Blond hair, blue eyes, and "bad" Japanese: representing foreigner stereotypes in Japanese anime

This paper investigates foreigners' linguistic and visual representations observed in 17 recent Japanese animated shows (or anime), and explores ways to increase students' critical awareness of issues regarding Japanese language and culture. We find that foreign characters in anime tend to...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language awareness 2020-07, Vol.29 (3-4), p.286-303
Main Authors: Ito, Rika, Bisila, Megan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animation
Anime
Asians
Cultural Awareness
foreigners
Gender Differences
Interjections
Japanese
Japanese culture
Japanese language
Language Attitudes
Language culture relationship
language ideology
Language instruction
Language Usage
Linguistic Theory
Mediatisation
Metalinguistics
nihonjinron
North Americans
Otherness
Physical Characteristics
Programming (Broadcast)
representation
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Stereotypes
Teaching Methods
Television
Whites
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper investigates foreigners' linguistic and visual representations observed in 17 recent Japanese animated shows (or anime), and explores ways to increase students' critical awareness of issues regarding Japanese language and culture. We find that foreign characters in anime tend to be linguistically represented with simplified, marked Japanese, and/or interjection of native language expressions to mark their otherness. While there are 17 countries represented in the anime shows we examined, the majority of foreign characters are Americans. Most of the characters are depicted as racially white and who speak marked Japanese. Of these, it is the American characters who are most often represented as white with blue eyes and blond hair, the quintessential representation of foreigners in Japan. Additionally, female characters account for only 20% of the total number of foreign characters, and many of them are visually sexualised. We discuss the effects of mediatisation regarding nihonjinron, 'the theory of Japanese', and propose ways to incorporate the findings into Japanese language instruction in order to increase critical awareness of issues regarding language and culture among students.
ISSN:0965-8416
1747-7565
DOI:10.1080/09658416.2020.1786578