Engrish in Japan

With the freedom that this week allows us, I have decided to investigate...Engrish! I love Engrish. On a very superficial level, it is obviously amusing. However, I was interested to look at the English language from a Japanese perspective. Again, I apologise for the number of photos in this entry - hardly a "Two-Frame Story", but I just can't help myself. There's just too much good Engrish out there.


(A restaurant in near the Aquarium, Osaka)

First of all I had to ask, why use English at all? Why does it hold such popularity? Certainly, it's taught in schools from a very young age until you leave High School, but similarly, in the UK you learn French or German from a very young age and we haven't developed any kind of similar trend.


(A café in Kobe.)

I am so intrigued by this phenomenon. Not only is so much English used in advertising, usually, it's totally incorrect, either in spelling or grammar.


(A restaurant in Osaka.)

This really made me laugh. Much of the time it seems that they've simply put a Japanese phrase into a second-rate online translator and used the output, whatever or however incorrect it may be. This seems so strange to me, when Japan seems to be a country of English learners, that incorrect English is so rife. Maybe I am expecting too much - it's not like I don't make hundreds of mistakes while speaking Japanese every day, but at the same time, I don't think I'd have a Japanese slogan printed on menus and advertising and even the main sign of my shop, if I wasn't 100% sure that it was correct.



I asked one of my Japanese friends, "why are there so many signs in English? Why are so many shop names in English? Why are they not in Japanese?". Her answer was, "because English is cool". I had to ask, though, "Can Japanese people read them? Often the signs come without katakana, so can people read it?". "Not always", she said, though this didn't seem to faze her. I continued "However, if a person, say, bought a really nice shirt from a certain shop which had an English name, and wanted to recommend it to a friend - if that shop didn't have a katakana transcription, and the person couldn't read it, how could they recommend it?". She thought about that for a long time, then said with amusement, "I don't know".

I guess we might never know, but there's no doubt that it's never going to stop, and the Engrish is just going to keep getting funnier.



At what?!

Religion and Tradition in Japan.

The type of comment I hear most often from foreigners living in Japan usually has to do with, in a positive or negative way, "kawaii" - that is, the intrinsic cuteness of Japanese things. I find it very interesting that this same "kawaii"ness echoes not only through time back to Japan's early history, but although though institutions such as religion and cultural tradition. In this post I will specifically be focusing on Japanese religious and traditional statues and figures.

Take the humble tanuki, for instance. Tanuki, as you can see, are mythical, magical raccoon-dogs, typically depicted wearing a hat, carrying a bottle of sake (the Tanuki is a renowned lush!). Moreover, they are almost always shown to have huge testicles. According to this site, this is more as a symbol of good luck, and perhaps that of excess and gluttony, than for overtly sexual reasons. Most often you can see statues of tanuki in or near the entrances of restaurants and izakaya, welcoming you in with their kind of creepy smiles and, well, massive balls. They are kind of like guardian spirits of this kind of establishment. The picture above, however, I took on a trip to Arashiyama, where they were lurking cheerily in the undergrowth.



Another kind of statue or figure you can often see in Japan are the Nio Protectors of Buddhist temples. According to this site these figures were originally adopted from Hindu mythology, at least in appearance. In the pictures I've taken, the green figure is called agyō, and as his mouth is open he is said to be saying "ah" (the first sound in the Japanese hiragana alphabet) which is said to be the sound of the birth of the universe, and the green one is called ungyō, who is saying "un" (the last sound in the Japanese hiragana alphabet), which is said to be the sound of the death of the universe. These cosmic sounds are said to represent "all possible outcomes...in the cosmic dance of existence". According to tradition, Nio Protectors are the guardians of the temple, keeping bad spirits, demons and even thieves out of the temple grounds.

In some temples they are replaced with the Shishi, Chinese lion-dog statues, the premise of which was most definitely imported from China (according to this site), with the same pattern - one mouth open, one mouth closed.



However, what these pictures show is that these statues don't always have to be guarding a temple - they can guard any holy place.



To finish off - a question. I have been looking online to try and find the meaning of these little figures, seen in Arashiyama by the roadside, but as yet I've been unable to find any explanation for them, who or what they're meant to represent. Does anyone know? They're very kawaii!

Gender in Japan.

The role of the woman in Japanese society is highly complex. It is multi-faceted, in that there are different sub-roles as women that women can take. On the one hand, it seems to my foreign eyes that women are viewed superficially as beautiful, delicate creatures who are to be protected and valued at any cost; on the other, it seems that they are viewed as property, to be used, abused or altered to the (usually, male) owner. This can be a confusing dichotomy, but in both ways the female is objectified.



For instance, let's have a look at this image. It was taken at Kyobashi station, and shows a woman in traditional Japanese kimono, waiting for a train. She's texting on her mobile phone here, but shortly after this picture was taken, she made a phone call to her husband, apologising for her late running, and promising to be home soon. As a woman who seemed as if she was happy to be returning from a nice day out in traditional dress, I was surprised at her subservient way of speaking.



This picture was taken of the side of a Purikura machine (go here to read about what Purikura is) in Kyoto. The text means "your beauty to God-level!". I can't help but look at the photograph of the girl attached, with her "kawaii!" clothing, pale skin and HUGE eyes. I have to wonder how this is affecting young girls' judgement of what the "ideal" woman looks like, with this unattainable image. I also have to wonder who designed it that way - and what gender THEY were.



Similar, but less damaging (in my opinion) is this picture on the side of a beauty salon in Miyanosaka. Again, we see this beautiful image of a Japanese woman, pale skin, large eyes. At least the image shown in this picture is attainable. And again, I have to wonder, how are these images formed? Is it as a reaction to what women want for themselves, or to what they believe men to want, or is it quite simply what men want?



In a different way, this is a more blatant example of the exploitation and objectifcation of women in Japanese society. The text reads:

"Don't look away. Don't pretend. Let your voice be heard. Don't allow perverts. Big courage."

I feel this to be quite telling. Perverts are a nuisance and a danger on trains, on train platforms and more generally. It has become so much of an issue that Japan's trains often have a "women-only" carriage running at peak times to avoid that thing. Also, for some time now, you cannot take a photograph on a Japanese mobile phone without it making some kind of loud sound effect. This is mainly to deter perverts who could take pictures of girls on trains without their knowing about it. In a society that relies so much on its women, they sure are objectified, sometimes to the point of perversion.



Staying on that end of this unfair scale, we have a sign for "Erotic Teacher XXX Yuka" in Kyoto. Again, I find that suspicious. Did Yuka decide to become this person out of a want to liberate her own self and her beliefs and values, or has she been somewhat forced into doing it by the many demands, both social and (apparently) sexual, made by the dominating Japanese man?