May 23, 2019
Watching Japanese in English
I noted previously that localized programming is the province of NHK World, with English-speaking hosts and subtitled or dubbed content. Prime-time news aside, TV Japan ("NHK World Premium") localizes little of its content. There are a few exceptions, starting with sumo.
When I first started watching TV Japan, it devoted two hours of NHK coverage to the makuuchi sumo bouts every afternoon during the tournaments, along with the nightly wrap-up shows. Now it's limited to one wrap-up broadcast and two hours of live coverage at 1:00 AM MDT.
But sumo is obviously a big draw internationally. During the fifteen-day tournaments, NHK World carries the thirty-minute wrap-up show four times a day and live coverage on weekends.
On TV Japan, a subtitled version of the weekly Taiga drama is broadcast on Saturday afternoon. Cool Japan is the same on NHK World and TV Japan. The international members of the studio panel all speak (often impressively fluent) English. The Japanese is subtitled.
On NHK World, domestic NHK documentary series like The Professionals are show with the on-screen Japanese subtitled and the off-screen narration redone in English, which works fine. Infotainment shows like The Mark of Beauty and Lunch On are dubbed in their entirety.
While the documentary segments of The Mark of Beauty work okay dubbed, when a charismatic actor like Masao Kusakari hosts a program, even if he's only on screen for about five minutes total, I want to hear Masao Kusakari, not a dub.
Especially with shows like Lunch On and Somewhere Street, though never shown on screen, the narrator is a participating character in the show, which requires decent acting skills and a well-translated script. Otherwise the dub can sounded forced and overacted or too cute.
It's a lot easier to overlook hits and misses in subtitles than in dubs. And subtitles don't color the quality of the original voice acting.
As you might imagine, I'm not a fan of dubbing. The same goes for languages I don't understand. I mean, one of the great things about watching Inspector Montalbano is just listening to Luca Zingaretti take on the role of the great Sicilian cop. It'd be a crime to dub him!
Unless, like Jackie Chan, he dubbed himself. Though I will admit that Disney and GKids often do a very good job. Having the heft in Hollywood to recruit quality actors and quality writers really makes a difference.
In any case, Japanese beginners will be more comfortable with NHK World. But if you are serious about learning Japanese, a good first step is getting out of your comfort zone with TV Japan or dLibrary Japan. And NHK Radio. Along with, of course, a whole lot of subtitled anime.
When I first started watching TV Japan, it devoted two hours of NHK coverage to the makuuchi sumo bouts every afternoon during the tournaments, along with the nightly wrap-up shows. Now it's limited to one wrap-up broadcast and two hours of live coverage at 1:00 AM MDT.
But sumo is obviously a big draw internationally. During the fifteen-day tournaments, NHK World carries the thirty-minute wrap-up show four times a day and live coverage on weekends.
On TV Japan, a subtitled version of the weekly Taiga drama is broadcast on Saturday afternoon. Cool Japan is the same on NHK World and TV Japan. The international members of the studio panel all speak (often impressively fluent) English. The Japanese is subtitled.
On NHK World, domestic NHK documentary series like The Professionals are show with the on-screen Japanese subtitled and the off-screen narration redone in English, which works fine. Infotainment shows like The Mark of Beauty and Lunch On are dubbed in their entirety.
While the documentary segments of The Mark of Beauty work okay dubbed, when a charismatic actor like Masao Kusakari hosts a program, even if he's only on screen for about five minutes total, I want to hear Masao Kusakari, not a dub.
Especially with shows like Lunch On and Somewhere Street, though never shown on screen, the narrator is a participating character in the show, which requires decent acting skills and a well-translated script. Otherwise the dub can sounded forced and overacted or too cute.
It's a lot easier to overlook hits and misses in subtitles than in dubs. And subtitles don't color the quality of the original voice acting.
As you might imagine, I'm not a fan of dubbing. The same goes for languages I don't understand. I mean, one of the great things about watching Inspector Montalbano is just listening to Luca Zingaretti take on the role of the great Sicilian cop. It'd be a crime to dub him!
Unless, like Jackie Chan, he dubbed himself. Though I will admit that Disney and GKids often do a very good job. Having the heft in Hollywood to recruit quality actors and quality writers really makes a difference.
In any case, Japanese beginners will be more comfortable with NHK World. But if you are serious about learning Japanese, a good first step is getting out of your comfort zone with TV Japan or dLibrary Japan. And NHK Radio. Along with, of course, a whole lot of subtitled anime.
Related sites
dLibrary Japan
Radio Garden
NHK World
NHK Radio
TV Japan
Labels: cool japan, dlibjapan, gkids, japanese tv, nhk, nhk world, streaming, tv japan
October 07, 2013
Haafu and half
Harry B. Harris Jr. is receiving his fourth star as a Navy admiral and assuming command the U.S. Pacific Fleet. What makes this appointment unique is that Harris is the son of a Navy enlisted man and a Japanese woman, Fumiko Ohno Harris.
Shisaku muses about how the brain trusts in Japan and China might read these particular tea leaves. But I was also struck by how Harris is a kind of mirror image of the Japanese actor Masao Kusakari. I'm not just talking about physiognomy.
Kusakari's father was an American G.I. He was killed in Korea, so Kusakari was raised by his mother in Japan. You can easily imagine one of those "trading places" scenarios.
When a haafu is Japanese/Caucasian, the Japanese genes usually dominate, except for height. Masao Kusakari is six feet tall, way above average for a Japanese born in 1950. Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish (Iranian father) is a towering six feet five.
In reality, the actual genetic mixing and matching is all over the map. Though with enough data it should plot out as a nice Guassian distribution.
Risa Stegmayer, co-host of NHK's Cool Japan (American father, Japanese mother), doesn't look especially Japanese, especially seated next to the very Japanese Shoji Kokami. (She speaks both English and Japanese fluently and without an accent.)
These variations can be found in "Yamato" Japanese too, though long periods of geographical and political isolation trimmed the tails of the distribution curve pretty short.
In the time-travel comedy Thermae Romae, for example, Hiroshi Abe (below) plays a Roman architect and Kazuki Kitamura is cast as Ceionius Commodus. In terms of their physical appearances, I was perfectly able to suspend disbelief.
Just to make sure, however, whenever Abe's character ended up back in Japan, the casting director surrounded him with "Japanese-looking" Japanese so he could observe how different they are (he describes them as having "flat faces").
This is pretty much axiomatic in population studies. Given a large enough cohort, the Guassian distribution of a common trait will reveal bigger differences within the cohort than than the mean differences across similar cohorts.
Shisaku muses about how the brain trusts in Japan and China might read these particular tea leaves. But I was also struck by how Harris is a kind of mirror image of the Japanese actor Masao Kusakari. I'm not just talking about physiognomy.
Kusakari's father was an American G.I. He was killed in Korea, so Kusakari was raised by his mother in Japan. You can easily imagine one of those "trading places" scenarios.
When a haafu is Japanese/Caucasian, the Japanese genes usually dominate, except for height. Masao Kusakari is six feet tall, way above average for a Japanese born in 1950. Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish (Iranian father) is a towering six feet five.
In reality, the actual genetic mixing and matching is all over the map. Though with enough data it should plot out as a nice Guassian distribution.
Risa Stegmayer, co-host of NHK's Cool Japan (American father, Japanese mother), doesn't look especially Japanese, especially seated next to the very Japanese Shoji Kokami. (She speaks both English and Japanese fluently and without an accent.)
These variations can be found in "Yamato" Japanese too, though long periods of geographical and political isolation trimmed the tails of the distribution curve pretty short.
In the time-travel comedy Thermae Romae, for example, Hiroshi Abe (below) plays a Roman architect and Kazuki Kitamura is cast as Ceionius Commodus. In terms of their physical appearances, I was perfectly able to suspend disbelief.
Just to make sure, however, whenever Abe's character ended up back in Japan, the casting director surrounded him with "Japanese-looking" Japanese so he could observe how different they are (he describes them as having "flat faces").
This is pretty much axiomatic in population studies. Given a large enough cohort, the Guassian distribution of a common trait will reveal bigger differences within the cohort than than the mean differences across similar cohorts.
Labels: cool japan, demographics, japan, japanese tv, nhk, science
June 03, 2009
Car smarts
Each week on the program Cool Japan, an international panel of foreigners living in Japan is invited to explore and comment upon various aspects of the popular culture. The subject last week was the automobile, and one of the topics presented was itasha.Itasha (痛車) means "painful car." According to Wikipedia and Zokugo Jiten, The etymology derives from the exacting work such exquisite detailing demands, and as a self-deprecating acknowledgment that any sane non-otaku would be painfully embarrassed to be seen even on the same highway as such a vehicle.
More specifically, itasha could be called moe auto detailing. Again referring to Wikipedia, moe is Japanese slang "referring to a liking or love for characters in video games or anime and manga," and has evolved into an identifiable aesthetic world-wide.
As a school of auto detailing, though, itasha represents a combination of visual genres that does not naturally occur to western minds. The German panelist in particular insisted than no self-respecting German driver would ever mar the factory finish with something like this.
Not to mention doing it to a Lamborgini (itasha is also a pun on "Italian car").
Of course, the Japanese being Japanese, there are itasha seat covers, itasha accessories, itasha auto clubs, itasha kits, itasha websites, itasha competitions, and ero-itasha (whose meaning should be self-evident), which creates a whole new category of the "street-illegal" car.
Another collection of photos here, or you can just google the term.
Labels: anime, cool japan, japan, manga, pop culture, social studies
November 26, 2008
Skinny and cute
Kaori Shoji informs us in the International Herald Tribune that "in Japan, it's the men who want to be skinny and cute."
This strikes me as one of those deeply-researched MSM pieces based on a sample size of "me and my two best friends." The business about the girlfriends weighing more
than their boyfriends is physically improbable. But in general I think she's onto something.
A recent episode of NHK's Cool Japan program polled Japanese women to create a composite of the "ideal man." He turned out to be the twin of popular enka crooner Kiyoshi Hikawa. According to his record label, Hikawa is 177 cm tall and weighs 62 kg (5'9.5" 136 lbs).
Those are my approximate dimensions, and I'm a beanpole. Before looking up the actual numbers, I'd assumed from watching his variety show that Hikawa was around six feet tall. But that's because his guests are usually so much shorter than he is. So we may be talking about tastes governed by situationally-relative dimensions.
To be sure, as an enka artist, Hikawa is most popular with the forty-plus crowd. Though the boy band idols on NHK's Pop Music Club (think American Bandstand) that have thousands of teenage girls screaming their lungs out every week look pretty much like teenage Hikawa clones.
Then consider yaoi and the Takarazuka theater troupe. In Takarazuka productions, all the male roles are played by women. The willowy, porcelain-skinned Takarazuka "leading man" looks exactly like the typical yaoi protagonist, and an awful lot like Kiyoshi Hikawa.
But the most annoying aspect of contemporary male fashion in Japan is long bangs. I can't abide my bangs getting into my line of sight (pragmatics, not aesthetics). Yet you see it even on suit-wearing businessmen and news anchors. It brings out the old geezer in me. I want to throw things at the screen and shout, "Cut yer darned hair!"
Young males between the ages of 18 and 30 make up the slimmest segment of the population and the ideal fashion weight as decreed by the apparel industry is 57 kilograms, or about 125 pounds, for a height of 175 centimeters, or 5 feet 8 inches.
This strikes me as one of those deeply-researched MSM pieces based on a sample size of "me and my two best friends." The business about the girlfriends weighing more
than their boyfriends is physically improbable. But in general I think she's onto something.A recent episode of NHK's Cool Japan program polled Japanese women to create a composite of the "ideal man." He turned out to be the twin of popular enka crooner Kiyoshi Hikawa. According to his record label, Hikawa is 177 cm tall and weighs 62 kg (5'9.5" 136 lbs).
Those are my approximate dimensions, and I'm a beanpole. Before looking up the actual numbers, I'd assumed from watching his variety show that Hikawa was around six feet tall. But that's because his guests are usually so much shorter than he is. So we may be talking about tastes governed by situationally-relative dimensions.
To be sure, as an enka artist, Hikawa is most popular with the forty-plus crowd. Though the boy band idols on NHK's Pop Music Club (think American Bandstand) that have thousands of teenage girls screaming their lungs out every week look pretty much like teenage Hikawa clones.Then consider yaoi and the Takarazuka theater troupe. In Takarazuka productions, all the male roles are played by women. The willowy, porcelain-skinned Takarazuka "leading man" looks exactly like the typical yaoi protagonist, and an awful lot like Kiyoshi Hikawa.
But the most annoying aspect of contemporary male fashion in Japan is long bangs. I can't abide my bangs getting into my line of sight (pragmatics, not aesthetics). Yet you see it even on suit-wearing businessmen and news anchors. It brings out the old geezer in me. I want to throw things at the screen and shout, "Cut yer darned hair!"
Labels: cool japan, eye-of-beholder, japan, nhk, romance, sex, yaoi
July 21, 2008
Love My Life
If I told you that Love My Life was about two attractive, middle-class, college-attending lesbians, you could probably fill in the rest from the title alone. "Self-discovery" and "owning your life" and "being yourself" and all that. And you'd be pretty much right.
What makes Love My Life such a pleasant experience (I give it demerits only for too much hand-held camera) is that it meets these stereotypical expectations in such a restrained manner. No operatic conflicts, no manipulative psychodrama. The world isn't against anybody, except in the same way it's against everybody. Hardly a strawman in sight (and once sighted, they quickly exit stage left).
The "big reveal" that typically haunts the genre is dispensed with in the first ten minutes. When Ichiko introduces her girlfriend Eri to her father, he informs her in turn that he is gay. And so was her mother (now deceased). Her mother wanted a child and the onus of social conformity being what it was (and still largely is), this was the easiest solution for all parties.
Eri doesn't bother coming out to her cold, conservative father, as she has enough problems just relating to him as a woman not interested in conforming to traditional gender roles. So Love My Life isn't a by-the-numbers family melodrama. No raising banners and crying revolution. No weepy realizations. And her father isn't ever going to change either.
Eri and Ichiko are just as circumspect with their peers. Conventional social norms in Japan are not as threatened as breathless reports in the popular media might suggest. A recent survey conducted on NHK's Cool Japan program, for example, found that the overwhelming majority of teens favored preserving the hierarchal language reflected by senpai-kouhai (senior-junior) relationships.
So the first half of the movie is mostly an exploration of Ichiko's tight circle of friends, meeting her mother's past lover, a comedic subplot about a girl who has a crush on one of Ichiko's gay friends and thinks Ichiko is his girlfriend. And several scenes between Ichiko and an amazingly tall girl with a Mohawk that together make a little short story by themselves.
Things between Ichiko and Eri reach a crisis point when Eri breaks off the relationship in response to her father's ultimatum—that he sees no need to support a woman trying to get into law school. If she doesn't get accepted on the first try (the equivalent of the LSAT in Japan can be taken retaken on an annual basis), he'll cut her off.
It is at this point that Ichiko realizes she has defined most of her adult life in terms of being Eri's girlfriend. Sensing as well that his daughter has fallen into a wallowing funk, her father encourages her to try her hand at translation. When she finishes, he evaluates the manuscript and observes that she has promise, but needs to work at her craft.
So he introduces her to his editor, who is looking for somebody to evaluate English-language books being considered for publication (essentially write book proposals). What follows is a nice montage about the back-and-forth process of getting a manuscript right. (It brought to mind memories of working with Richard Romney and Larry Hiller at The New Era.)
In the meantime, her father also tells Ichiko, she ought not get too hung about Eri doing what seems to be the right thing for the wrong reason (to prove herself to her father). Sometimes what matters is being motivated to get off one's butt and do something, to start creating—for whatever reason—and let the profound reasons come later.
It's an odd juxtaposition, but Love My Life struck me as the lesbian, twenty-something version of Whisper of the Heart. In the latter, teenager Shizuku finds the discipline to become a writer from her boyfriend's dedication to his own goals. Like Ichiko's father, Nishi-san encourages Shizuku while making it clear she's not going to hit the ball out of the park the first time at bat.
As things turn out, Eri's the one who (perhaps unrealistically, though these things do happen) ends up hitting the home run. But as this all takes place off-stage, I don't take it as an obviation of the above point. In any case, the long denouement delivers an unrelentingly happy ending. And yes, this meal comes with dessert (if you don't know what I mean, add a few winks and nudges to that).
What makes Love My Life such a pleasant experience (I give it demerits only for too much hand-held camera) is that it meets these stereotypical expectations in such a restrained manner. No operatic conflicts, no manipulative psychodrama. The world isn't against anybody, except in the same way it's against everybody. Hardly a strawman in sight (and once sighted, they quickly exit stage left).
The "big reveal" that typically haunts the genre is dispensed with in the first ten minutes. When Ichiko introduces her girlfriend Eri to her father, he informs her in turn that he is gay. And so was her mother (now deceased). Her mother wanted a child and the onus of social conformity being what it was (and still largely is), this was the easiest solution for all parties.
Eri doesn't bother coming out to her cold, conservative father, as she has enough problems just relating to him as a woman not interested in conforming to traditional gender roles. So Love My Life isn't a by-the-numbers family melodrama. No raising banners and crying revolution. No weepy realizations. And her father isn't ever going to change either.
Eri and Ichiko are just as circumspect with their peers. Conventional social norms in Japan are not as threatened as breathless reports in the popular media might suggest. A recent survey conducted on NHK's Cool Japan program, for example, found that the overwhelming majority of teens favored preserving the hierarchal language reflected by senpai-kouhai (senior-junior) relationships.
So the first half of the movie is mostly an exploration of Ichiko's tight circle of friends, meeting her mother's past lover, a comedic subplot about a girl who has a crush on one of Ichiko's gay friends and thinks Ichiko is his girlfriend. And several scenes between Ichiko and an amazingly tall girl with a Mohawk that together make a little short story by themselves.
Things between Ichiko and Eri reach a crisis point when Eri breaks off the relationship in response to her father's ultimatum—that he sees no need to support a woman trying to get into law school. If she doesn't get accepted on the first try (the equivalent of the LSAT in Japan can be taken retaken on an annual basis), he'll cut her off.
It is at this point that Ichiko realizes she has defined most of her adult life in terms of being Eri's girlfriend. Sensing as well that his daughter has fallen into a wallowing funk, her father encourages her to try her hand at translation. When she finishes, he evaluates the manuscript and observes that she has promise, but needs to work at her craft.
So he introduces her to his editor, who is looking for somebody to evaluate English-language books being considered for publication (essentially write book proposals). What follows is a nice montage about the back-and-forth process of getting a manuscript right. (It brought to mind memories of working with Richard Romney and Larry Hiller at The New Era.)
In the meantime, her father also tells Ichiko, she ought not get too hung about Eri doing what seems to be the right thing for the wrong reason (to prove herself to her father). Sometimes what matters is being motivated to get off one's butt and do something, to start creating—for whatever reason—and let the profound reasons come later.
It's an odd juxtaposition, but Love My Life struck me as the lesbian, twenty-something version of Whisper of the Heart. In the latter, teenager Shizuku finds the discipline to become a writer from her boyfriend's dedication to his own goals. Like Ichiko's father, Nishi-san encourages Shizuku while making it clear she's not going to hit the ball out of the park the first time at bat.
As things turn out, Eri's the one who (perhaps unrealistically, though these things do happen) ends up hitting the home run. But as this all takes place off-stage, I don't take it as an obviation of the above point. In any case, the long denouement delivers an unrelentingly happy ending. And yes, this meal comes with dessert (if you don't know what I mean, add a few winks and nudges to that).
Labels: cool japan, japan, japanese movie reviews, movie reviews, nhk, publishing