What makes a person get interested or fall in love with a foreign culture? As everything else in human life, humans entirely operate based on their feelings. They often believe they act as a result of rational thinking, but in reality, it is feelings that lead them to form judgements and act upon them. Typically, people get interested in an activity or object if they experience a range of emotions by interacting with it. If an activity or an object make a person feel certain way, they want to prolong that feeling. Interest in a foreign culture is not an exception to this dynamic. 

Fascination with Japanese culture, history, and people, Japanophilia (shinnichi (親日), goes back centuries. Prior to 1853 Japan was sakoku (鎖国, "closed country”) for more than two centuries, which meant that Japanese ships were forbidden to leave the country, and Japanese people returning from abroad were put to death. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy, sailed into Tokyo harbor and forced Japan to end their isolation. It was the starting point of discovery of Japan by other countries. 

Japanese art immediately flooded Europe. The woodblock prints influenced and shaped 19th century European art. It is quite evident in the art of Degas, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh. Western fashion collections exhibited the traditional Japanese costume, known as kimono. Japanese gardens started to appear in the West at the end of 19th century. 

In the late 20th century and the beginning of 21st century, Japanese culture had and has a global effect on the industry of entertainment. In 1996, the Japanese company Bandai introduced Tamagotchis, digital pets. The popular card trading game Pokémon literally captured the world. 

The popularity of Japanese culture is constantly increasing worldwide. One of the recent influences is the introduction of the culture of minimalism to the Western culture of mass accumulation. The Japanese expert Marie Kondo promotes the concept of tidying houses and throwing away everything that does not bring joy to a person. 

Here is a brief list of reasons to learn Japanese today. 

Exploring Unique Japanese Culture

• Japanese pop culture, such anime, manga, Nintendo games, karaoke, and J-Pop.

• Japanese food is one of the most popular in the world. There are over 90,000 Japanese restaurants across the world. Tokyo has the most 3 Michelin star restaurants in the world.

Increasing Professional Opportunities

• You will have more professional opportunities in different industries such as global business, technology, science, tourism, and humanities.

• Japanese is the fourth most used language on the internet.

• You will have access to advanced technology. Japan has created various humanoid, animal, social and many other kinds of robots and technologies.

Relatively Unknown Aspects of the Japanese Language

• Learning Japanese is easier than it seems. There are only 46 Hiragana and Katakana characters. Japanese grammar is not complicated but it is very different from English grammar.

• After mastering Japanese, it will be easier to learn Chinese languages (Kanji, one of Japanese’s alphabets, is based on Chinese characters) and Korean (Japanese has similar grammar to Korean).

• Learning Japanese will allow you to read beautiful works of Japanese literature in their original form: from the tenth-century Tale of Genji to the postmodern dystopias of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto.

Social Reasons and Personal Improvement

• Taking Japanese classes will allow you to meet interesting, like-minded people.

• It will open for you a new, intriguing culture and will allow you to see many aspects of human life from a new prospective.

Olga Sylvia, PhD

Finally, a curious aspect of Japanese mythology, the Rokurokubi, shown and described below.

Rokurokubi (ろくろ首, 轆轤首) are human like creatures that have an extraordinary ability to stretch their neck. They appear in oral Japanese tradition and classical spirit tales.