Japanese in the Mirror

First of all, thank you for your comment Rachel. I hope to keep up with thought-provoking entries although I have to say, I won’t be able to write as much from next month. Still I wish to tell the big stuff and little stuff about Japan, as a resident of Japan. Comments always gives me energy to keep writing :)

Since I had been writing about very serious heavy stuff for the past month, I thought I’d write about something easy today.

It seems like NINTENDO’s new game machine Wii has been released in the States a bit earlier than in Japan, and even though it’s not sold in Japan yet, the release of Wii marked rounded up the release of the so-called next-generation video game machines (XBOX360, PS3, Wii).

Well, it’s not about Wii itself that I want to write about today, but the TV commercial that has been aired in USA. As a Japanese I found it both interesting and entertaining so I’ll write how I felt.

But before getting my comments, have a look at this (see below) if you haven’t had a chance to see the TV commercial I’m am going to write about (it’s safe).



A couple of agent-looking Japanese men (I think they’re Japanese) get on this tiny tiny car, knocking around the doors of the houses, and bow as they present the controller for Wii – which I believe is the biggest characteristic about Wii – and suggest these people to actually play with the machine.
I suppose that the mild expressions they wear and the humble attitude that can be seen in bowing shows how Japanese people are viewed from others. The ad is finished with the two [ ii ] of “Wii” bowing.

I think it’s pretty funny. The two Asians (from my point of view) look a bit more like Chinese (there’s absolutely no offense in this, and I apologize if they’re Japanese), but anyway, as I was thinking “so this is how Japanese people are portrayed in other peoples’ eyes” I suddenly remembered this other news article that elephants have been proved to recognize their figure in mirrors.

So my point is, I realized that when seen through a mirror called “non-Japanese”, Japanese people could be illustrated as something quite different from what we (=Japanese) usually believe us to be, and both are probably our true characters.

It’s not that I’m trying to express complaint like “we aren’t like that” or “we never do things like that”, but just found it interesting. I’m sure that we too see non-Japanese people in “mistaken” perceptions.
As for this commercial, Japanese people are perceived in a favorable (nice) way so I don’t feel bad (um, is the small car supposed to portray our car technology or the smallness of the country and houses?) – it’s a Japanese company to begin with so I guess there’s nothing for us to complain about.

Watching this commercial, I even became to think that Japanese people should have more pride in ourselves. So that we can be welcomed everywhere with a round of applause, we need to improve ourselves through these “mirrors”.