Nov 21 2008
Anne and Japan
You know, for a few years now I’ve been fascinated by the fact that certain elements of Japanese culture are hugely popular here in North America. Japanese anime has been showing on television for many years, prompting huge anime-based conferences to spring up in all major cities, that attract hundreds of thousands of young people. And Japanese manga is wildly popular. You know, those are the novel-shaped “comic books” that are so much more than the slender comics that we grew up with here.
I really, really, really love anime, and I’m beginning to discover certain manga that I enjoy too. But it’s always been a curious thing to me, that this particular cultural phenomenon would have crossed the ocean and take such intense root here.
But yesterday I had it confirmed to me that this exchange of cultural icons is a two-way street.
I attended a lunchtime reading/talk at the Toronto Reference Library by two academics who have studied Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables for most of their adult lives. And Drs. Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Rollins Epperly explained how that book, too, crossed the ocean and took very deep root at the other end of this cultural stream - in Japan. I’d forgotten that I’d previously heard that Japanese tourists absolutely flock to Prince Edward Island to see all the places associated with Anne Shirley and her story. But now I know why they do.
According to these authors, the book was actually being translated into Japanese while World War II was still going on, and it was introduced into Japan in the early 1950s. Something was wanted, to help teach an understanding of Western culture in Japan after the war, and this book was all ready to go when the need arose. It was required reading in Japanese schools for several generations (which it has never been even in Canada), so all Japanese kids grew up with the book.
They related to it for several reasons. In that first generation after the war, there were a large number of orphans, so the young people could identify with Anne as an orphan. Anne was also an overachiever, which again meant that many Japanese kids could relate. We’ve heard a lot, in recent years, about Japan’s driven, overachieving lifestyle. Even today in Japan, the book is still read as a “confidence booster.”
In a way, after I attended that lunchtime discussion yesterday, I felt more satisfied than I had before. I didn’t exactly mind the eastward flow of Japanese anime and manga to North America; after all, I love the stuff myself. But it’s actually rather nice to think that some worthwhile literary icons of our own made it back the other way. In fact - Anne made the move first, and the Fullmetal Alchemist and Naruto and all the Gundams are serious latecomers. So I guess it was about time that North America got with the program.
When my sister and brother-in-law visited Prince Edward Island, they learned that many Japanese couples come to PEI to have their wedding in Green Gables. The book is that popular in Japan.