and festive cloths rather

than the usual jerseys. The graffiti in the urban areas also has similarities of Japanese art and

writings (Marker 3). This change in graffiti can be seen in the works of the graffiti artist Charles

Bojorquez who was inspired by Asian calligraphy including Korean, Chinese, and most

importantly, Japanese.