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Has watching anime ever made you fall in love with Japan?
Have images of summer festivals and cherry blossoms made you want to visit or even move
here?
Of course, it's happened to all of us.
A lot of the anime that we watch has a great way of highlighting Japan's charm, but there
are some anime that paint a very different, more realistic picture of Japanese culture.
That's what we're going to focus on today...on Brotakuza
Konnichiwa, snitches.
I'm B, and this is Brotakuza.
Okay, so I was browsing through YouTube one day when I came across this video that listed
10 ways Japan is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world.
Now, this guy was just a tourist, and many of the topics he discussed were related to
technology, and they were all valid.
I mean, future toilets, paying for food with your train pass, arcade skyscrapers and immaculate
public transportation are all great and a big reason why I absolutely love living here.
However, these are matters of convenience, and convenience doesn't always equal progress.
In fact, depending on who you ask, ie, actual Japanese people, there are certain aspects
of the culture here that a lot of people feel places Japan 30 to 40 years BEHIND the rest
of the world.
I've been living and working in Japan full time for a year now after visiting off and
on for 3 months at a time for a year and a half, and while that's still a relatively
short amount of time, it's enough to say that some of the smudges on this pretty picture
we paint of Japan have started to show.
And being aware of these things, I started to notice more frequently how some of these
flaws are portrayed in anime.
People in Japan typically aren't anywhere close to being as socially or politically
outspoken as America or other countries, but every so often you'll find social or political
commentary thrown into different forms of Japanese media that call attention to serious
issues, sometimes subtly, and sometimes very forthright.
There are quite a few of these issues, from gender inequality to work culture, that anime
either speaks out against or outright reinforces, and I hope to discuss more on these in the
future, but today I'll be talking about some anime that address and criticize a specific
part of Japanese culture that we often don't notice in the anime or even realize exists,
and that's the very real issue of bullying in Japan.
But before I get started, I just want to emphasize that this is in no way meant to be a hit piece
on Japan.
I live here, and I love it here.
For me personally, the good outweighs the bad exponentially.
It has its endearing quirks that make you love it a little more each day.
But one thing a lot of people do, and I've been guilty of this myself, is we see the
side of Japan that's marketed to us and we romanticize it as a perfect cartoonish utopia
that just has everything figured out, which simply isn't the case.
The danger of this view is that, for some foreigners who have moved here in the past,
they find themselves confronted with the realities of everyday life in Japan, and it completely
obliterates their preconceived notion of what it would be like to live here.
Some of the customs and cultural norms just don't jibe with their personality and they
quickly find themselves on a return trip back to their home country.
So I think taking a realistic view of these things helps with understanding that no place
is perfect.
not Japan, certainly not America, not anywhere.
And going in with a more informed impression of life here will make for a better experience
should you decide to move to Japan in the future.
Sorry for the long intro, let's get into the anime.
First I want to talk about Aura: Koga Maryuin's Last War.
Among all the slice of life school anime that we've come to enjoy, where the girl is secretly
pining after the male classmate of her dreams, or vice versa, Aura focuses on what's really
happening in schools in Japan by taking an unabashed look at the epidemic of bullying.
Of course there's bullying all over the world, but Japan's bullying issue is a particularly
unique because of the way its carried out.
Along with other movies like A Silent Voice, Aura is an anime film that takes one of the
most honest looks at this phenomenon without sugarcoating the issue.
And the issue is really a cultural one.
Modern Japanese culture is rooted in a form of collectivism that reinforces uniformity
disguised as unity.
Japan is an incredibly clean, safe and peaceful society, but it comes at a high cost of individuality.
Theres a Japanese saying that's pretty well known to many foreigners who find themselves
having trouble coping with the homogenous nature of its society, and it goes: "The nail
that sticks out gets hammered down.?
And this philosophy apparently is put into practice very early, as seen in 'Aura.'
This anime is about a young high school student named Ichirou Satou, who had a wild imagination
in middle school, always pretending he was a hero named Maryuuin Kougha.
It was this eccentric behavior that made him an easy and frequent target for bullying.
From all the bullying and hammering he received from being a nail that stuck out a little
too much, Ichirou tries to put that life behind him in an effort to live a "normal" life in
high school.
So now Ichirou is doing his best to NOT standout, and live a peaceful life by blending in...which
again comes at the high cost of his individuality.
Unfortunately for Ichirou, however, his teacher assigns him to look after a female classmate
named Ryoko whose personality is very similar to his, as she also likes to fantasize about
being someone else and has her own delusions of grandeur as well.
Ichirou rejects the notion of befriending her, as it opens way too many wounds of his
own past and the pain and suffering that his entire family endured as a result of it, and
the chances of that past being exposed to his new classmates is just too much for Ichirou.
In fact, upon seeing how similar Ryoko is to Ichirou, Ichirou's sister even orders the
girl to stay away from him after learning about her and seeing how badly she's been
bullied.
Japanese kids can find themselves the targets of bullying for being the slightest bit different
from the group.
In America, a bully victim is typically targeted by 1 to 3 people, whereas in Japan, it's not
uncommon for a child to be targeted by his entire class, and teachers are notorious for
being either unable or flat out unwilling to do anything to remedy the situation.
Bullying can range from physical assault, to constant verbal abuse, to even being completely
shunned by literally everyone.
In fact, 80% of bullying among school students in Japan qualifies as ?collective?
violence, meaning it's the entire classroom against a single victim, and 90% of these
cases are considered ongoing, lasting more than a week.
Despite its efforts, Japanese governments have been pretty ineffective in trying to
fix the epidemic, which is especially sad when you take into account Japan's suicide
issue.
This is also addressed in the anime.
So the bullying of Ryoko intensifies, all the way up to the point where she wants to
leave this world and go to what she calls the "other world," which is referring to the
fantasy land that she believes her alter ego is from, but it's definitely conveyed in the
film that her means of reaching that place is in the form of suicide.
Now, Japan has been in the top 10 countries for suicide rates in the world for decades.
For many years they were #2 only to South Korea.
Over the last 8 years, however, overall suicide rates have experienced a consistent decline,
which sounds good at first...But it's not all good news, though, as suicide rates for
kids 19 years old and under has actually increased during that time.
That is an incredibly heartbreaking statistic.
The new school year begins in April and goes until summer break in late July, which lasts
about 8 weeks.
This gives kids suffering from the pains of school life a much needed break from the stress.
but that month off from school apparently isn't nearly long enough, as the beginning
of the second semester, which is Sept 1, is known as the deadliest day for Japanese teens
because it's the day when the majority of students kill themselves.
Just the thought of having to return to such a toxic environment is too much for some kids
that it drives them to suicide.
Fortunately for Ryoko, although it's unfortunate that this isn't the case for most students
in real life, Ichirou saw in her who HE really is inside and couldn't allow Ryoko to continue
suffering alone, and actually put his secret past on full display for all to see in an
effort to save her life, by showing her that it's okay to be different, it's okay to be
unique, it's okay to be an individual, and that we all to an extent hide those quirky
sides of ourselves from other for fear of ridicule.
I really enjoyed this film for the simple message of not only accepting people for their
differences, but embracing them and using those differences to teach us a lot about
ourselves as well.
But there was another more recent anime film that I felt tackled the subject in a much
more direct and aggressive manner by exploring the long-term effects of bullying, not just
from the perspective of the victim, but also from the perspective of the bully, the families
involved, and other bystanders and co-conspirators.
That film was Koe no Katachi, also known as A Silent Voice, or the shape of voice.
So this film was about a guy named Ishida who, along with his friends, mercilessly bullied
a new deaf student named Shoko in elementary school.
Despite her outgoing personality and wanting to befriend everyone, they would rip her hearing
aid out, causing her ear to bleed, throw her books into the water, along with other forms
of physical bullying.
This led to the young girl being pulled from school by her mother, which led to the ringleader
Ishida getting into some serious trouble, resulting in him receiving a Bully label that
would follow him through middle school and into high school where he was now the social
outcast, unable to even look his classmates in the eye, and contemplating suicide himself.
Having now experienced the shoe being on the other foot, Ishida sets out to be a better
person, even befriending a fellow outcast named Nagatsuka, who was probably my favorite
character in this film.
But his ultimate goal is to make amends with his former victim, even going so far as to
learn sign language to better communicate with her.
This attempt at reconciliation reopens some old wounds, particularly for a girl named
Naoka who was a part of the bullying group and who tries to sabotage Ishida and Shoko's
newfound friendship by harassing Shoko as cruelly as she did in elementary school, and
conveying to Shoko that SHE was the bad person for destroying their lives as children by
getting Ishida in trouble for being a bully and that things would have been better if
she never came to their school all those years ago in the first place.
Shoko really takes Naoka's words to heart, and begins to hate herself, and attempts to
take her own life, but this attempt is thwarted by Ishida luckily being in the right place
at the right time, and landing himself in the hospital in the process.
This culminates in everyone related to the situation from elementary school to take a
hard look at themselves, from the parents and family of the children, to the people
involved in the bullying directly, to even friends who saw these things taking place
and were too fearful or self-centered to do anything to stop it.
The effects of what looks like a typical bully situation on the surface prove to run quite
deep, and I applaud A Silent Voice for exploring them with such depth and detail.
I applaud both of these films.
Aura for its message of acceptance, and A Silent Voice for its running theme of the
importance of self-love, the lack of which can lead to some potentially dire consequences,
as shown with Shoko, Ishida, and especially Naoka who was just a big ball of hate.
Of course there are plenty anime that show kids being bullied, but usually its handled
in a very blasé manner, I guess because it's so normal here, but I'm really glad to see
two films place the issue front and center to spotlight how unacceptable it is and just
what these kids are going through.
Because honestly, 13 year olds even thinking of suicide is a huge problem and I hope to
see it addressed with a little more seriousness here in Japan, because these kids are truly
suffering quietly, and something has to change.
Now I want to know what you think.
Have you seen either of these films?
Did you like them, did you hate them, did you think they were too sensationalized?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Don't forget to like and subscribe, and I'll see you next time, but until then...
sayonara, suckaaasssss
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