- Current
Nikkei View
- About
- Roots
- Nikkei
Links
- IMDiversity Job Bank
- More
about Gil:
Gil's Home Page
Resume
Fave Web Sites
1957 TimeLine
"Toy Book" Excerpt
Writing Samples
SUPPORT THE NIKKEI VIEW!
Amazon.com now offers a way for you to sponsor the Nikkei View column! Just click below for more information!
Search Amazon.com using keywords such as "Japan," "Japanese
American," "Tokyo," and others for books or videos.
I'm now an Amazon.com
Affiliate. I urge everyone to support their local independent businesses
first, but if you search Amazon.com from here, I earn a percentage of
your purchases. It's one way you can help underwrite the Nikkei View.
Thanks!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
"Ties Talk" is an e-mail discussion group through which people of all ages and backgrounds from all over the U.S. and the world can comment on the Japanese American and Asian Pacific American experience. You can get a sample of the types of discussion that go on in the Ties-Talk Archives.
To
subscribe to "Ties Talk" and join our community, send an e-mail
to majordomo@lists.apanet.org
with the following line in your message:
subscribe ties-talk
Once
you send in your subscription request, an automated e-mail message should
be returned from "majordomo" to your e-mail address asking you
to confirm your membership to the list. Once you send in the confirmation,
you'll be added to the list. The "Ties Talk" e-mail discussion
list is operated by the Japanese American
Network, or JA*Net.
Hope to see you in e-mails!
Connect to the Denver area's Asian community with AsiaXpress!
Radio the way it should be: DavidsWebcast
ARCHIVES
LATEST
COLUMN
2001 COLUMNS *
2000 COLUMNS
1999 COLUMNS * 1998 COLUMNS
February 28, 2000
AMERI-KANA:
JAPANESE
GOES MAINSTREAM IN THE U.S.
One of the more interesting things a Western traveler will notice in Japan is how often English is used -- in signs, slogans (often slogans that don't make much sense) on everything from packaging to t-shirts, and in advertising copy and even the mass media.
| Union Bay clothing features a line of katakana underneath its logos which spells out "hip-pu hop-pu," or "hip-hop." |
The English alphabet is scattered everywhere, and they're not used for the purposes of helping American tourists get around the country. English is almost a second language in a way; in fact there's a debate going on over whether to acknowledge English as an official second language.
One of my favorite anecdotes about this cross-cultural phenomenon is the Japanese gas station chain, Cosmo, which spells out its name proudly in the Roman alphabet for its logo. I once asked an older taxi driver if he could read the signs. He replied that unlike a lot of younger Japanese, he couldn't read English, but "Cosmo" meant "gas station" to him by association, so he wasn't offended that the company chose to use a name that many Japanese presumably couldn't even read.
At the time, I found it far-fetched that Americans would accept signs and symbols in a language other than English alongside our roads. The thought of a U.S. gas station chain with its signs written in Japanese was quite a fantasy.
But recently I've noticed how, as Asian culture begins its periodic cyclical resurgence in the West, Japanese is showing up stateside. And I don't mean English spellings of Japanese words, but rather words and phrase written in Japanese alphabet characters.
For the uninitiated (which includes me, since I can't read or write it despite my mom's erstwhile efforts when I was a kid), a quick introduction to how the Japanese language is written out: Unlike English, which is written with the 26 letters of the "abc" alphabet, Japanese have to stuff their heads with a minimum of three completely different alphabets to read the morning newspaper. The largest alphabet is "kanji," the Chinese pictographic alphabet (each character, which can be very complex, represents a separate word), and includes thousands of different characters which often have different meanings from their original Chinese roots. The next two alphabets are "hiragana" and "katakana," both of which include 46 different letters with extra variations of them to memorize.
Confused?
But wait! There's more -- these "kana" letters don't represent symbols that make up words like our letters are used in English. Instead, they represent entire phonetic syllables. For instance, there are separate letters that represent the sounds for "ah," "ee," "oo," "eh" and "oh" and then the next five letters represent "kah" "kee," "koo," "keh," "koh" and so on.
Why have two separate "kana" alpahabets? I wonder if somewhere along the line the Japanese decided that foreign words should be written in a different alphabet, so that they'd know at a glance that the words they represent aren't originally Japanese. Along with all the words written out in English throughout Japan, there are many more written out in katakana. (The prevalence of foreign words in Japanese isn't just in writing -- a listen to Japanese newscasts via satellite or the Internet in the U.S. reveals many English words sprinkled throughout, although they're often abbreviated or mangled in pronunciation. But that's another column for another week.)
These days, though, language seems to be a two-way conversation.
Especially because it's the Asian Year of the Dragon, images derived from the "Orient" seem to be appearing more often in American pop culture. Dragons are commonplace, and the local department store invariably stocks clothing with Asian motifs. Those motifs increasingly include Japanese and Chinese alphabets.
I now own several baseball hats with kanji characters for the words "love" and "heart," and I've even seen a line of baseball caps with the kanji characters for various American universities' mascots on them (I wonder how North Carolina's "Tarheels" translates?).
Because katakana is meant for use with foreign words, the alphabet is ideal for use in slogans on American clothing. You can buy a long-sleeve t-shirt from the store popular with teenagers called "Abercrombie & Fitch," which has the name of the chain spelled out in katakana, "Ah-beh-roo-ku-rom-bee and-oh Fit-chee," down the sleeve.
Guess Jeans offers t-shirts with "Gess-su Jeen-zu" in katakana across the chest.
And another popular brand of clothing for young people, Union Bay, features a line of katakana underneath its logos which spells out "hip-pu hop-pu," or "hip-hop," as its stamp of contemporary authenticity.
Does this mean that America is on the verge of accepting Japanese in everyday life and commerce? Of course not. As with every cultural trend that's embraced and then inevitably dropped, such use of Japanese on American products will probably disappear along with whatever the "in" color is this summer.
I'm trying to memorize the katakana before this fad fades, so that I can walk through a store and read some of the Japanese. It'll make me feel pretty darned smart, knowing that most Americans won't have a clue what they're wearing on their chest, or on their butts.
But for now, I like the idea that the old cab driver might come to the U.S. and see Japanese strewn across the American cultural landscape. The only problem is, he could read it but he still wouldn't know what the heck "Ah-beh-roo-ku-rom-bee and-oh Fit-chee" is....