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Haruhi in Usa: a Case Study of a Japanese Anime in the United States

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Haruhi in Usa: a Case Study of a Japanese Anime in the United States HARUHI IN USA: A CASE STUDY OF A JAPANESE ANIME IN THE UNITED STATES A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Ryotaro Mihara August 2009 © 2009 Ryotaro Mihara ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Although it has been more than a decade since Japanese anime became a popular topic of conversation when discussing Japan, both within the United States and in other countries as well, few studies have empirically investigated how, and by whom, anime has been treated and consumed outside of Japan. This research thus tries to provide one possible answer to the following set of questions: What is the empirical transnationality of anime? How and by whom is anime made transnational? How is anime transnationally localized/consumed? In order to answer the questions, I investigated the trans-pacific licensing, localizing, and consuming process of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Haruhi) from Japan to the United States by conducting fieldwork in the United States’ agencies which localized Haruhi as well as U.S. anime and Haruhi fans. The central focus of this research is the ethnography of agencies surrounding Haruhi in the United States and Japan. I assume that these agencies form a community with a distinctive culture and principles of behaviors and practices in the handling of the Haruhi anime texts. The research findings to the above questions could be briefly summarized as follows. The worldview, characters, and settings of Haruhi (i.e. a fictious world of Haruhi which is embodied and described through its anime episodes and other related products) “reduces” and “diffuses” as it is transferred on the official business track from the producers in Japan to the localizers in the United States (i.e. considerable number of Haruhi-related products are not licensed by Japan and therefore are not officially available in the United States; also, many clues and elements embedded in the anime, which suggest the creators’ intentions, were not translated in the U.S. version of Haruhi anime, etc.) but it is considerably supplemented on the unofficial (and illegal) track of fan activities mainly taking place on the Internet (i.e. the considerable amount of the contents of the non-licensed Haruhi products are voluntarily translated into English by Haruhi fans and uploaded on websites, considerable amount of un-translated clues and elements are explained on the English- based Haruhi fansites, etc.). This further suggests that the base-structure of the anime business is still weak and immature in the United States and that the Internet functions as the supplemental infrastructure of the trans-pacific anime process from Japan to the United States. The worldview of Haruhi is introduced reductively and diffusively to the United States because there are insufficient platforms for the Haruhi-related products to be transplanted to the United States and because there are insufficient capacities for the U.S. Haruhi localizers to pick up and translate all the clues and elements in the original Haruhi anime. In addition to the on-line fan activities that aim to supplement the missing parts of the worldview of Haruhi, the localizers in the United States also depend on the Internet when promoting Haruhi business in the United States, both in the B to C phase (such as Haruhi promotion in the United States which was conducted almost exclusively on the Internet) and the B to B phase (such as the prospective U.S. distributors’ watching Haruhi anime on Youtube after its air in Japan and before offering the U.S. distribution contract to the rights holders in Japan). Although these findings from the case study of one anime in one country cannot be generalized to all anime in all countries, I believe it reveals the essence of the transnationality of anime, since the basic localizing processes of anime are more or less the same in most anime in most countries. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ryotaro MIHARA is an official of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) of Japanese government. After graduating The University of Tokyo in 2003 (BA in Anthropology), he entered METI and was in charge of WTO negotiations (2003 to 2005) and Intellectual Property Acts amendments (2005 to 2007). Being selected by the Japanese government for full financial support for studying abroad for graduate degree (Japanese Government Long-Term Fellowship Program), he has been studying in Cornell University Graduate School (Anthropology) since 2007, and also been a visiting scholar at the Department of Comparative Media Studies (CMS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2008 to 2009. iii to the MIHARA Family: my parents, Seiichi and Shizuko Mihara, and my sister, Asako Mihara iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I first would like to express my appreciation to my employer, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), the Japanese government, and ultimately, the Japanese nation and people for giving me full financial support through the Japanese Government Long-Term Fellowship Program, to pursue this research. It is amazing that they maintain such a magnanimous program, even in the current worldwide recession era. This program grants awarded government officials an opportunity to study whatever topics they want to, without any restrictions, even though the topics are not directly related to their government works. The flexibility of the program enabled me to complete this anthropological research whose discipline and topic are indeed unrelated to the realm of public policy. I believe, however, such a deep- pocketed program will surely enhance diversity of the talents of government officials and will thus enforce the competitive edge of the government and the Japanese nation. The main body of this research is based on fieldwork and interviews I conducted in Los Angeles area during the summer of 2008 on the status quo of an anime, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (hereinafter called Haruhi), in the United States. I would like to thank the following U.S. anime companies which are involved in the Haruhi business in the United States for allowing me to do the fieldwork on their working sites: Kadokawa Pictures USA, Bandai Entertainment, and Bang Zoom! Entertainment. I would especially like to thank to the representatives who took their time for my interview. Also, I appreciate even the suggestions not directly related to my research from Aniplex of America, Broccoli International USA, Geneon Entertainment USA, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) Los Angeles Center, Kinokuniya Bookstores, Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), and WOWMAX Media. I am also immensely grateful to the members of the Cornell v Japanese Animation Society (CJAS), especially those who took the time to answer my questions, and to their transnational anime otaku friendship. This work could not have been done successfully without the thoughtful comments and suggestions from my research committee and the outstanding scholars I met during the project. I am deeply grateful to my research committee members, Hirokazu Miyazaki, Annelise Riles, and Ian Condry for their helpful, on-target, and sometimes rigorous comments and suggestions on my thesis manuscript. Their advice never missed the point and always directly contributed to improve my arguments, making me wonder why they always knew so precisely where I was stuck and how to get out. Since it is always one of the most difficult matters for graduate students to find “good” advisors, I believe I was extremely lucky to find the exact ones whose expertise perfectly matched the topics I intended to cope with. I thank Masataka Yoshikawa of Hakuhōdō Institute of Life and Living (HILL) for introducing me to Ian Condry who is outside the Cornell faculty but whose area of specialty coincides with my research field. I would also like to thank Takeshi Matsui of Hitotsubashi University and Motohiro Tsuchiya of Keiō University for voluntarily reading the drafts and giving me insightful comments and suggestions as my informal advisors on the “unofficial track.” I also thank Kati Lustyik of Ithaca College and Eve Zimmerman of Wellesley College for giving me the opportunities to present my research arguments to their students and to receive provocative feedback from them. Lastly, I would like to give my biggest thanks to my parents, Seiichi and Shizuko Mihara, and my sister Asako Mihara for their “trans-pacific” support via phone calls and Japanese food care packages while I pursued my research. The United States of America has special meaning for this “Mihara family.” We once stayed in this country about two and a half decades ago. The family head, Seiichi Mihara, my father, was working for an automobile company – within the leading auto industry of vi Japan – and was transferred to a U.S. branch in Los Angeles. The memory of the days we spent in the United States, whose landscape and culture was totally different and mainly fresh and enjoyable for us, still largely contributes to band us together as a family. And now, I am “back” in the United States and am investigating Japan’s other potential leading industry, anime. I believe this research will contribute to the restoration of the anime industry, making it the true “leading industry” of Japan in our generation. I believe it as my “duty” to continue in the footsteps of my father’s generation which gave us such an “abundant life.” vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch .................................................................................................
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