Japanese are very adept at absorbing a foreign concept and making it uniquely their own. They are so good at this that sometimes even the original source is forgotten and folks believe that it was always Japanese in the first place.
Take baseball. While, yes, Japanese do understand it wasn't invented in Japan, the product out there, detail-oriented and overly practiced creating such perfectionist hitters as say, Ichiro Suzuki (arguably the greatest batting machine ever. period), certainly has a uniquely Japanese imprint. Strikes are called before balls, unlike the States. Ramen is offered for sale in the stands during games. Players bow to the field like they would a sumo doyo. (See "Mr. Baseball" with Tom Selleck for other more common practices, although often overly stereotyped in the movie.)
Take "Auld Lang Syne." (You know, the nostalgia-inducing Scottish song we sing at New Year's). In Japan, the melody was adopted with new lyrics, albeit nostalgic old days doing homework dutifully via light of fireflies to do honor to one's family and country, and became "Hotaru no Hikari" (literally, "Firefly's Light").
The American Civil War Union anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has become a bright, friend-making song sung at kindergartens here.
I have been met so often with open incredulity in explaining these songs' true origins that I almost begin to wonder whether they weren't actually originated here in the first place.
Take rock-and-roll. No, don't. Not here in Japan. I don't think they ever got it, completely. The whole complete rebellion thing ends when the 20something gives up the purple hair for the company job. Boy-band after girl-band after boy-band gets cranked out like pornography in unoriginal, sappy succession to no outstanding lasting musical advancement or fair.
Sometimes, I've noticed, in an attempt to take a foreign concept and to force it into a new and creative Japanese product, it fails terribly. I have had a shaving cream that doubles as a face wash which means either I'm planing the contours of my face painfully through soap bubbles or washing stinging menthol out of my eyes.
This last product, I must admit, was made by Gillette (owned by the Procter & Gamble Co., main office Ohio) although it may have been made for the Japanese market.
That's another thing that adds to the confusion of trying too hard, re-applying foreign concepts indiscriminantly: foreign companies are just as eager to attempt the smorgasborg mentality. Gillette is one, Coca-cola is another. They are one of the largest drink marketers in Japan, mostly of a variety of bottled teas and canned coffees sold via vending machines. Their major coffee brand is "Georgia" which is where, I have to tell my Japanese friends who think it is a Japanese product with a cool name, the home of Coca-Cola is: Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Other than deflating vague nationalist product connection here locally for my own sick pleasure, I find this re-application misguided and occasionally plagiaristic and, really, offensive. Mostly, the original meaning and history is jettisoned for a short-lived, sexy or worse, cutesy, product endorsement pitched and wasted in a minute and limited market, but enormously popular for 15 seconds. (I say "15 seconds" because that is often the lenth of the typical TV ad, unlike 30 in the States, as opposed to Andy Warhol's "15 minutes" of fame.) One of my favorite Gipsy Kings songs was used for the background of a beer commercial and ever-etched in the minds of Japanese as such. In fact, if your band's tune is lucky enough to make it to the product endorsement level, you've made the big time, but only briefly. Many Japanese remember the commercial better than the original. Hardly anyone, in fact no one I've met here, knows who the Gipsy Kings are.
Also, the strange popularity of cars with bizarre names in English completely unconnected to their real meaning baffles me. I used to drive a "Parsley." One could see the "Today" driving up and down the road alongside, perhaps appropriately, with the "with." The large mini-van "Voxy" may have been an attempt at "Boxy," and the "Cube" an expression of the box-like design of a smaller car. But, the "Noah" (another mini-van) doesn't carry any animals and hardly resembles an ark. My wife used to drive a flat, pistacchio-green "Pao" which is the onomatopoeia of a trumpeting elephant.
Anyway ...
I think there is hope, though. I heard "Kimigayo" -- once Japan's oft-protested yet nationalist-defended, crusty "unofficial" official national anthem -- performed stunningly by a single artist at a Japanese national soccer friendly. It was breathtaking, fresh, young and powerful. Maybe the younger generation is trying to find a new identity, something based in something they know, something they recognize and take pride in, and re-invented with new feeling. Now, that could take the world by storm.
