John Lindsey
2nd November 2003, 18:01
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment&id=488
Chris Betros
The other day at a screening of "Kill Bill," everytime the characters played by Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu spoke Japanese, the audience laughed — politely, but still laughed — even though I thought both Liu and Thurman spoke pretty good Japanese.
Last week, when the movie's cast appeared at a Tokyo news conference, they were asked to speak some Japanese. Both Liu and Thurman closed their eyes and desperately tried to recall some of the dialogue they had memorized for the movie, and which they had obviously forgotten long ago. After they came out with a sentence each, the Japanese audience broke into raptures again, something that has always amused or irritated longtime foreign residents of Japan.
It got me thinking. Is this reaction on the part of the Japanese a form of latent racism or something else? Is the chuckling another way of saying: "Oh look, how quaint, those foreign actors are trying to speak our unique language which everyone knows is the most difficult in the world and which makes us special?" Is it ignorance? Or is it a compliment? How often have foreigners uttered a few simple phrases of Japanese and been told they are "jozu desune?" Very gratifying but simplistic, to be sure.
Something similar happened a few weeks ago when the media were shown a special long trailer of "The Last Samurai," in which Tom Cruise speaks very good Japanese. At that screening, the reaction of the Japanese was one of almost awe. They were very impressed.
In any case, I asked an older Japanese man and a young Japanese woman who were at both screenings why they laughed at the Japanese dialogue of Thurman and Liu, and how they felt seeing Cruise speak Japanese in a very melodramatic scene.
With Liu and Thurman, it wasn't what they were saying that came across as amusing, the older guy said. They were using very colloquial slang. That kind of dialogue will always sound funny when it comes from a non-Japanese.
I believe the same reaction would occur in the U.S., Britain, Canada or Australia. Imagine an English movie, with Bruce Willis or whoever glaring at a punk and saying something like "I'm gonna kick your !!! from here to hell and back" or "Your !!! is mine." Now imagine a Japanese actor saying the same lines in English, no matter how fluent he is. It really would sound odd.
Anyone who has seen the 1986 Ron Howard comedy "Gung Ho" will know what I mean. Japanese characters (played by Japanese-American actors, I believe) used such English dialogue as "I was on him like hair on a gorilla's !!!" and imitated Porky Pig's closing line from Looney Tunes. It was hilarious.
In the case of Cruise and "The Last Samurai," the woman told me it just took some getting used to. She had been so used to seeing Cruise in movies for years that to now see him speaking Japanese just didn't register or feel right. At first, she even suspected his voice might have been dubbed.
Sometimes, the reverse is just as puzzling. I recall meeting Noriyuki Pat Morita, the star of the "Karate Kid" movies, during a promotional visit to Japan in the 1980s. In those movies, Morita plays Mr Miyagi, a venerable Okinawan karate master who has lived in California since before World War II. And yet, in the movies, set more than 40 years after the war, his character speaks in bad English, saying things like "Always look eye," and "Miyagi understand."
Morita, of course, speaks flawless English like most Japanese-Americans I know. I asked him if he found it galling to be asked by the movies' producers to speak such bad English, and why he didn't object. He said he was uncomfortable at first but the producers argued that if he spoke perfect English, it would remove some of the mysticism and aura of Oriental wisdom surrounding Mr Miyagi. His performance was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
Morita, who had parts in the TV series "M*A*S*H*" and "Happy Days," said that for most of his career he been forced to take parts in which he spoke stereotyped English — in an episode of "Columbo," he was a manservant who hardly spoke any English at all.
Morita said something else that has stuck with me. Recalling his childhood, he said it puzzled him why Americans always spoke in broken English to a foreigner as if that made it easier for them to understand what was being said to them. Australians do this too, I might add, and not only that, they also think that speaking English louder will make the foreigner understand.
Anyway, to get back on topic, I still don't know if you can call any or all of this a form of racism. I'd be interested to hear what readers have to say. In the meantime, Japanese better realize one thing: There are a lot of foreigners out there besides actors who speak Japanese very well, and in some cases, better than some Japanese do, judging by the gibberish some of those Shibuya girls speak.
October 26, 2003
Chris Betros
The other day at a screening of "Kill Bill," everytime the characters played by Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu spoke Japanese, the audience laughed — politely, but still laughed — even though I thought both Liu and Thurman spoke pretty good Japanese.
Last week, when the movie's cast appeared at a Tokyo news conference, they were asked to speak some Japanese. Both Liu and Thurman closed their eyes and desperately tried to recall some of the dialogue they had memorized for the movie, and which they had obviously forgotten long ago. After they came out with a sentence each, the Japanese audience broke into raptures again, something that has always amused or irritated longtime foreign residents of Japan.
It got me thinking. Is this reaction on the part of the Japanese a form of latent racism or something else? Is the chuckling another way of saying: "Oh look, how quaint, those foreign actors are trying to speak our unique language which everyone knows is the most difficult in the world and which makes us special?" Is it ignorance? Or is it a compliment? How often have foreigners uttered a few simple phrases of Japanese and been told they are "jozu desune?" Very gratifying but simplistic, to be sure.
Something similar happened a few weeks ago when the media were shown a special long trailer of "The Last Samurai," in which Tom Cruise speaks very good Japanese. At that screening, the reaction of the Japanese was one of almost awe. They were very impressed.
In any case, I asked an older Japanese man and a young Japanese woman who were at both screenings why they laughed at the Japanese dialogue of Thurman and Liu, and how they felt seeing Cruise speak Japanese in a very melodramatic scene.
With Liu and Thurman, it wasn't what they were saying that came across as amusing, the older guy said. They were using very colloquial slang. That kind of dialogue will always sound funny when it comes from a non-Japanese.
I believe the same reaction would occur in the U.S., Britain, Canada or Australia. Imagine an English movie, with Bruce Willis or whoever glaring at a punk and saying something like "I'm gonna kick your !!! from here to hell and back" or "Your !!! is mine." Now imagine a Japanese actor saying the same lines in English, no matter how fluent he is. It really would sound odd.
Anyone who has seen the 1986 Ron Howard comedy "Gung Ho" will know what I mean. Japanese characters (played by Japanese-American actors, I believe) used such English dialogue as "I was on him like hair on a gorilla's !!!" and imitated Porky Pig's closing line from Looney Tunes. It was hilarious.
In the case of Cruise and "The Last Samurai," the woman told me it just took some getting used to. She had been so used to seeing Cruise in movies for years that to now see him speaking Japanese just didn't register or feel right. At first, she even suspected his voice might have been dubbed.
Sometimes, the reverse is just as puzzling. I recall meeting Noriyuki Pat Morita, the star of the "Karate Kid" movies, during a promotional visit to Japan in the 1980s. In those movies, Morita plays Mr Miyagi, a venerable Okinawan karate master who has lived in California since before World War II. And yet, in the movies, set more than 40 years after the war, his character speaks in bad English, saying things like "Always look eye," and "Miyagi understand."
Morita, of course, speaks flawless English like most Japanese-Americans I know. I asked him if he found it galling to be asked by the movies' producers to speak such bad English, and why he didn't object. He said he was uncomfortable at first but the producers argued that if he spoke perfect English, it would remove some of the mysticism and aura of Oriental wisdom surrounding Mr Miyagi. His performance was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
Morita, who had parts in the TV series "M*A*S*H*" and "Happy Days," said that for most of his career he been forced to take parts in which he spoke stereotyped English — in an episode of "Columbo," he was a manservant who hardly spoke any English at all.
Morita said something else that has stuck with me. Recalling his childhood, he said it puzzled him why Americans always spoke in broken English to a foreigner as if that made it easier for them to understand what was being said to them. Australians do this too, I might add, and not only that, they also think that speaking English louder will make the foreigner understand.
Anyway, to get back on topic, I still don't know if you can call any or all of this a form of racism. I'd be interested to hear what readers have to say. In the meantime, Japanese better realize one thing: There are a lot of foreigners out there besides actors who speak Japanese very well, and in some cases, better than some Japanese do, judging by the gibberish some of those Shibuya girls speak.
October 26, 2003