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View Full Version : Right words, wrong face



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

Vapour
2nd November 2003, 18:59
Uma Thurman and Lucy Lu's Japanese were quite bad in the sence that they read a line which would have been uttered by someone who are quite fluent in Japanese.

I don't know about Tom Cruise because I haven't seen the movie but his role require no pretence that he speak fluent Japanese.

I did enjoy the film but may be because I can put it in context. I enjoy the TV programme "Banzai" as well.

CKohalyk
3rd November 2003, 02:00
I was surprised at the Japanese in the movie. Firstly because Tarantino had SO MUCH of it in the script! I was expecting a couple of lines but something like a quarter of the script was in Japanese.

Secondly, although Uma Thurman's Japanese was pretty bad, Lucy Lui's was actually pretty good, all things considering. Apparently she had studied J in highschool or college I heard.

Anyways, both of them were much better than I thought they would be. I was TOTALLY expecting subtitles when they spoke; but there weren't. I would also like to give props to Tarantino and the actors for writing and acting in a movie with such a large portion in a language they don't understand. That's brass.

Vapour
3rd November 2003, 12:15
Let me clarify my point. Japanese those two actor were using were equivalent to ebonic in English. It would be absolutely comical, for example, for me to speak in ebonic, even if my English is quite decent.

If you imagine those Japanese pop stars mimicing western counterparts, you get the idea.

Cady Goldfield
3rd November 2003, 20:56
Living in the US for a long time doesn't guarantee fluency in speech. My fiance has lived here for almost 30 years, but still speaks with a thick Japanese accent and broken grammar. Not as extreme as "Mr. Miyagi's," accent and grammar, but still quite pronounced.

It's not that he doesn't understand English well -- his comprehension is fluent. But his speech is limited because his interactions with Americans in conversation were limited, and so he didn't get the immersion that brings fluency.

All it takes is to live in an isolated community, or an ethnic one surrounded by other Japanese speakers, and you can retain broken English your entire life.

In fact, coincidentally, my fiance is a gardener like the Mr. Miyagi character. His interactions with Americans pretty much related to business topics. And, a lot of his time was spent supervising non-English-speaking Latino laborers (lots of sign language).

So, Pat Morita's character wasn't necessarily an incorrectly portrayed one.

CKohalyk
4th November 2003, 00:31
Originally posted by Vapour
Let me clarify my point. Japanese those two actor were using were equivalent to ebonic in English. It would be absolutely comical, for example, for me to speak in ebonic, even if my English is quite decent.

If you imagine those Japanese pop stars mimicing western counterparts, you get the idea.

Yeah like Norika in Spy_N which was absolutely horrible.

I totally understand your point Youji.

I have always been in Kansai, and originally "came from" Kishiwada, so I have a pretty thick accent. This really surprises Japanese of course, and when I took my first Japanese-language course it surprised the hell out of my teacher. But hey, that is all I knew.

Tarantino is showing that these women grew up in a Yak culture... I can guarantee you won't learn Daily Concise J-lingo when you are having your baby finger lopped off. Personally, I think it is good research, and adds a (possibly the ONLY) facet of reality to the film.

renfield_kuroda
4th November 2003, 01:15
I saw Kill Bill here in Tokyo, at the Virgin Cinema in Roppongi Hills, so the audience was about 25% foreigner.
Every time Lucy Liu spoke Japanese, the Japanese audience laughed, because she sucked. Uma's Japanese got some chuckles; her pronunciation was marginally better.
Chiba's sushi-chef English had the foreign audience chuckling, but his English ability went with his character alot better than Lucy's ability went with her character.

My friends and I agreed that the best thing would have been to have Lucy and Uma do their lines in English, then dub them over in Japanese, then subtitle them badly -- that would've been true to the spirit of Saturday Matinee Kung Fu Theatre.

Regards,

r e n