Japanese Culture

In Banana Yoshimoto's novel Kitchen, a woman named Mikage Sakurai and her friend Yuichi Tanabe both take care of each other after they both dealt with losses in their family. By supporting each other, they were able to live happily again, which shows the significance of having someone by your side. In the beginning, Mikage is living alone and grieving over her grandmother's death. Yuichi then tells her to move in with him and his mother named Eriko, and Mikage decides to do it. Yuichi and Eriko treat Mikage with respect, and they welcome her as if she were a part of their family. They "chatted about things like the flower shop and [Mikage's] grandmother, and time passed quickly" (Yoshimoto, pg. 15). Mikage was grateful for everything they were doing for her, and she felt at peace knowing that she had others who were trustworthy. Without Yuichi and Eriko, Mikage would've had to dealt with her grandmother's death by herself, and it would've ...

The animated film  Akira takes place in 2019, 31 years after the nuclear explosion in Tokyo and is about two friends named Tetsuo and Kaneda. Tetsuo ends up getting into a motorcycle accident, which grants him supernatural powers. The military experiments with Tetsuo, but Tetsuo escapes and wreaks havoc trying to find Akira while Kaneda tries to figure out what is going on. As the film progresses, we find out that the cause of the bombing was that a group of people, per the government's request, were trying to control Akira's power, and this ended up failing, so Tokyo ended up being bombed. Additionally, throughout the film, we see acts of terrorism performed by protesters rebelling against government control. These are two examples of negative outcomes due to controlling other people or things that are unknown, and this can be seen throughout the history of the United States. During World War II, the United States government forced Japanese Americans into concentration...

Artificial intelligence is making advancements every day. Human-like robots are seen on social media performing various activities that humans do. Technology has and is making a huge impact on today's society, and this is what Tezuka Osamu highlights in his manga/anime Astro Boy.  The image above shows scientists in Japan producing a huge amount of robots that look exactly like human beings (Osamu, p.14-15). It also explains that the robots were gaining more and more human qualities on a daily basis. This idea of normalizing the use of robots is a transition to Astro Boy .  In episode one of Astro Boy , a father creates a robot named Astro Boy that looks like his deceased son. The father teaches him everything that he needs to know, but he later realizes that Astro Boy would never be able to replace his son, so he gives him away. Astro Boy is a selfless robot that has powers that no human can possess. The father creates the robot in order to cope with the sudd...

When World War II ended, the people of Japan suffered plenty of hardships, mainly due to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States showed contempt towards Japan and their culture. This caused the Japanese public to express their frustration and anger through cinema.             Japanese cinema portrayed the United States as the antagonist, and it also highlighted Japanese nationalism. During the 1950's, Japanese films like  The Tower of Lilies, The Room with Thick Walls,  and  Godzilla  expressed the impact that American actions had on Japan (Goto-Jones, p.108). The public of Japan created these movies to cope with the anger that they had on the United States. They wanted to persuade others that they were not the enemies. Other Japanese films highlighted Japan as the protagonist. Japan isn't the only country that shows nationalism in the movies that they create. The United States has come out with multipl...

Hello. My name is Elmer Benitez.