December 24th, 2005
Update
- Jay Navok
Greener Grass, Part 1:
The Charm of Childhood
It’s been said that “the charm of Japanese life is
largely the charm of Childhood.”
As I consider my own interests in understanding Asia,
and in particular Japanese society, I reflect upon what it is in Sailor
Moon, that cultural asset that drew my initial interest, that still manages
to capture my imagination and point it toward wanting to comprehend the
complexities of another culture.
|
|
|
Is
this the charm of childhood? |
The way I see it, nostalgia for childhood plays a hand
in adult attraction toward Sailor Moon in two ways. One is fantasy, the
other reality. This intertwined duality is extant wherever you interact with
fiction. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges in attempting to analyze
literature or any form of media is where you draw the line between studying
only the text, the exposure of the text, or how far to look at both. In many
cases it’s an exercise wrought with peril, particularly among academics who
love to nitpick.
Let’s turn to reality first. This is the simplest to
understand on the surface, but the most complex as you delve deeper. Like
many of you, I became a fan of the series as a young teenager. I know that
this is also the case with a large portion of our readership because you’ve
taken the time to contact me and let me know. (I heard this in particular
with those who were gracious enough to inquire about the tour and explain
their desire for attendance.)
|
|
|
Or
is this the charm of childhood? (For a sad 35-year-old Japanese otaku.) |
When I rewatch an episode of Sailor Moon, I’m able to
recapture certain portions of what we tend to think of as ‘simpler times’
(although often enough this is a retrospective illusion; those times were
just as complicated as things are for us today.) Different formats bring
back different memories, often to when I first watched them. The dub to
1996, the late R season subs to 1997, S, SuperS, and Stars to 1998 and beyond. I am
sure years down the road, when I consider the Pretty Guardian series, I’ll
also be reminded of what life was like for me circa 2003-2005.
To explicate this a bit further, let’s consider part of
what draws many of us to anime, manga, video games, etc. in the first place.
Many say they enjoy anime
because it’s “oriented toward adults.” Cartoons for adults! A concept ahead
of its time.
An implication in saying that some anime is “cartoons
for adults” is that cartoons have an intrinsic childish quality. How is this
so? On one level it’s the bright colors, shapes noises, motions that we
might have been attracted to since we were young.
For those of us who may appreciate anime as an artform and
even have framed cels on our wall, consider how our taste in visual appeal
differs from those who have impressionist paintings. Brush strokes are not
visible, but black outlines strike the eye and give contrast between
character and background. Rather than light colors, bold solids capture our
attention. Children’s toys often have the same lack of detail and attention
to solid, outlined colors.
|
|
|
Anime highlights sharp, bright, contrasting colors. |
I am suggesting that there is a basic attraction to the
art style of comics, cartoons, and videogames (the majority of which are
popular these days come from Japan) that hits us on a childhood level,
although I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this.
|
 
|
|
I
didn't mean to use a Sailor Moon toy for an example, but it came up on page 5 of a
Google image search for children's toys, which I think says something,
Anyway, note the similar color use between it, the other children's toy,
and the Sailor Venus image above. |
There’s another level at which we appreciate anime,
manga, and such, however, which is that of nostalgia. The protagonists
themselves are often young, ranging from pre-adolescents to young teenagers;
the adventures they have, while potentially dangerous, almost always have a
happy ending. The animators and storywriters create worlds in which we
viewers can feel safe, while still having new experiences through the eyes
of our protagonist, often that of the ‘ordinary girl’ Tsukino Usagi. It’s
because she’s ordinary that she’s the main character, and it’s because she’s
the main character that she’s ordinary, but more on my thoughts on this in
WoL 2.
Then there are the personal nostalgia experiences we
can recapture- as I said, many times I am brought back to the 1990s when I
pop in a volume of the series. Odds are you already understand what I mean,
so let’s turn to fantasy.
|
|
|
Chibiusa doesn't rank high among Americans due in my opinion to the
"scrappy doo" theory, but she was always one of the top among Japanese
fans. |
In some ways we’ve already touched on the fantasy side
of childhood in these works, by considering how the stories woven are able
to place us in the eyes of someone potentially much younger. (This is kind
of what I mean by how the seemingly two-faced coin of reality and fantasy in
studying fiction is more ying-yang than we realize.)
But there’s more to the idea that, what is in this
specific case a Japanese fantasy, holds the charm of childhood. Consider the
elements of its fantasy: the gaining of super powers, talking animals,
fairytale royalty. This is the stuff childhood dreams have been made of
since time immemorial. Our interest in Sailor Moon and many other anime or
manga is often because these fictional worlds nurture the imagination we had
as children, and create bubbles in which we can lose sight of the complex
realities around us.
|
|
|
Fantastic fairytale worlds. |
This is not the case for all fantasy, but there are
elements of childhood in nearly all of it, and Japanese fantasies seem to
have at least as much childhood fantasy elements as is in Harry Potter and other Western pop
fantasy, if not more.
Thus, at the start I did not quote “the charm of
comics and cartoons is largely the charm of Childhood”; the quote said
Japanese life. The two are not normally interchangeable, but the outpouring
of Japanese anime, manga, and video games across the globe has redefined our
understanding of pop culture. These works, no matter how displaced they seem
from average life, are always infused with qualities from their origin
culture, and this origin culture is producing pop cultural works that seem
dependent on its audience looking for something that can appeal to at least
one aspect, if not many more, of childhood.
Indeed, the man who said “the charm of Japanese life is
largely the charm of Childhood”? That’s Lafcadio Hearn, one of the most
famous westerners to live in Japan and study the country and its people. He
wrote that in the late 1890s.
Yet what does “Japanese life” really mean? We need to
qualify ourselves; Sailor Moon may have charms of childhood, and Sailor Moon
being Japanese may be part of the reason for this, but to take this line of
thought to its furthest extent, you reach the ridiculous view of Japan and
its cult of Kawaii as a land of people who never grew up. The problem with
such generalizations is that their vagueness permits extrapolations that
have potentially damning consequences, which we’ll examine in Part 2 of this
series.
Post a comment in the forums Email
Jay Navok Archives
