Thoughts on Japan

Kingaku kara no omoi - 金額からの思い

Thoughts on Japan from the National Institute of Japanese Studies. University of Sheffield

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been talking about the motivations for Japanese speakers to use honorific language, and how those motivations have been theoretically explained by linguists interested in Pragmatics. This week, I’m going to move away from the theory and take a look at how honorifics have been considered by socio-linguists – people who are interested in language use as a social activity, and in the links between language and different social groups – groups based on age, sex, affiliation, region, class, and so forth.

In any language, speakers adjust what they say, and how they say it, depending upon the situation in which they find themselves, and what image they wish to project. Do they wish to assert solidarity with their addressees? Do they wish to emphasise superiority? Level of education? Identity? And so forth. All of this can be done, and is done, through language use: the accent, use of dialect, type of vocabulary, intonation, etc. Sometimes, it’s a conscious decision, and sometimes it’s done unconsciously. British readers in their forties may remember the 1980s Nat West commercial below:

It is, of course, a showcase for Adrian Edmonson’s clowning, but the fact that he endeavours to ‘Talk proper’ in order to get a bank account is evidence of the importance placed upon the right language for the right situation in British society – and the ending is evidence of how things were changing in the 1980s.

There’s been a great deal of work done on English speakers’ attitudes to, and use of, language – some of which seems to identify general cross-linguistic tendencies, and some which is country-specific. In England, for example, there’s a very close relationship between accent and social class, and listeners tend to assign people to classes depending upon what they sound like, and then have stereotyped expectations of how they will behave, and what sort of people they are. So, people with who speak RP – the standard middle class accent spoken by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady:

are: intelligent, unfriendly, trustworthy and, believe it or not, tall! Whereas people with accents from the larger metropoli (London, Birmingham, etc.) are friendly, devious and short, and people with rural accents are backward, uneducated, warm, and direct. As you can see, a lot of these are nonsense – accent has nothing to do with body size, for example – but the attitudes are pervasive. One of the most famous experiments a linguist did to test this was to have someone go into a cinema and shout, ‘Fire! Everybody leave via the emergency exits!’ during a performance, in an RP accent, and then at a different showing in a regional accent, and time how long it took the audience to leave. The audience were noticeably slower to get moving with the latter than with the former – evidence that an RP accent was regarded as more trustworthy and authoritative.

In Japan, of course, which lacks a class-system along English lines, accent is much less important as a social marker – even dialect use doesn’t convey as much information about background and education. As Fukuda and Asato (2004, 2000) say, however, ‘use [of] elaborate honorifics’ by people from particular groups is one of the things which serves as a badge of identity.

One of the best examples of this is given by Miller (1967, 289-90) in his description of the difference between women’s and men’s Japanese speech. The following exchange he describes as (for the time) ‘fairly elegant, but otherwise quite run-of-the-mill women’s speech’:

A
ma, go-rippa na o-niwa degozāmasu wa nē. shibafu ga hirobiro to shite ite, kekkō degozāmasu wa nē.
まあ、ご立派なお庭でござあますわねえ。芝生が広々としていて、結構でござあますわねえ。

A
My, what a splendid garden you have here-the lawn is so nice and big, it's certainly wonderful, isn't it!

B
iie, nan desu ka, chitto mo teire ga yukitodokimasen mono degozaimasu kara, mō, nakanaka itsumo kirei ni shite oku wake ni wa mairimasen no degozāmasu yo.
いいえ、何ですか、ちっとも手入れが行き届きませんものでございますから、もう、中々いつも綺麗にしておくわけには参りませんのでござあますよ。

B
Oh no, not at all, we don't take care of it at all any more, so it simply doesn't always look as nice as we would like it to.

A
ā, sai degozaimashō nē. kore dake o-hiroin degozāmasu kara, hitotōri o-teire asobasu no ni datte taihen degozaimasho nē. demo mā, sore de mo, itsumo yoku o-teire ga yukitodoite irasshaimasu wa. itsumo hontō ni o-kirei de kekkō degozāmasu wa.
ああ、さいでございましょうねえ。これだけお広いんでござあますから、一通りお手入れ遊ばすのにだって大変でございましょうねえ。でもまあ、それでも、いつもよくお手入れが行き届いていらっしゃいますわ。いつも本当にお綺麗で結構でござあますわ。

A
Oh no, I don't think so at all -but since it's such a big garden, of course it must be quite a tremendous task to take care of it all by yourself; but even so, you certainly do manage to
make it look nice all the time: it certainly is nice and pretty any time one sees it.

B
iie, chitto mo sonna koto gozāmasen wa.
いいえ、ちっともそんなことござあませんわ。

B
No. I'm afraid not, not at all...

All of the boldfaced elements in the above exchange are honorific, in one way or another, and the conversation is less about the content – which is relatively trivial – than about the two women affirming their relationship and common background, and the elaborate honorifics are a significant part of that. Miller goes on to remark humorously that the same exchange between two men would consist of Ii niwa da nā いい庭だなあ (‘Nice garden’) and ‘a sub-linguistic grunt, as a sign of acknowledgement or of polite denial’ (1967, 290), which contains no honorifics at all. This is not to say that male speakers don’t use honorifics – they do, of course – but that they use them less for asserting solidarity with friends and acquaintances than women do.

Given the pronunciation of the deferential copula degozaimasu as degozāmasu, the ladies are from the Yamanote area of Tokyo – then and now a wealthy district – and when I was last discussing this extract with some Japanese (about twenty years ago now) my informants said the language was a bit old-fashioned, but they wouldn’t be too surprised to hear it on the streets there, if the two women were quite elderly. I wonder what people would say today?

Next week, I’ll continue on the social side of honorifics, and consider some of the reasons why usage changes over time.

References:
Fukada, Atsushi and Asato, Noriko (2004), “Universal politeness theory: application to the use of Japanese honorifics” Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (11), 1991-2002.
Martin, Samuel E. (1964) “Speech levels in Japan and Korea”, 407-414 in Dell Hymes (ed.), Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper & Row.
Miller, Roy Andrew (1967) The Japanese Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Last week, I described how Brown and Levinson (1978; 1987) laid out a universal politeness theory, and how this had been criticised as being inapplicable to Japanese by a variety of linguists (Matsumoto 1988; Ide 1989), who prefer to analyse Japanese honorifics as being based upon ‘discernment’ or indication of social relationships. It might have seemed from this that the face-based account of honorific usage was discredited by this but – and this will come as no surprise to you if you think about how science works – other linguists have recently been criticising the discernment account, and relating how the theory of face could be adjusted to fit the linguistic facts of Japanese.

One of the most cogent of these criticisms comes from Fukuda and Asato (2004), who argue that Brown and Levinson’s theory works perfectly well for Japanese, as long as one important fact is taken into account:

When a person of higher status is involved, distance and power are given markedly high values, which in turn, elevates…the weightiness of the FTA. Thus, any act, whether intrinsically face-threatening or not (meaning, regardless of the value of imposition), will be counted as face-threatening.

(Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1997)

Thus, saying anything in the presence of a social superior can require the use of politeness strategies, and hence the use of honorifics. This does seem like a sensible adjustment to the theory, given the well-documented awareness that Japanese people display of status differences between individuals – even in contexts where a difference wouldn’t exist, or be considered to be important, most English-speaking countries. As an example of this, we only have to think of the fact that one of the most important relations Japanese can have is between senpai 先輩 (‘seniors’) and kōhai 後輩 (‘juniors’) – whether it’s at school, or in a club, or at a company. Those who enter an organisation later will accord respect to those who were there before them, who, in turn, will feel obligated to look after, or instruct, (or take advantage of) those younger than themselves. The relations can be extremely long-lasting, and require use of honorifics by the kōhai to the senpai – if you see two Japanese meet at a school reunion you can often spot who was in which position by listening to who is using honorifics and who isn’t.

Fukuda and Asato (2004) also provide five arguments for the applicability of their account, and against Ide and Matsumoto’s version.

First, correct honorific usage does have much to do with face-preservation, as if speakers fail to use honorifics when expected, they can sound presumptuous – threatening the addressee’s face – or, they can embarrass themselves, threatening their own (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1997). This is obviously a concern for non-Japanese trying to speak the language, as you want to avoid causing offence, although – particularly if you don’t look Japanese – you can get away with mistakes native speakers can’t. The most important thing is to try and avoid obvious mistakes – like using honorific expressions to refer to your own actions, and humble ones to refer to a superior’s – and try and develop your honorific fluency by observing how Japanese speakers talk to each other.

Although, that being said, it’s also best to avoid talking ‘down’ to your Japanese juniors (people younger than you, or who work for, or under you) too much, as it’s difficult to adopt the mannerisms of a Japanese senior without sounding offensive, unless your language skills are very high, and even then, they may not ‘fit’ with your Japanese personality.

Second, the fact that it sounds odd to use honorifics about social superiors if they have done something dishonourable (Sensei ga dōkyūsei o gōkan nasatta 先生が同級生を強姦なさった ‘My teacher raped(honorific) my classmate’ – sounds bizarre in the extreme), means that obligatory indication of the social relationship is not the only criterion for honorific usage (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1998). Third, superiors do use honorifics to juniors if they are asking them a favour. This usage cannot be to indicate the social ranking between them, as that is maintained (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1998). Fourth, in more formal situations, too, superiors will use honorifics to juniors, which again cannot be to indicate social ranking (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 1999).

These arguments, in fact, contain useful lessons for the Japanese language learner – not about what honorifics to use, but when to use them: making requests and impositions, and in any formal situation, and to anyone who’s a superior – either in the sense of having some authority over you, or simply that they are older.

Finally, if saying anything in the presence of a superior is intrinsically face-threatening, then one of the most sensible options for juniors is Brown and Levinson’s (5) don’t do the FTA – in other words, keep quiet – and this accounts for the tendency of juniors in Japan not to say very much in the presence of their superiors. It is not the case, after all, that it is considered polite for them to talk as much as they want, even if they do use honorifics (Fukuda and Asato 2004, 2000).

All in all, then, it seems like the face-based account of honorifics might well have something to recommend it, doesn’t it? What you need to remember, though, is that no theory can entirely account for the complexities of human interactions or behaviour: just as it’s possible to find weaknesses in the ‘face’ account, it’s also possible to find weakness in the ‘discernment’ one, and even Fukuda and Asato’s revised version is unlikely to be the final word. It’s likely that someone else will come up with a new account in a few years which will provide a different approach, and there’s nothing wrong with this, because each new version provides different insights into the language and takes a step closer to the reality.

So, is that the final word on honorifics? Well, no, another interesting area, and one which Fukuda and Asato themselves acknowledge is that ‘sex, age, education, and regional origin of the speaker are related to the use of honorifics…Women, the well-educated, the aged, and urbanites like to speak a refined, elegant language and use elaborate honorifics to serve their own face wants, such as being perceived as having had a good upbringing, and being intelligent, decent or sophisticated persons’ (Fukuda and Asato.2004, 2000). This is moving more into the socio-linguistic analysis of honorifics, and is something I’ll talk about next week.

References:

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1978) ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena’, 56-311 in Goody, E. (ed.) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fukada, Atsushi and Asato, Noriko (2004), “Universal politeness theory: application to the use of Japanese honorifics” Journal of Pragmatics, 36 (11), 1991-2002.
Ide, Sachiko (1989) ‘Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness’ Multilingua 8 (2/3), 223–248.
Matsumoto, Yoshiko (1988) ‘Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese’ Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4), 403–426.

Last week, I was talking about the use of honorifics in Japanese, and speculated a little about why speakers might use them. This week and next week, I’m going to continue in that vein, but from a more technical angle by considering how linguists have analysed and theorised about them, and see whether this has any practical lessons for someone who wants to learn, and speak, Japanese.

There are, of course, any number of different fields within linguistics where honorifics could be studied – syntax, semantics, historical, and so on – but the area which I’m going to talk about falls under the general heading of Pragmatics. This covers quite a wide range of theoretical areas, but what I am interested in here are the reasons why certain language forms are used in particular contexts, and how these phenomena can be described theoretically. (If you want to know more about Pragmatics in general, then there are any number of good introductory textbooks, with Huang (2006) being the most recent.)

In Pragmatics, then, honorifics are generally considered to fall under what is called Politeness Theory, which was first laid out by Brown and Levinson (1978; 1987) in an attempt to come up with a way to describe the theoretical basis for polite language usage cross-linguistically. Their theory – which they claimed was universally applicable – (1987, 57-76) was to posit that all human beings have both positive and negative ‘face’, with the former being essentially the desire to be liked and approved of by other people, and the latter the claim that individuals make for their personal prerogatives, such as the desire that their own actions and wishes should not be impeded. Any action which impinged upon one’s own, or another person’s face was described as a ‘face threatening act’ (FTA) and potentially required a politeness strategy to minimise its effect. Brown and Levinson posited five possible actions, depending upon how serious the speaker judges the FTA to be: (1) Use no politeness; (2) use positive politeness – stressing one’s community with the addressee, for example; (3) use negative politeness – minimising the level of the imposition, or degrading one’s own position vis á vis the addressee; (4) use other means, such as getting a third party to initiate the FTA; and (5) don’t do the FTA at all. They further posited that speakers determine how serious an individual FTA is by summing the social distance between speaker and hearer, the amount of power the hearer has over the speaker, and a culture-based ranking of impositions (asking for a reference from a superior is more serious in Japan, for example, where the writer is expected to put his or her personal status behind the junior, than it is in the UK, where the reference is a more objective evaluation of the person’s qualities). They represented this with the following equation:

W(eightiness of the FTA)= D(istance between Speaker-Hearer)+P(ower of Hearer over Speaker)+R(ank of Imposition)

Having laid out the basis of their theory, Brown and Levinson then proceeded to apply it to politeness phenomena in a variety of the world’s languages in an attempt to demonstrate its universality. Use of honorifics – in any language, not just Japanese – is categorised as a negative politeness strategy, as it is seen as giving deference by lowering the speaker’s position, and exalting the hearer.

Obviously, in the above I’ve simplified things quite a bit, but that’s the basis of universal politeness theory and its application to honorifics. Simple, isn’t it?

If your answer is ‘No!’, and you feel that describing honorifics as simple markers of deference used when initiating requests doesn’t quite fit with your understanding of them, you would not be alone. In fact, Brown and Levinson almost immediately came under attack from linguists who questioned the universality of ‘face’, and claimed that the theory was based upon an overly-Eurocentric concept of social relations between individuals, or even of the notion of the individual. One of the first to do this was Matsumoto (1988), who denies the applicability of the idea that individuals want to be unimpeded in their actions to a Japanese context. Instead, ‘acknowledgement and maintenance of the relative position of others, rather than preservation of an individual’s proper territory, governs all social interaction’ (1988, 405). The sources she cites in support of this, such as Nakane (1970) and Doi (1973) would probably now be considered as part of the nihonjinron (even Matsumoto acknowledges that Doi may be over-stating the point (1988: 407)), which weakens her overall argument, but there is no doubt that honorifics are used in Japanese in situations which do not involve a face-threatening act, such as Kyō wa doyōbi degozaimasu 今日は土曜日でございます (‘Today is Saturday’), where the copula verb degozaimasu (‘be (deferential)’) indicates a high level of politeness and formality, but the statement itself cannot possibly impinge on anyone’s prerogatives. Furthermore, in some contexts imposing upon a person is actually considered the polite thing to do. For example, a wife may say to her husband’s boss, Shujin o dōzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu 主人をどうぞよろしくお願いします (‘Please take care of my husband’). This is a request to the boss, and hence an imposition upon him, but is considered polite in Japan because it’s an acknowledgement that the superior has the power to perform the action requested (Matsumoto 1988, 410). Given these, and other, issues, Matsumoto (1988, 411) claims that Japanese honorifics are essentially ‘relation-acknowledging devices’, a description which comes closer to my own reference to them as markers of social deixis. She also rejects Brown and Levinson’s theory entirely, and prefers to see politeness as motivated by culturally-determined concepts of deference, which ‘in Japanese culture focuses on the ranking difference between the conversational participants…Conventional Japanese Deference would say ‘Leave it to someone higher’’(Matsumoto 1988, 424). Further criticisms, and an alternative theory, were proposed by Ide (1989), who argues that honorifics are governed by ‘discernment’ of the social position of the addressee, and this is based upon the speaker’s understanding of the social conventions governing interaction in Japanese culture. Again, this is broadly similar to Matsumoto’s description of honorifics as ‘relation-acknowledging devices’.

So, is the face-based account of Japanese politeness discredited? Not entirely, and I’ll tell you why, next week.

References:

Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1978) ‘Universals in language usage: politeness phenomena’, 56-311 in Goody, E. (ed.) Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doi, Takeo (1973) The anatomy of dependence. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Huang, Yan (2006) Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ide, Sachiko (1989) ‘Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness’ Multilingua 8 (2/3), 223–248.
Matsumoto, Yoshiko (1988) ‘Reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in Japanese’ Journal of Pragmatics 12 (4), 403–426.
Nakane, Chie (1970) Japanese society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

In my column about why the Japanese language can be difficult to learn, I mentioned that one of the challenging features is social deixis – the fact that you cannot say anything in Japanese without conveying what your impression is of the social relationship between you and your addressee, or between you and the person you are talking about. This week, and over the next couple of columns, too, I’m going to talk about this in a little more depth, by taking a look at the subject of honorifics.

For those of you who don’t know any Japanese, briefly, honorifics are linguistic means of expressing respect to the person you are talking to, or the person you are talking about. There are various forms: prefixes attached to nouns, a variety of verb inflections, and a number of substitute nouns and verbs for use in particular contexts. So, for example, one uses the verb meshiagaru (召し上がる), ‘eat (honourably)’, if a social superior is doing it, but itadaku (頂く), ‘eat (humbly)’, if you are doing it in a social superior’s presence, and so on. Put like that it sounds quite simple, if bizarre to English speakers, and strictly speaking, it is – one can learn the most common forms, expressions and grammatical rules quite quickly – and like everything in Japanese they are logical and don’t have exceptions, but the challenge comes in learning when and how to apply them, and relating that to yourself – your age, sex, job and so forth – in other words, the socio-pragmatic rules and conventions.

What combination of honorifics are appropriate when meeting one’s prospective parents-in-law for the first time? When speaking to one’s teacher? When meeting a business client? When talking to one’s boss at work? Should you use different expressions if you meet him outside the office? The possibilities are as varied as there are different social situations and encounters, and unless you are extremely familiar with Japanese social relationships, it’s difficult to sound natural, or to pick up on the signals that honorific usage sends.

For example, I recently received an email from a Japanese publisher, requesting corrections to the proofs of a book chapter I’ve written, and letting me know what the necessary schedule was for me to get the corrections back. Nothing surprising about that, but how did she conclude her mail? Well, the final sentence was: ‘kongo tomo go-shidō go-bentatsu no hodo, nanitozo yoroshiku o-negai-mōshiagemasu’ (今後ともご指導ご鞭撻の程、何卒宜しくお願い申し上げます), which translates literally as, ‘In every way we humbly and sincerely request your future honoured guidance and the honour of your lashes of encouragement’, although if you look the expression up in Kenkyūsha’s Japanese-English Dictionary, you’ll find the much less flowery, ‘Thank you in advance for your continued support’ given as a translation! In any case, this was about the politest expression I’ve ever received from a Japanese, so I showed it to one of my Japanese colleagues, who laughed, and said, ‘I haven’t seen anything like that for years. She wants you to know how important you are, and she must work for quite a traditional company.’ As a native Japanese speaker, my colleague was able to pick up on the message that was being sent, in a way that I couldn’t, but I was still flattered to be addressed in that way, and have reciprocated by being especially careful in my own responses which, in turn, has generated a warm response back.

Knowing that they are missing out, many foreign learners of Japanese tend to throw up their hands at the thought of honorifics, and try to avoid them wherever possible – and the Japanese, being polite – let them get away with it. It’s a mistake to do so, however, as it means you’re cutting yourself off from a major part of Japanese socio-linguistic interaction, and depriving yourself of a useful tool for easing relationships, making a good impression and even disambiguating your speech – of which more later.

As a Japanese teacher, I sometimes think that part of the problem learners have with honorifics is that they tend to be introduced some way into a course, after students have had a chance to internalise a fair number of conjugations, inflections and other pieces of grammatical information, which means that they tend to regard them as an special add-on to ‘normal’ Japanese, rather than as an integral part of it and simply an extension of the ‘polite’ and ‘plain’ styles of speech that everyone learns almost from the beginning. Perhaps if honorifics were taught earlier, students would find them easier to deal with (I seem to recall that the famous linguist Eleanor Jorden was in favour of this approach), but then again, maybe it would just put them off even more.

In any case, with teaching as it is, students’ reactions to honorifics generally fall into one of three types – not unlike the reactions they have to learning kanji characters: grudging acceptance, wholehearted enjoyment or, virulent dislike, with the first being the most common. Leaving the first two aside, people who dislike honorifics tend to believe that by using them they are somehow demeaning themselves, and that they are simply a manifestation of the inequalities in Japanese society, and so it’s a democratic duty to actively refuse to use them. Or, that it’s part of the Japanese conspiracy to make speaking their language needlessly complex, and difficult for foreigners to learn.

Obviously, the latter belief is simply paranoia brought on by dealing with a language which conceptualises the world in a very different way from what they are used to, but what about the former? Are honorifics a linguistic reflection of an unequal society? Is doing away with them a ‘good’ thing? Will they eventually disappear?

Well, the answer is far from easy to arrive at, partly because first we’d need to define what an unequal society was, and who it was unequal for. To avoid getting bogged down in that, I think I would prefer to say that in the Japanese case, honorific usage reflects a society where it’s important to show that you are considerate of other people – and of demonstrating that consideration verbally. I’ve talked previously about the Japanese love of rituals to mark important, and not so important, events, and using honorifics is a verbal confirmation to the person you are speaking to that you know how to relate to them and are taking things seriously.

As a foreign learner, unless you live in Japan long-term and relate to people largely in Japanese, it is true that you probably won’t use honorifics in an entirely natural way, but that is no reason not to try, because honorifics are not primarily about conveying information – propositional content, in technical terms – because you can do that using neutral verbs and expressions. Instead, they function as a demonstration of commitment and concern, and will convey the sense that you are trying hard to communicate properly, and are thus more trustworthy and reliable.

Next week, I’m going to get a bit more technical, and discuss the different ways linguists have analysed honorific usage, and what these theories can tell us.

Last week, I outlined the differences in plot and resolution between Koishite Akuma and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, as a way of demonstrating how closely the former fitted with Japanese tastes. This week, I want to consider some of the reasons why this was necessary, and see what lessons we can draw from it.

As a first step, I think it’s yet more evidence, if it be needed, of the omnivorous internationalisation of popular culture. The vampire theme is perceived as being currently popular, and so the Japanese media ‘cash in’ with a version tailored to their own audience. That being said, however, it’s also evidence of how much plot-lines have to be adapted to be acceptable to that audience, or the sponsors, producing a version which closely follows the stylised conventions of the dorama form.

There is no doubt that dorama are highly formulaic: no matter what the programme is, one can predict, within certain limits, exactly how it is going to develop. I’m not saying the British or American dramas are not formulaic – just think of 24, now in its eighth season and still following the same arc as in all its previous ones – but it’s more obvious in dorama, as if all the TV writers were following the same ‘Bible’: first, the two main characters and the supporting group ensemble is introduced; second, a variety of external circumstances both push the protagonists together and pull them apart, while simultaneously affecting the dynamics of their relationships with the group. Events build to a climax, which is resolved by a cathartic, emotional confrontation, which leads to the final denouement, whether it be happy, or sad. There are other dorama plot staples, but I think the above is a reasonably summary which any fan could identify. Again, I can only speculate as to why there should be such a high level of repetition: the imposed conservatism of an entertainment agenda frequently dictated by commercial sponsors and major talent agencies; a limited pool of successful TV writers who come from similar backgrounds; or, maybe, simple, unintellectual tastes on the part of the audience – any and all of these could play a role.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that there are certain, set, scenes which occur regularly in dorama, and so must be included. For example, the cathartic final confrontation: here, the individual and the group face each other, confess their mistakes, and draw closer together through an outpouring of emotion. This reaffirmation of social bonds, presented in a highly sentimentalised fashion, provides the audience with a major emotional ‘hit’ from their viewing, and is so much a staple of the form that it has to take place, and does so again, and again, in programme after programme. Again, I can only speculate as to why this is so popular – possibly because such open displays of emotion are extremely unusual in public in Japanese society, and showing them in fictional form reassures people that their friends, families and work colleagues do, indeed, care, even if they don’t show it that often. It also provides reassurance that no matter what the crisis, the supportive network of intra-group ties can overcome it, allowing viewers to feel hopeful that their own networks will support them in their real lives.

Returning to Koishite Akuma and its differences from Twilight, a further adaptation and one of the most striking, I think, is in the identity of the heroine: from someone of the same apparent age as the vampire to an older woman. In order to understand why this is necessary and, indeed, imperative in Koishite Akuma, we need to consider the stereotyped images of and attitudes to women prevalent in Japan. Over the last twenty years – or even longer –Japanese opinion has agonised over ‘acceptable’ ideas of womanhood, women’s roles in society, and ideas of ‘appropriate’ teenaged, and older behaviour. In this it’s no different from many modernising, or post-modernising states, and many academic authors have written about it. Notwithstanding the undoubted eroticisation and fetishisation of the image of the high-school girl in some areas of Japanese popular culture, and the complicated realities of teenage sexuality and experience, television dorama tends to present teenaged female characters as two distinct character types: first, there is the ‘good’ girl – studious, quiet, possibly interested in a boyfriend, but entirely innocent and able to do no more than hold hands, if she’s particularly daring. Second, there’s the ‘bad’ girl – noisy, interested only in clothes, make-up, having a good time, and probably sexually active and promiscuous.

Example of both this character type are present in Koishite Akuma: there's the serious Kaori (Sakuraba Nanami 桜庭ななみ) and the lively Tomomi (Okamoto Rei 岡本玲). But neither would do as a heroine: the ‘bad’ girl because she’s a bad girl, and the ‘good’ girl because it’s inconceivable that she could ever let go enough to engage in the semi-sexual activity that being bitten by a vampire involves. Hamstrung by these conventions, the writers of Koishite Akuma had no choice, therefore, but to make the female lead an older woman, which provides greater leeway in acceptable behaviour. Makoto is presented as being ‘good’: she lives alone, socialises little – because she’s so committed to her work and the children in her care – and, despite going out with the vice-principal, has not even kissed him or held his hand. Nevertheless, because she’s in her twenties, it would not be problematic, or unusual for her to do so, and so the writers can build up the tension with suggestions that she may surrender herself to Luka, in a way that would be impossible with a girl of his own, apparent, age. Of course, her actually doing so would be a step too far, and so inevitably viewers know that the relationship must remain unconsummated, and that the dénouement will involve an element of tragedy, as indeed it does – Romeo and Juliet again, but with a semi-sad ending. This plays sentimentally on the heartstrings of the Japanese viewer, allowing them to be moved by the characters’ plight, while also reassuring them that the correct social norms have been upheld.

Thus, the bloodsuckers of the world may be united in their popularity, but also remain very much a part of their own cultural milieu.

• Japanese Language (11)
• Japanese Literature (3)
• Japanese Popular Culture (6)
• Japanese Social Relations (6)
• Japanese Society (3)
• Musings (4)
• Traditional Japanese Culture (2)

• How Does Your Garden Grow?
• Your Face or Mine? (Part Two)
• Your Face or Mine (Part One)
• Honour and Humility - Japanese Style
• Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite? Part 3
• Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite? Part Two
• Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite! Part One
• Amber or Green Tea - Part Two
• Amber or Green Tea - Part One
• Does the Shining Prince yet shine?

• How Does Your Garden Grow?
    - Neil McClelland
  
• Your Face or Mine? (Part Two)
    - Claire
  
• Your Face or Mine (Part One)
    - Claire
  
• Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite? Part 3
    - Christiano
    - Chris Pitts
  
• Honour and Humility - Japanese Style
    - Mary Aruga
    - John Whitlam
    - Michael Kruse
  
• Bloodsuckers of the World, Unite! Part One
    - neil.m4
  
• Amber or Green Tea - Part One
    - Matt
  
• Does the Shining Prince yet shine?
    - Matt White
  
• Nonsense About Nihonjin
    - Neil McClelland
    - Jennifer Teeter
    - Mary
    - Mike Bagosy
    - Martin Dennis Molinary
    - KattyBlackyard
  
• Dorama - What A Drama!
    - Matt White