On cuteness

Of course it was an incident at work today involving cultural diversity that is getting me fired up enough to write a post about this. Just as I am forgetting about the little things here in Japan that make me tilt my head and go, "Huh?", something else comes up and it's like I can feel the invisible atmosphere of suppressiveness closing in. It doesn't make much sense, no one really cares here what I think about these sort of things. Okay that's over-exaggeration, I think it might be a generational sort of thing. I'll explain more in a moment.

This particular eye-opening spit-choking moment had to do with a translation contest. One of the English teachers at my school told me that over the summer, our school's English Speaking Society (ESS) will be translating a picture book, Olanna's Big Day, into Japanese. She asked me to take a look and return it to her after.

 

So the book is about a young student (probably elementary, since the book says it's for ages 6-8) named Olanna who lives in Ireland with her mom and dad. The book doesn't say so explicitly, but Olanna and her family moved to Ireland from Nigeria within the past year, because Olanna has to ask her classmates what "Paddy's Day" is. Olanna's grandmother also still lives in Nigeria, but frequently sends Olanna packages, Olanna's favorite being a long green and white striped scarf (Nigeria's flag colors are green and white, and Olanna's grandmother worries about the cold weather). 

On St. Patrick's Day, the school band (in which Olanna plays the tin whistle) gets to perform in the parade. Everyone is really excited, since St. Patrick's Day is a work holiday in Ireland, all of their friends and family can come watch the band perform. Olanna decides to wear her long green and white scarf since her grandmother cannot come from Nigeria to watch her. But just as the bad is getting ready to march, oh no! the strap for the giant drum breaks, and there is no time to fix it! The drum is such an important part of the band! What will the band do? 

Okay so the book is really funny, even as a kids' book, because the big problem/suspenseful point--how will they fix the drum?--is brought up and solved in the last 3 pages. It could have been drawn out a little longer lol...you just find out the strap is broken and the next page it gets fixed haha. 

But anyway, I brought the book back to my teacher, and told her that it looked like it would be a challenge but I thought that they would learn a lot of interesting things. Just from my quick read, I learned the Nigeria's flag colors are white and green, I learned the St. Patrick's Day is a work holiday in Ireland, and I also picked up on the fact that Ireland's immigrant populations were growing, and that this book was a way to show a more multicultural Ireland. Sure enough, Ireland had a major influx of immigrants during the Celtic Tiger boom, and the wave of immigrants has been a major part in distinguishing Ireland from the other countries of the "greying European Union". (http://www.workpermit.com/news/2007-01-07/ireland/immigration-driving-population-increase.htm)

As I was leaving, the teacher said, "So what do you think of the pictures?" And I had a feeling that I would be either walking into a trap, or would be in for an unpleasant discussion. 

"They aren't cute drawings," I said, "but for this type of book...that's trying to show cultural diversity and multiculturalism...those types of things...it's easy to see why they made these types of drawings. All of the characters look a little funny with distinct features, but like...everyone in the book looks like that. Also so the kids reading the book won't put the characters into stereotypes (yes, my English is pretty horrible, I know). It's very different from Japanese books..."

"Yeah, I think it is rather strange. It is very different, our books are all very cute and pretty. Everyone likes that." 

"Right, I have seen it, and yes they are really cute...but these type of books are trying to make a point that people look all different and have different features..." 

"When I showed the girls (from ESS club), they hated it actually. They didn't like it at all. (But they have to do the competition because I told them to.)" 

"Hmm, yeah, it is very different...but hopefully they will learn a lot..." and I walked away feeling very troubled.

Even after running it through again in my head, the conversation and exchange gets muddled, but I just felt dejected that of course they would comment on the aesthetic nature of the book, completely missing the point that it was done on purpose. And what makes me sad is that they might not ever get the point that the book and the drawings were trying to make. There is no denying it, the art here in Japan, anime, manga, casual doodling, is all done with the intention of looking pleasing to the viewer, especially those done of people.

So the flip side of the argument would be, well if the book was drawn with the intention of making the people look more real, aren't anime and manga drawn with the intention of making people not look real, and shouldn't that be okay if that is the established intention? Okay, so why do things AKB48, maid cafes, circle lenses, crazy hairstyles, etc, try to bring those elements to real life? 

Anyway, I'm a little muddled in my thoughts...even in just the past few weeks I've been watching more and more anime, enjoying them in Japanese and finding out all the crazy story lines that they edited out of the American versions. So maybe this is just a #checkyoself type of rant...