#Japanese work culture

[laidbackmarco]

The Difficult Challenge of Living in Japan as a Foreginer

[nevermeyers]

Do you know the number of manga authors who have died in the last decade? Do you know the number of physical illnesses a mangaka can develop due to his work? Muscle and posture problems, kidney problems, circulation problems. Not to mention that in recent years it is also common to say “being sick” to have depression, something that many manga artists suffer from due to the media exposure of their works to hundreds of thousands of ungrateful people who constantly insult and harass them.

Some of y'all are disgusting.

I hope I don't see any of you posting ANYTHING about the importance of mental health on your shitty profiles after everything you're doing with Gege Akutami. You're so self-fucking-centered and ungrateful.

[demonslayedher]

I finished posting the unabashedly educational Sword Fic.

It includes a detailed (but hopefully beginner-friendly) explanation of all the steps of making a Nichirin blade from a sunny mountain like Mt. Youkou, a touch of swordsmith and metalworker folk lore (including demons), meta about what must make Kimetsu no Yaiba's swordsmithing methods different from real life methods, some character exploration for Haganezuka and his polishing method, vocabulary and additional resources in the chapter notes, and hopefully, an endearing, silly POV character to learn this all through.

[fellhellion]

genuinely p4 fandom outside of tumblr makes u feel like ur living in an alternate reality. You say hey I think u can easily read trans subtext and text in Naoto’s story because the game quite literally talks about transition surgery, and people act like you’re the insane one.

[plague-of-insomnia]

What does “Akuma” Mean?

Sebastian refers to himself as an akuma (悪魔), which is often translated into English as demon or devil. But what does the word really mean?

Japanese has many ways to say “demon/devil,” and they don’t all mean the same thing. Akuma is the most common, generic word for a demon, and does not necessarily have any specific religious connotations, including whether or not it is “evil” (in the Christian sense).

Its two kanji roughly translate to “bad/evil influence.” However, it’s important to note that “evil” has a very different connotation in Shinto belief than it does in other religious/moral frameworks.

This aligns with how Sebastian is often portrayed as a corrupting influence. Like a force of nature that can be destructive. The concepts of evil and sin like we find in Christianity and even Buddhism are not found in classic Shinto belief.

Let’s also not forget that part of why Yana uses “Akuma” is so she can make her famous “akumade” pun, or, as it translates in English, “simply one hell of a butler.”

But, you ask, “POI, didn’t you define ‘Akuma’ as “the devil/Satan” in your vocab list for Vatican Miracle Examiner?”

Yes, I did. “Akuma” is used for “demon” for many religions, including Hinduism, Buddism, Islam, and Christianity. But the word itself isn’t exclusive to Satan, and often, when that is who is intended, in Japanese we write サタン (Satan) for clarity.

So, no, Akuma doesn’t always mean Satan or even refer to a Christian entity. It doesn’t even refer to an entity that’s “evil” in the sense we think of in English.

It’s simply a generic term for a supernatural creature that is in opposition.

So Sebastian is not Satan, or Lucifer, or even a Christian demon (fallen angel) in canon. He is merely a corrupting influence.

[no-nic]

tip: you can fix any boring canon couple by making them t4t ❤️💜

[mochayoubi]

burnt out on japanese learning recommendations tbh. I recommend uuhhhhhhhh downloading every menu and compiling them into a pdf and then reading that. in japanese. fuck it

[delawaredetroit]

"Treating them like the bad guys"

These are just reasonable questions. UA had the responsibility to take precautions because of the status it has and because it has high schoolers in its care.

The laissez faire attitude they had going ahead with the sports festival after being targeted by villains is part of the reason why UA deserved to be raked over the coals here.

This is Izuku at his most childish. He loves UA, so everyone criticizing it must be in the wrong. Flawed systems rarely get fixed unless they are confronted like this. A lot of manga seem to have an similar antagonistic relationship with the press for some reason. But sometimes, conflict "from your own side" so to speak can be good and productive.

[ineffable-opinions]

BL: Romancing in a Bubble?

As always, please let me know if you have suggestions, critiques, comments or corrections.

I will only be discussing BL broadly (here I use BL as an umbrella term) and not just live action. I don’t want to club together BL and GL since in spite of their shared roots they are very different in their genre conventions, target demographics, and history. Also, I am not very familiar with it.

I consider BL a genre in itself – practically well as the way Masala is a cinema genre.

Please check the content/trigger warnings before diving into the works I have mentioned below. Feel free to message or ask.

BL / romance

I don’t think BL is romance or even a sub-genre of romance. A lot of BL is romance. Many more of them have at least a romantic side to them. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is romance. (I remember the discussion Killing Stalking had prompted.)

But there are plenty of BL devoid of romance. Like One Room Angel, Social Reform Season, and The Orc Bride. Similarly, BL is not exactly a porn sub-genre even though there are plenty of ero-BL.

Also, there are plenty of BL where romance takes backseat such as The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Blue Morning, Brother, Lawless Gangster and Thousand Autumns.

BL / queer

Queer – Can I call it a genre the way I call BL a genre? Even if one were to ignore queer as method in academia, it is still so complex.

Let me quote Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) author Chiang-Sheng Kuo:

[W]hat exactly is queer literature? Is it queer literature if queer people like to read it, or is it only queer literature if there are queer characters in the books? Or is it an appendage of the queer movement? If a queer author writes a book without queer characters, does that represent a certain aspect of queer culture?

(You can find the whole interview here.)

I think the problem persist even when I think of queer as a label.

Then there is the issue with conception of “queerness” itself. Like, in a way it is a limiting term. Is it fair to call normative or customary male-male erotic practices such as masti and Launda Naach, “queer” just because that’s how it is perceived elsewhere now?

To quote what Kaustav Bakshi wrote in Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla:

In the last decade, the question of decolonizing queer epistemologies was being raised periodically, whereby queer politics, despite having a shared agenda of toppling heteronormativity, and queer culture, albeit having a shared aesthetics, became more and more regionalist – not in a negative sense – but, with implications of difference, which can be interpreted and understood only when one subjectively experiences the ‘region’ with respect to gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical and intellectual ability, access to education, metropolitan cultures, and most importantly, the internet.

[T]he attraction towards the launda is not understood as ‘queer’ – non-normative or out of the ordinary – but, as an integral part of sexual life, which is not always compulsively alert to the heterosexual-homosexual binary.

Imo, decolonizing queer epistemologies comes in handy when discussing BL since there are plenty of BL dealing with:

Historical BL set in eras and locations that had customary male-male sexualities and practices.

BL with special settings, like omegaverse, with different (if any) idea of queerness.

BL / other queer content

Just as Japan has gei-comi, and other manga like Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out, and Kieta Hatsukoi (shoujo), What Did You Eat Yesterday and My Brother's Husband (seinen) beside BL manga, different countries offer diversity in queer content with noticeable overlap. But clubbing them together would not be easy. Moreover, this diversity is as much cross-sectional as it is temporal (tanbi, JUNE, shonen ai, yaoi, BL in Japan).

BL the main difference between BL and other queer genres is BL’s focus on moe (affect). Anyway, BL predates LGBTQ+ acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people (BL fans) were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL is commercialized and we get mostly feel-good content. But that is capitalism (and the State) reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people’s labor of love.

I wonder if it is apt to consider BL the way western queer shows (such Verbotene Liebe, Queer as Folks, Os Nossos Dias and SKAM) as benchmark when discussing BL? Won’t it be better to evaluate consider BL in relation to local non-BL queer content in BL producing countries? But then, there are BL inspired by western queer culture such as Partners by Tamaki Yura.

Here are three gei-comi that I recommend for BL audience, through which they can get an insight into non-BL queer manga from Japan (created with androphilic men as target audience) :

Fire Code by Ichikawa Kazuhide

Fisherman's Lodge by Gengoroh Tagame

Coming Home by Go Fujimoto

Here is my BL versus gei-comi list which I think highlights their differences and similarities (I have included only Gengoroh Tagame’s works since they are probably the easiest to access/buy/borrow):

Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? by Gengoroh Tagame || Hitori de Yoru wa Koerarenai by Matsumoto Yoh

Arena by Gengoroh Tagame || Jinx by Mingwa

Cretian Cow by Gengoroh Tagame || The Orc Bride by Madobuchiya (Nishin)

Uo to Mizu by Gengoroh Tagame || Terpenoid by Okadaya Tetuzoh

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame || The Story of My Brother by Ike Reibun

There is lot of overlap between BL and gei-comi. Gengoroh Tagame first published in JUNE (a magazine that contributed to BL we know now). There are magazines and anthologies (Nikutaiha BL) that offer crossover between different streams of queer content.

Similarly, there are danmei (Chinese BL) novel written by queer men such as the autobiographical works: Six Records of a Floating Life and Waiting Until 35 Years Old by NanKang BaiQi and Bei Cheng Tian Jie (北城天街) by FeiTian YeXiang.

BL / Queerness - exploration and conflict

Here are some live action BL (I’m not including some of the more famous ones like TharnType and Wedding Plan) where plot is rooted in character’s queerness and its exploration or implications:

Lan Yu – first danmei to get live action adaptation. The central conflict is rooted in the queerness of its characters, particularly Chen HanDong.

A Round Trip to Love and Irresistible Love – based on danmei by Lan Lin. These are part of a shared universe. The former has both ‘coming out’ (Cheng Yichen) and ‘leaving home’ (Lu Feng). In the latter, all the conflict is rooted in compulsory heterosexuality and we get the perspective of not only an amphiphilic (bisexual) man (Xie Yan) but also an amphiphilic woman (Xia Jun) of the same social class.

Boys Love: The Movie

No Touching At All (2014)

Udagawachou de Matteteyo (2015)

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Sing in Love (2022) – Queerness is part of the main conflict.

Mood Indigo

Life: Senjou no Bokura

Light on Me

I don’t keep track of these things usually, so this is based off memory.

In Japan, most BL has dealt with the struggles of being queer in a largely heterosexist society since the days of tanbi and shonen-ai (such as Zankoku Na Kami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto). JUNE gained notoriety for focusing on it and yaoi boom was movement away from that. Then yaoi gained notoriety for existing in a bubble. When BL started to treat heterosexism in society as a part of the narrative, it garnered praise for being ‘transformative’.

BL has managed to carry within it different modes of identity and queerness.

Take Okane ga Nai (No Money) by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Toru Kousaka for example.

It is often held up as the epitome of all that is wrong with BL (or yaoi as anglophone fandom calls it). What’s less talked about is the main character, Ayase Yukiya’s queer angst and his exploration of identity that spans several volumes of the manga series. Kano on the other hand doesn’t struggle with his identity at all since his attraction to Ayase is driven by a very strong, initially unreciprocated emotional connection dependency (formed when his father died and he was at his lowest). For him, sexuality is merely a form of expression of his attraction for Ayase. Therefore, it does not inform his identity in anyway.

Within cannon, Someya and Honda’s pairing offer contrast to Ayase and Kano’s pairing. In a way, Kano and Someya have post-queer and pre-queer identities, respectively. Someya is a self-actualized person who mentors other queer characters (club staff, Ayase, Honda, Kano). There is a lot of give and take that happens between Ayase and all the queer people he meets at Someya’s club. Ayase's and Honda’s struggles with identity and sexuality are juxtaposed with Kano's and Someya's self-assured disposition.

That is also why I don’t think I Told Sunset About You stands out much. It can easily fit into the BL fold because there are plenty of BL that approached the same theme as I Told Sunset About You in a similar fashion (including these live action BL: His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta, Life: Senjou no Bokura and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese).  

I recommend the danmei novel Sissy by Shui QianCheng, the author of the works Beloved Enemy, My Stand-In and Meet You at the Blossom are based on, for a more detailed exploration of heterosexism, including femmephobia and homophobia.

Sissy, Beloved Enemy and Professional Body Double (the novel My Stand-in is based on) are all part of 188 group (a shared universe of novels).

There are plenty of other BL from other region that are focus on themes such as heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality. Here is such a one-shot: Romantic by Motoni Modoru (part of the anthology Tanbishugi).

BL / terms

I like BL and associated terms like danmei because of the culture and the history associated with those terms. Tanbi and danmei are different readings of same characters 耽美 but they represent very different things. Shonen-ai literally translate to boy(s) love but that term (or BRM (boys’ romantic manga) as Emiko Nozawa puts it) carries within it so much history and specific artistic styles and sensibilities. Waai is derived from yaoi/yuri but there are fu-cultural processes, very different from that of yaoi creation, behind the production of Y-novels. I learned a lot from exploring these words alone.

[axesent]

axesent.com / Scrap Book/ weekend mess about https://www.facebook.com/Okamiworks/ https://www.facebook.com/axesentcreations/

[japanwords]

気 (ki) "energy" / "life-force"

Japanese martial arts practitioners often give a loud quick shout as they perform an attacking move.

This shout is a 気合 (ki-ai), often translated as “meeting of spirit”.

This ki is the ki in aikido, qigong, and reiki.

Ki is a central principle in traditional Chinese medicine and Eastern martial arts.

It has been translated variously as energy, life force, vital energy, spirit.

It is believed to be the essence of life.

Eastern health practices such as qigong, taichi and acupuncture are believed to balance and encourage the flow of ki to create a healthy mind and body.

The above artwork is available on my Etsy shop here.

Tumblr users get 15% off (all my stuff!) with this discount code: TUMBLRCODE15 Just enter it when you checkout.

[michdoodles]

Today’s work doodles brought to you by my love of this drawing of Espio. Would have doodled this sooner but my hands and brain get stupid sometimes and don’t cooperate with each other

Wanted them to be blushing but it wasn’t looking good on Shadow so forget that for now. They’re off to share a milkshake cuz Espio doesn’t have much money and Shadow doesn’t eat much anyway

[iniziare]

Consider Yelan's facial expression to be my own in reaction to opinions shared on both X and Tumblr, and I guess I'm in the minority of the 'loud ones', but I'm pretty excited for Natlan since that trailer, actually. The previous teasers left me a little 'eh', but this definitely got my hopes back up, and I'm back in the right spirits for it (and ready to catch some Pokémon.)

Now I wouldn't be me if I didn't touch on the salt that I've seen scattered across the dash, so here I go. Listen, I read people's objections and I see what you're all aiming at, but in that light want to note that it's often incredibly easy to point fingers (arguably too much so) at others while being, quite honestly, hopefully rather aware that many of our own countries, cultures, and its populations across the board (and no, I'm not excluding anyone here) would likely be just as easily guilty as MHY is with these things. And no, I'm not blindly defending them, but I also won't point fingers at only one without pointing them everywhere else as well, including those you might think would 'never do such things', because I'm absolutely certain that they would. /continues on in the tags.

[daz4i]

the local anime con is looking for people to write and host events.. what if i did a funny and sent in something abt bsd...... haha just kidding. unless? 😳

[telleroftime]

I bring forth a snippet of the Sukuna bingo WIP, written during my flight with a grand total of 0 hours of sleep. OOC? Maybe, most definitely, but oh well I'll just tweak it later.

With some bonus dialogue:

And also:

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

genuinely can’t stop cracking up over there not only being culture war shit over translation and localisation but also it being just hilariously wrong. people will post dry-ass unnatural sentences and go “this is a more accurate translation” bc they literally translated it but like you can’t literally translate things that’s literally just how machine translation works and it sucks bc like doing that is utterly incomprehensible and it actually just is very wrong. the Japanese language has a lot of complexities about stuff like politeness levels and pronouns that make characters have speaking patterns that show their personality really well, but doing a literal translation makes them all sound the same and it’s bad and confusing. wordplay and symbolism has to be changed bc that is a very culturally specific thing and again literal translations there make the work incomprehensible and just like awful to engage with. there’s things in certain cultures that just have way different implications in others and they like, literally have to be localised else you’re having the meaning of everything changed bc of your own cultural context. localisation is not only good but some level of it is necessary for an actual understandable experience. i mean if you’d rather have a literally incomprehensible and bland as shit game/anime/whatever where you literally do not have any of the characterisation of the japanese version and everyone acts like identical interchangeable robots go ahead but what you want is literally just Google translate. that is what an entirely literal and faithful translation is.