Davide Sarti

Individual and Society in Japan: Researched through the Use of

Language in Manga

1. Presentation and Motivations

I did this research during the winter of 2013 as a final examination for the class “Linguistic

Anthropology” 言語人類額 I was taking at the University of Tsukuba 筑波大学, where I studied for six

months (from Oct. 2013 to Mar. 2014). After my teacher, Ide Risako 井出 里咲子, checked my paper, I

decided to correct it and to upload it. I think it could be useful for other researchers as a starting point

for other researches or just as something to quote or maybe to improve with more analysis.

In this research I will examine the difference between how Japanese language is used in manga

(Japanese comics) and how it is used in real life by Japanese people, hoping to find some interesting

cultural and social consequences (especially from the point of view of the individual in the society). I

chose this subject since, when I arrived in Japan, I noticed a big difference between how Japanese were

represented in manga and how they really looked like to me. Of course, I know that manga are meant to

entertain people so they are not a honest representation of reality, which would make them boring for an

average Japanese reader, but my impression was that the differences were not limited just to this and so I

decided to research this topic deeper. First, I am going to talk about my motivations and expectations.

Then, I will talk about how I did my research and, finally, I will explain the results I obtained and my

deductions.

Talking about the aim, to be more specific, I would like to say that I decided to use language to

study the differences between the way people act inside the society in reality and the way they act in

manga. From my studies of Japanese culture I knew that Japanese people give a big importance to group

consciousness (集団意識 shudan ishiki 1 ) and that individual is usually less important than the group

and my experience demonstrated to me that this was true. But, on the other hand, in manga, even if the

idea of groups and collaboration is still present, the main character has a particularly strong role in the

story, as an individual who is important since he/she is different from the others, is unique.

Therefore, the first question I asked myself was: in which character Japanese people find

themselves, when reading a manga? In the main character? Or in the secondary characters that usually

1 Roger J. Davis, Osamy Ikeno, The Japanese Mind, 2002, Tuttle Publishing

are less strong as individual? When I started writing, my hypothesis was that in manga is given a bigger

relevance to the idea of individual.

I started writing a questionnaire, as I will explain better later, with sentences in Japanese taken by

Japanese manga (and in this case I mean manga published inside Japan for a Japanese audience). And I

asked people to choose, among those sentences, which ones they would use in real life

I also wanted to see if the role of the opposite genders showed in manga were realistic or not. In

other words, if the way male characters talk in shojo manga ( manga that are mostly addressed to girls) is

realistic. And, on the opposite, I wanted to check as well the way female characters talk in shonen manga

(manga that are mostly addressed to boy). I was supposing , for example, that sentences said by male

characters in shojo manga were usually too much stereotypical, since they are aimed to show to the

female readers an idealistic, strong, reassuring image of boys (an image which contrast with the idea of

“herbivore men” (草食系男子), which recently spread in Japan).

As you can see, I had several aims, but the one I was more interested in was to research the idea of

individual and society that we can find in manga and compare it with reality.

2. Research Method

To do my research, I wrote two questionnaires, one for girls and one for boys, that I submitted to

11 Japanese female students and 18 Japanese male students (mostly of Tsukuba University) without

explaining them the aim of my research nor that the sentences came from manga. Spending several

hours reading manga in Japanese language, I collected around fourteen sentences said by male

characters and fourteen sentences said by female characters. To reach my aim, I did not just collected

male sentences from shonen manga or female sentences from shojo manga, I used also sentences said

by male characters in shojo manga and vice versa. At the same time, I didn’t just limit myself to collect

sentences said by the main characters and, doing so, I tried to have a wide range of choices. In the

questionnaire, I wrote the sentences in mixed order, but I actually know which sentence comes from a

shojo manga, which from a shonen manga, which one is said by the main character and which one is said

by friends of the main character and so on. I have to state that , for the above reasons, I did not choose

sentences said by evil characters since readers are usually not supposed to see themselves in this kind of

characters, so I thought it was easier for surveyed people to choose inside a range of “positive”

sentences.

Girl questionnaire (sentences said by female characters)

Main character Friends of the main character

Opposite gender character (opposite

towards the target)

Shojo manga X X

Shonen manga X

Boy questionnaire (sentences said by male characters)

Main character Friends of the main character

Opposite gender character (opposite

towards the target)

Shojo manga X

Shonen manga X X

Even if at first I was pretty certain to be able to take on this research in an objective way, I found

myself facing a big doubt when I actually started writing down the questionnaire. The problem consisted

in the choice of the sentences. Finding “typical” sentences, that could represent a specific character’s role

in manga, was harder than I thought, since the differences between the sentences of the main character

and the ones of the secondary characters were not as strong as I expected. And, moreover, I had to think

about what can be considered a “typical” sentence. I just had a blurry idea of what I personally thought

were “typical” manga sentences, but I did not know how to scientifically define them. Not finding any

useful points about it, I decided to choose the sentences using as basis my experience and only my

personal opinion, and consequently I cannot say for it to have been an objective selection. Moreover,

sometimes I had to reject sentences that were too much connected with the context and would have

probably not been understood without it, in the questionnaire (and, actually, even some of sentences

that I chose, I found out later to have lost a bit of their meaning and of the strength that they had in the

manga, since they were missing the context.)

Later, I found myself facing other doubts. In fact, after finishing the questionnaire, and while

collecting dates, I started being worried about the objectivity of my results. In fact, for example, the shojo

manga take usually place in schools or anyway in a “realistic” world, and this makes sentences sound

more realistic (and easily accepted by the surveyed people). On the contrary, shonen manga talk usually

about fights, magic and life-death situation that make the sentences look less usable (in everyday life)

compared to the shojo manga ones. Even if I tried to use mostly sentences from shonen manga which

take place in school, I also used some fantasy manga. Finally, I did not survey as many people as I initially

hoped to. So, I am well conscious of the subjectivity of this research and I would like the reader to take it

into account. Anyway, conscious of it, I will try to analyze the data and to deduct as much as I can from it.

3. Exposition of the Results

I will start analyzing the results I had from the girl questionnaires. As I said before, I asked 11 Japanese

girls, students of the University of Tsukuba (all of them around 20 years old) to choose in the

questionnaire which were the sentences that they use( or would use) in real life, writing a maru, a circle,

○. Near to the sentences they don’t use (or would never use) I asked them to write a batsu, a little cross,

×. And I also asked to write something (like a comment or correction) next to the sentences, if they

thought it could be useful. And the result that came out from this is quite interesting. For what concern

the sentences said by main characters in shojo manga the number of “use” and “don’t use” (respectively,

maru and batsu) are similar and anyway well balanced (even if the number of batsu is, generally talking, a

little higher). In the sentences said by secondary characters, the situation is the same, but this time the

number of maru is higher than the one of batsu. Finally, the sentences used by female characters in

shonen manga did not receive any maru at all, so it means that the surveyed girl would never use this

kind of sentences.

I received several comments about the sentences used by female characters in shojo manga:

most of them contained corrections of the final part of the sentences (for example a 「やめろ

う」,”Stop”, was corrected as「やめて」 a less strong version). The other comments were about the

excessive strength of the sentences and the fact that they seemed a bit masculine and not realistic. On

the other hand, the comments concerning the sentences said by female characters in shonen manga

were all about the fact that the sentences do not look realistic (since they were often connected to the

act of fighting) and that they seemed too strong for a girl.

Let’s now analyze the questionnaire I distributed to boys. I surveyed 18 Japanese boys, all around

20 years old and students of Tsukuba University. I have to say that the choices made by boys have been

far more homogeneous than the ones made by the girls. In fact, the sentences said by main characters of

shonen manga received batsu the 90% of the times, in other words, the surveyed boys stated that they

would never use in real life the sentences usually said by main characters in shonen manga. Only one,

very common and not strong sentence (「よく頑張った！」 “You worked well”) received, on the

contrary, 90% of maru. But this is the only exception. For what concerns sentences said by secondary

characters the number of maru was generally higher (except for a sentence said by a very male and

strong character). Finally, the sentences used by male characters in shojo manga received a lot of maru.

For what concern the comments to the sentences, I have to say that several boys asked me if I

made up the sentences or If I translated that from another language. A lot of comments, in fact, stated

that the sentences looked not enough realistic, too similar to a manga sentence (which was ironically

true). Several boys, in place of writing a comment, rewrote the sentences correctly, usually changing not

just the last part, but the whole sentence. The sentences said by the secondary characters received less

notes and/or correction, generally. The sentences said by male characters in shojo manga did not receive

several comments and, when there were some, they were annotation about shyness or not having a

girlfriend (comments motivated by the fact that all of them were connected to a love relationship

between a boy and a girl).

4. Deductions

What can we deduce from these results? Asking what kind of sentences people would use, I

wanted to find what sentences can fit better the behavior and the nature of the surveyed students. In

other words, I hoped to find what kind of characters of manga can represent well Japanese people.

We can states that girls can see a just a little difference between the way they are represented in

manga and how they actually feel. The differences are more when talking about their representation in

shonen manga, where female characters seems too manly and use too strong sentences.

But, at the same time, we have to say that the representation of boys in shonen manga is far

more distant from the reality than the one of the girls. In fact, it seems that they cannot find themselves

at all in sentences said by the main character of shonen manga, since they find this sentences too strong

or not enough realistic. Usually this kind of sentences are said by leader character, strong people who are

sure of themselves. Japanese boys seems not being comfortable with using this kind of sentences in real

life. On the other hand, the fact that a lot of surveyed boys chose sentences said by male characters in

shojo manga surprised me. I think that the fact that these sentences are connected to a scholastic, more

realistic life, compared to the more unrealistic sentences of the shonen manga, lead people to choose

them. But I cannot suppose this was the only reason. Probably Japanese boys are more self-confident

than I expected when talking about love relationship. Viewing this from a social point of view we can

state that this is probably due to the fact that we are talking about a relationship between two individual

people, space in which boys/men can feel stronger and more comfortable. But, when we talk about

leader-like sentences that are supposed to be used in front a lot of people, it seems that sentences of

main characters of shonen manga are too strong. From what I studied, I know that Japanese people have

a very solid ideas of groups and of harmony inside what is called the uchi (the group one is part of). A

single person would rarely say something that go against the rules commonly accepted inside the group

because he/she would risk of being ostracized.2 This can be seen as a strong push to the homogenization

which actually “kill” the individual person, in favor of a more collective personality and the use of very

soft, well balanced sentences that can keep a sort of equilibrium.

So, how can we link this two points? I think that in manga and anime the idea of individual is

showed in a stronger version, compared to what is actually accepted inside the Japanese society. And

this lead to a very important point: the vision that Western countries have of Japan. In fact, we have to

state that from the ‘80s, manga have had a great influence in the diffusion of Japanese culture in the

2 Roger J. Davis, Osamy Ikeno, The Japanese Mind, 2002, Tuttle Publishing

world. Thanks to the big success of the Japanese animation in the world and the fact that the most part

of the imported products are addressed to children, the influence that Japanese animation and manga

had on the idea that Western countries have of Japan is very strong and growing every year.3 In this

products, such as anime and manga, the idea of group can certainly be found (for example in the idea of

friendship and of collaboration) but it is not so strong as it is in reality, in the real Japan. And, on the

other hand, while in this fiction animated word the individual (the main character) is showed as a strong,

independent figure who is different from anybody else, in the real Japan people aim to be part of a

group, without creating any problems, in order to maintain harmony inside the society. Looking at these

questionnaires, could we perhaps say that Japanese people are more similar to the secondary characters

of manga than the main characters? And do Japanese people like manga because they look for a leader,

someone with strong values who can stand against the others? Or they read manga because they would

like to be the main character (and, inside, they know that it will never be, since they are just reading a

fiction)?

Of course I have no answer yet, but I think that this points can be interesting and I hope that

there will be chance for me (or for other researchers) to bring on this topic. Trying to think about possible

reason, I found myself thinking that this could be motivated by a big influence of Western values, and

especially of American ones (for historical and economic reasons America had a very big influence in

Japan since the Second World War4) on Japan. I think that the influence of Hollywood’s movies (and of

American way of thinking) has been taken by Japanese and translated as something interesting but that

can happens only in fiction. This could explain why there is a bigger influence of the idea of individual

compared to the reality. Doing so, in manga we can say we find characters who have a western way of

thinking but who live in a Japanese world (After all, is generally thought that manga was born thanks to

Tezuka Osamu, who was greatly influenced by the Disney animation, so from their very first start they

have been a mix between Japanese and American culture). But, of course, to state something like that we

should also study how Japanese literature changed after Japan started having relationship with Western

countries.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, even if I cannot consider this research a very objective one, I think I found out

interesting information that I personally analyzed in the way I explained above (even if, of course, there

3 Berndt Jacqueline, Manga and “Manga”: Contemporary Japanese Comics and their Dis/similarities with

Hokusai manga, Essay for publication by the Japanese Art and Technology Center “Manggha” in Kraków,

2008

4 Tipton Elise, Modern Japanese - Social and Political History, 2002, Routledge

can be more explanations for this results). I posed some questions which I would like to find an answer

to. As well as I think it could be interesting to do a similar questionnaire in Italy, my country, asking about

what sentences of Japanese manga they would use in real life.

After the bibliography, the reader will find the two questionnaires and their results.

Bibliography

- Berndt Jacqueline, Manga and “Manga”: Contemporary Japanese Comics and their

Dis/similarities with Hokusai manga, Essay for publication by the Japanese Art and

Technology Center “Manggha” in Kraków, 2008

- Berndt Jacqueline, Facing the Nuclear Issue in a “Mangaesque” Way: The Barefoot

Gen Anime, from the website: “Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti”,

http://www.cinergie.it/

- Roger J. Davis, Osamy Ikeno, The Japanese Mind, 2002, Tuttle Publishing

- Tipton Elise, Modern Japanese - Social and Political History, 2002, Routledge

アンケート・男性

下記で書いてある文章の中であなたにとって使える表現の近くに○を書いてください。

全く使わない表現の近くに×を書いてください。

使わなくても使いたい表現があったら、☆を書いてください。

少年漫画のメインキャラクター・赤

少年漫画のメインキャラクターの友達・青

少女漫画の男性・緑

X (18) O (0)「あんまボクもかぶせ過ぎたら、笑えねーんだよ！」

X (10) O (5)「見せてやれよ、おめーのちからを！

X (13) O (6)「俺の女にならない？」

X (2) O (15)「おまえそれ本気で言ってんのか。」

X (6) O (11)「泣けばいいよ。」

X (16) O (1)「後は俺たちにまかせる！」

X (15) O (2)「おれも行くよ！連れてけ！」

X (12) O (5)「そして、最後に勝つのは真の正義！」

X (0) O (16)「困った時にすぐ呼んでください！」

X (0) O (18)「よくがんばったな」

X (7) O (10)「進む方が大事！」

X (12) O (5)「お前がいるから俺は前に進めるんだ！」

X (11) O (5)「好きだから守るんだ」

X (3) O (14)「ボクもチャレンジしてみたい！」

アンケート・女性

少女漫画のメインキャラクター・赤

少女漫画のメインキャラクターの友達・青

少年漫画の女性・緑

X (9) O (2)「ちゃんと言えるじゃない？自分の気持ち」

X (7) O (4)「協力すればいい？」

X (7) O (5)「一度失敗したってのに、来年やればいいじゃない。次の年も。その次の年だって

チャンスはいくらでもあるでしょう！」

X (11) O (0)「あたしに助けられた分際強がりなんか言っちゃって。」

X (5) O (6)「一人になるのは怖い。」

X (6) O (5)「いいから、もう私にかまわないでください。」

X (2) O (8)「信用できません。」

X (11) O (0)「あたしも戦えるから！守れてばっかりじゃない！」

X (10) O (1)「やめろう！ふざけないで！」

X (3) O (8)「助けてあげたい！」

X (4) O (7)「優しい方だということも知りました！」

X (5) O (6)「私は負けない！」

X (7) O (4)「親友ってのはな言葉はなんかじゃなくて心でつながっているもんだ！」

X (7) O (4)「優しい○さんと毎日一緒にいたい！」