My planner... Palm trees for my Florida based college
I'm now in my second week of college and already I feel as if my head is going to explode. Now, I'm sure there are some who will think that I'm a sad piece of work if I'm feeling this way at the mid point of the second week. But there are quite a few factors at work, here... The first is that the last time I attended school (which was high school) was... well... Let's just say it was more years ago than I care to think about... The second is the content of the class I'm currently in. At the current time, I'm in digital literacy, which is, essentially, a class to find out how savvy you are with technology, specifically the internet and computers. When I was in high school, computers were much different than they are today and it wasn't required to take a class to learn to use them. I didn't even own a computer until I was in my mid twenties. Since then, I've taught myself, either by experimenting with the computer or looking into tutorials (mostly it was the experimenting). So unlike my classmates, I'm not as comfortable with technology. In fact, compared to them, I feel like a complete moron...
The Vapors were turning Japanese in the 80s...
So... for the sake of giving my poor, fried brain a rest for a little while, I've decided to do a random blog about something a bit off beat and odd...
Back in the 1980s, a rock group known as The Vapors came out with a song called "Turning Japanese". In all honesty, it wasn't exactly a brilliant piece of work, but, at the time... Well, in general the 80s were just an odd time and you had to be there in order to appreciate them... The song was quite a hit despite its strangeness and it still relatively well known to this day. Though there have been many speculations as to what this song was really about, the front man assured everyone in an interview that it had nothing to do with masturbation (as was one theory) nor did it have anything to do with the Japanese or even wanting to be Japanese. As he told reporters, it was a song about the angst over losing a girl. Apparently it was just a strange choice of words to relay said angst...
Kirsten Dunst turning Japanese in the 2000s...
But that wasn't the end of things... Since then, it seems that a lot of people have had a desire to "turn" Japanese. Case in point, the picture to the left... Kirsten Dunst made a video in which she sports a blue wig, much like the hair of vocaloid program character Hatsune Miku, and traipses through a Tokyo like setting while singing "Turning Japanese"... Since that day so long ago when The Vapors released their "one hit wonder", it seems as if the entire globe was slowly, but surely, also turning Japanese in a variety of ways.
Japanese live action show, Ultraman
The ninjas: Ryu, Jun, Joe, Jinpei and Ken
Back in the late 1960s to the early 1970s, Japanese movies, such as Godzilla with its big fake rubbery monsters, and television programs, such as the live action Ultraman, began slowly making their way into the US. But they weren't alone... Animation had also come along for the ride, programs such as Mach Go Go Go (known as Speed Racer to English speaking audiences) and Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman known to English speaking audiences as Battle of the Planets and G-Force, Guardians of Space). Unfortunately, there were some issues with the animation. Aside from the usually older teen/adult themed story lines, they were also, quite frequently, violent. To avoid the issue, distributors in the US often edited out the violence and foul language and, at times, completely changed the story line. Believe me, it can be quite a shock to see the original after having watched the bastardized version (I received such a shock watching the original version of Gatchaman). Today, thankfully, distributors only weed out the worst of the foul language and sensitive subjects in the story line (Sailor Chibi Moon or Rini was not Sailor Moon's sister, it was her daughter) that they felt would be a bad influence on young viewers.
Richard Chamberlain in Shougun
Even certain US programs and movies had "turned" Japanese... In 1980, a miniseries based on James Clavell's story Shougun. Richard Chamberlain stars in this miniseries as the character Pilot Major John Blackthorne, a sailor from Europe who travels to Japan during their Feudal Era and gets progressively more involved in their culture and politics.
Watanabe and Cruise in The Last Samurai
Along similar lines is the movie The Last Samuraistarring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In this tale, Tom Cruise plays Nathan Algren, a participant of the wars between the white men and the Indians who is so plagued by what he did that he turns into a raging alcoholic. He gets hired by the Japanese government to teach their army the Western ways of war in a hope to bring down the last of the samurai led by a man named Katsumoto (played by Ken Watanabe). Instead, Algren gets captured by the samurai and is befriended by Katsumoto. After some time, Algren decides to join with the samurai and fight on their side in the war against the Japanese government. In the end, the only remaining samurai is Algren and the Japanese army seems shamed that they have killed off the last of who they were. Interesting moral in the story... Unlike the movie, real samurai were not literally killed off, they were simply stripped of their status as the only group allowed to be armed in favor of more Westernized ways. Today, there are no more "authentic" samurai, their teachings are still evident in martial arts and every day life.
J-Rock group, L'Arc~en~Ciel
But that isn't where Japanese influence ends... Thanks to various anime being brought into the US, modern Japanese music (J-Rock, J-Pop, etc.) has also been slowly making its way into the country. Unlike American cartoons, Japanese cartoons, and other shows, don't always use a musical score created specifically for use on that program. Japanese programs, in most cases, use actual songs recorded by rock and pop groups. With all the newer anime being aired in the US, the rock and pop songs were also being aired and piquing the curiosity of the viewers. Eventually, these groups gained a rather large following in a country where the majority of people had no clue what they were singing about due to the language barrier. But that didn't seem to stop the obsession... As they say, music is a universal language and, in the case of Japanese rock and pop bands, this seems to ring true.
Take for instance the Japanese rock band, L'Arc~en~Ciel (pictured above and in the video to the left). L'Arc~en~Ciel performed the themes for a few different anime and gained such a following that they performed a live concert at an anime convention in Baltimore, Maryland back in 2004.
Tickets from the Madison Square Garden concert
Madison Square Garden concert
But it didn't stop there... In March of 2012, L'Arc~en~Ciel did something no other Japanese band has ever done... they headlined at New York City's Madison Square Garden. As you can tell by the picture to the right, I, too, have been one of those who have "turned" Japanese. This is a photo of the tickets I myself bought to attend the concert at Madison Square Garden. Originally they were to perform two days earlier at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, but they sold so many tickets that the concert was moved two days later than originally scheduled and moved to the main arena. They were the first, and thus far only, Japanese band to accomplish this in the US. Quite a feat... And, as you can see from the photo I snapped during the concert, aside from being able to tell that I was hell and gone from the stage, the entire arena was packed. It was an historic event that I'm personally honored to have been a part of.
Who knows what the future holds... Whereas in the past the Japanese adopted the Western culture, perhaps, one day, the Western culture will adopt the Eastern culture in the same fashion. Did The Vapors see this coming...? Probably not, but it makes one wonder what they think of this today, now that there are a large group of people all "turning" Japanese...
