How a Canadian Teacher was influenced by Japanese culture without knowing it 50 years ago: New Years, a time for reminiscence.
I woke up fitfully this morning. My mind meandered in the early morning filtered sunshine glow as I thought about what I was going to do today. My wife and child were still fast asleep, snoring in unison. They deny it, but I know what a pair of chainsaws sound like. It’s New Year’s Day, and my mind wandered. Time passed relatively quickly, and my family was still snoring away like monsters when my thoughts solidified. I want to talk about how Japanese culture influenced me when I was young, and I didn’t even know it.
Who Am I? I am the Canadian teacher who became influenced by Japan at an early age
Hello and Happy New Year! My name is Brett Austin, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. I write articles concerning English education in Japan, articles about my bilingual family like this, and articles about life in general in Japan. I am an English teacher and my Japanese ability is very low so I apologize in advance that this article is written with translation. Even though my writing is poor, I can’t express how nice it is to finally speak to the people of Japan, even if it is through translation. The original English post can be found below. Let’s get back to the story.
About 50 years ago.. In the early years of elementary school
I remember much of my childhood, luckily I haven’t yet lost those memories. After many years of teaching, memories of my past often get brought up. Let’s begin with Saturday morning and after-school cartoons on weekdays. Saturday mornings were a festival of cartoons, even to this day. From about 6:30am until 12pm, the TV Guide was full of great cartoon shows that interested us as kids. Multiple channels broadcasted these enjoyable programs. The American TV channels always hosted the best cartoon entertainment that kids craved. The Canadian TV channels often presented educational and uninteresting programs. I also remember the Canadian French programs, which I wished I could understand, but often had to skip since my French was terrible, and still is. American Saturday morning cartoons were the best!
Cartoons always made me happy. I suppose I could lay this fascination on my dad who would sometimes watch them with me when he was at home. We both liked the witty sarcasm that some of these shows boasted back in the day before censorship became the norm. I loved it when we laughed together. We bonded back then and that remains special to me.
The first signs of Japanese content. The early influences of Japanese culture in Canada to me.
Back to our story, I believe I woke up early on Saturday mornings while my parents and older sisters were still asleep. My morning ritual was to sneak downstairs and let the dogs out in the yard for a bit of a pee and a sniff. Afterwards, I would plop myself down on the comfy rocker chair and do some channel surfing for about 5 hours straight. My priority was to find the fun programs! I skipped past the early morning ultra-boring Galaxy Express 999 and Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato) (the English anime theme song, by the way), which were slow, long, and all connected together, so I couldn’t understand where the story began or if they ever finished. The dubbing back then was terrible too! However, Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny were far more appealing to my little brain.
As I got a little older..
By the time I was in elementary school in my 5th year, Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back had already become a huge hit (I saw it with my dad and friend in the theater). Space themed tv shows replaced the cowboy themed shows in popularity making a young boy dream of outer space.
My friend was playing with a toy that he made one day. He crafted a spaceship out of a Q-Tips box (a cotton swab alternative to mimikaki in Japan) and put his toy cars and planes in it! That was novel to me. He then told me about a cartoon called “Battle of the Planets” (科学忍者隊ガッチャマン). I fell in love. Since then, “Battle of the Planets,” “Force-Five,” and finally “Robotech” (the American超時空要塞マクロス version) became my cartoon foci for many years afterwards! Saturdays were always the best! The knowledge that these were all Japanese still didn’t connect with me. They were all cool and amazing. Robots and spaceships fighting, evil master villains, sexy animated women, and the more mature storylines were all so entertaining. There was “Sailor Moon,” but that was for girls. Yuck.
Junior High School
Cartoon watching took a back seat in priority in those later years. I still watched them from time to time but became more interested in the game Dungeons and Dragons, which still holds my interest to this day. Power Rangers and then Pokemon became popular then. Yes, the term “Japanese cartoons” did finally start to be murmured amongst the kids at school, but it did not matter to us. There were so many varieties of different cultures that we were growing up with back then, what was one more? By then, I was maturing and girls became more fascinating and frustrating to me. My body and mind were all hormones and silliness which would continue well into my later years. So ended cartoon Saturdays for me.
By the way, Yamato was still boring… until I turned 50 and watched the remake. (It’s now my favorite anime of all time!) If you’re wondering, Gundam never came to Canada. Why? I suppose it’s important to mention the difference between cartoons and anime.
The Differences between Cartoons and Anime
Cartoons in the North American standard are self-contained 30-minute stories. Each episode is not linked in a series from A to Z. So, if you watched episode 2, and then episode 6, you wouldn’t miss the overall story. The episode plot was completely solved in that 30-minute span. Sure, there were constant villains, but the storyline could have been endless. Also, these cartoons were never serialized in a full-length manga story like One Piece or Gundam. Therefore, when Yamato was played back in the day, few Canadians were enamored because of the length of the story. At least, this was the case in my opinion. I suppose the adults may have liked them? Gundam, and subsequently One Piece, would never hit mainstream cartoon watching because of their length and subsequent continuity.
Cartoons weren't the only influence on us Canadians
There were old black and white Kurosawa samurai films that my dad watched on occasion, which he loved at the time. He had a fascination with Asia that I never knew about until I got older. Those samurai films were all old and subtitled which was very unappealing. Back then, I didn’t care about swords, ninja, or foreign people in general; I was in love with fantasy literature, blonde-haired girls, and space stuff. Additionally, my dad had a novel called Shogun by James Clavell, which had been sitting on the coffee table for many years. I always knew about it as it was always in sight. It wasn’t until my later years that I would sit down and read it. Finally, my dad bought me a SEIKO watch from when he went on a business trip to Japan. Being young, at the time, I didn’t care for a watch; as time holds no meaning to a child, and the watch, although pretty, was sadly irrelevant. I suppose my dad also introduced me to Japan.
There was a special occasion that I remember very well. I had a case of the measles when I was around six years old and was confined to bed. My grandmother had to watch over me, and there was nothing on TV except an old subtitled episode of Godzilla. It was enjoyable, and as the years passed, I watched more of those movies, and my dad did too. I still like them now.
If you were wondering how this long story came about, the early morning snoring of my family woke me and reminded me of the Godzilla Minus One . Zero movie that I want to watch now on this New Years day.
And so ends the story
It wasn’t until I was 19 years of age when the next connection to Japan started to coalesce. I was introduced to a fortune teller who said I would live overseas in an Asian country and … Let’s leave that story for another day.
So comes the end of our tale. How my childhood was influenced in Canada by Japanese entertainment and how I never knew about it until much much later in life. I hope you found this entertaining. If so, please leave a like. It was a pleasure to reminisce about the past with you. I truly didn’t think about my father adding to my narrative until I began writing. I will need to talk to him once he recovers from a bout of COVID. Yes, I am worried.
As I just finished this article, the very terrible news came about the earthquake and tsunami up north. I pray people are safe. God Bless.
Discover more from Austin Worx
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.