#You see… a few years before the events of Osomatsu-kun a fellow beggar was nice to him and shared his food with him.

[crtter]

I know I find a way to link just about everything to The Character but this time the topic at hand really has something to do with him: if you’ve ever ran any Osomatsu-san or Osomatsu-kun material through an automatic translator, you’ve probably noticed Iyami’s name gets translated as “sarcasm” or “I don’t like it”. The word iyami DOES have a meaning outside of being Iyami’s name, but neither of those are accurate translations of it: when applied to a person, iyami means something more along the lines of “indiscreet” or “brutally honest”. As in, a person who speaks or acts in a way with no regard for other people’s feelings. And, at his core, that’s Iyami’s most distinguishing personality trait! He has this name in the first place because he doesn’t comply appropriately to Japanese social conventions, which makes him come off as a very unpleasant person.

We’re able to see this very clearly in his second ever appearance in the Osomatsu-kun manga. In it, Iyami is an old friend of Matsuzō and he shows up unannounced at their house right when they’re about to leave to have dinner at a restaurant. They keep trying to make him take a hint and leave, but he’s just unable to read between the lines. Instead, he makes himself way too comfortable and keeps making inappropriate jokes only he finds funny.

Anyway, I mentioned that foreigners in Japan get somewhat of a free pass when it comes to not understanding their indirect communication style because people assume things are different where they came from and they still have to get used to it, right? Interestingly enough, even if all of your family has been born in Japan but you’ve moved to and lived in a different country for a significant period of time, people are also willing to forgive your social missteps more easily, under the assumption you’ve absorbed different values while living abroad. There’s even a term for people who had this experience: kikokusha, or returnee.

That’s what Iyami’s insistence that he “just returned from France” tries to invoke! Sure, he also associates living abroad with being fancy, but the fact he very specifically tries to get people to believe he’s a returnee implies that that’s just the most convenient way he found to excuse the fact he’s as blunt and bad at picking up hints he’s being rude as he is. Unfortunately for him, though, people tend to catch up quickly to the fact he’s lying about it.