Behind the Scenes

Japan and its culture are other things in which I have a fascination simply by virtue of the fact that it presents a reality that millions upon millions of people have lived every day for thousands of years but that is, to me, completely alien. I won't call myself well-read on the subject, but I know a little of it, enough to put even some of the strangest behaviours into context.

It started when a friend I had in school introduced me to Sailor Moon and from that day on I had a soft spot in my heart for the hyper-distorted, stylized, yet strangely appealing world of Japanese anime and manga cartoons. It was the artwork itself that drew me, but eventually I did become somewhat more immersed in western 'Japanophile' culture. I have never been good with languages so unfortunately for me learning the language wasn't an option--instead I satisfied myself simply emulating the style of drawing and was content with that until I was in high school. Since my high school was significantly bigger than any school I had ever been to before (when I graduated it had 2100 students in just four grades) so I found myself among a much broader spectrum of people and interests and being myself very quiet and shy, I fell in with the anime and manga crowd. I was perfectly happy simply watching or reading whatever anyone else had at the time but never had any particular series that I was known for enjoying--everyone in the group had their personal favourite--for a few years.

I guess I was probably fifteen or sixteen (probably sixteen) when I found Hisaya Nakajo's crossdressing shojou manga, 'Hanazakari no Kimitache e', meaning 'For You in Full Blossom' and usually familiarly abbreviated to 'Hana-Kimi'. Part of the draw for me was the crossdressing angle. I have no idea what it is, possibly my own personal enjoyment of blurring gender lines, but I have a weakness for any book or movie or show that incorporates crossdressing or genderbending. The plot of 'Hana-Kimi' involved, somewhat commonly I was later to discover, an American Japanese girl named Mizuki who plots to disguise herself as a boy and enroll in the all-boys private school attended by her track-and-field idol. Other series followed and I can actually remember most of them. I soon added Yuu Watase's 'Alice 19th' and 'Imadoki', Hiroyuki Nishimori's 'Cheeky Angel', Emura's 'W Juliet', Tokihiko Matsuura's 'Tuxedo Gin', CLAMP's 'Chobits', and maybe one or two others. ('Cheeky Angel' and 'W Juliet' were also had a theme of genderbending.) With the exception of 'Chobits', which takes place in a futuristic society, all of them took place in contemporary Japan and portrayed a world that would have been very familiar to the target audience but casually referenced common practices that were totally unknown to me.

I loved it. I loved seeing this world that I didn't understand at all. I know manga and anime are no more representative of Japanese culture than TV shows like 'Friends' or 'The Simpsons' are representative of American culture, but I'm willing to boldly suggest that, even when they didn't show a true-to-life representation of certain things, they led me to seek one out for myself. The whole thing was just so totally fascinating to me. It still is. I religiously bought books monthly for years, until I was about twenty, by which time the friends who had brought me into the world of Japanese media had largely moved on to college and left--the last series I bought was also the first series I bought, 'Hana-Kimi', which ended its 24-volume run in the US in 2006. After that I just sort of lost interest. Those books get expensive and I had other things I wanted to pursue more, but the stories and artwork I'd spent so many years enjoying stuck with me. I even got a little bit of a happy little fangirly 'SQUEE!' moment when, just now as I was looking up the authors of the various titles I read, I learned that Disney Pictures and Viz Media (who own the rights to the story) had begun adapting the series 'Tuxedo Gin' into a movie. If this happens, I will be among the first to see it.

There was one particular regular feature I found in a good many of the series I read--usually in the girly or 'shojou' genre--that came with every volume but had nothing at all to do with the story as a whole. The last handful of pages of every published book usually contained a small peek into the artist's everyday life. They spoke about their families and home lives, what they enjoyed doing, movies, music, books, the things that inspire them to write and the life and times of a comic, why they did this instead of that or why the characters evolved as they did--the kind of thing you usually get in the West in interviews published online or aired on television or radio. Instead they just plopped them in the books and it was just one more thing, one more keyhole through which I could take a peek into this utterly bizarre, completely alien, rivetingly fascinating world. Not only did I get to read a fictional account of life, I got to read a real one, as well.

And to be honest, ever since I've been immensely jealous that Japanese writers get to do this and their audiences get to read it, but in the west we don't do such a thing. I always loved, LOVED reading what went on behind the scenes. It made the stories more accessible to me, even though I lived in a completely different world. I read Tamora Pierce's books throughout my adolescence and teen years but in all that time I never felt I 'knew' her as well as I got to 'know' the manga artists in the relatively short span of time it took for their books to run their courses.

Since then I've sort of had the urge to do this myself. I really enjoy writing author notes and postscripts to my stories that provide a glimpse into MY world, and MY mind, and the reasons behind plot points and minor details that I so dearly loved reading about when I was the audience. I never really got the impression anyone cared to know these things but I always wanted to write them anyway. I just felt like this was a connection I really wanted to make. I'm not just someone who mindlessly grinds out stories--and I want to show that.

It never really caught on and I don't expect it ever will. Its natural progression led me here, to the land of personal blogs, where I write about the things that go on in my head and little else.

Still. It brings my world a little closer to anyone who might be interested in it. Maybe someone, somewhere, living in another place and a culture different from mine, has read what I've written and been thrilled at the details I willingly put forward that provide a little keyhole-peek into my 'normal' and a world completely alien to them, too.