Abstract

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.

摘要

本文调查了外国人在最近的17个日本动画节目（或动漫）中观察到的语言和视觉表现形式，并探讨了提高学生对日语和文化问题的批判意识的方法。我们发现，动漫中的外来字符倾向于用简化的，标记的日语和/或插入母语表达的语言来表示它们的差异性。虽然有17个国家/地区的动漫显示，我们检查了大多数外国字符是美国人。大多数字符被描绘成种族白色，并且讲日语。在这些字符中，最经常表现为白色，蓝眼睛和金色头发的美国字符，这是日本外国人的典型代表。此外，女性角色仅占外国角色总数的20％，而且其中许多人在视觉上具有性别特征。我们讨论了中介化对日本人理论“日本人”的影响，并提出了将调查结果纳入日语教学的方法，以提高学生对语言和文化问题的批判意识。