This article will spoil the first episode of Oshi no Ko. At first glance, Oshi no Ko appears to be another Japanese pop idol anime, but the story quickly bursts that assumption. Ai is a 16-year-old idol who was scouted by a tiny talent agency. So far, so normal. She’s pretty with a unique eye…
Why Should You Read Books?
Book reading is on the decline, at least in the US. According to Gallup (Jones, 2022), Americans read 3 fewer books in a year. The total percent of people who don’t read books held steady at 17%, but everyone is reading less, with the highest averaging around 10 books a year. The survey includes partial-reading…
Old Proverbs about Japanese Women
World War II marks a dramatic shift in Japanese history, equal in impact to the Meiji Restoration on the culture. The proverbs I will discuss trace deep into Japan’s cultural views of women and to the Confucian influence China had on Japanese culture. Women’s roles and freedom varied across the different eras of Japan, and…
Ryōnen Gensō, The Poet Who Disfigured Herself
Japan has a long history of literary and artistic women. If you look at the education of women, Japan’s history would resemble a sine curve. Some periods have widespread female education among the nobility and even among some peasant groups. Other periods neglected or limited female education. The most literary women cluster around the Heian…
What the Historical Silence of Japanese Women Says
By the title you may be expecting me to write about the patriarchy in history. You’re right to a degree. After all, the patriarchy has hurt women, but it has also hurt men too. What we have of history comes from those who worked within and often benefited from historically male-dominated power systems. However, little…
Animation is Hard: What You Should Know About the Anime Industry
Have you thought about how the anime you watch works? Animation results from the stickiness of our minds and vision. We take this stickiness for granted, but without it animation wouldn’t work. Animation happens when a series of images are shown to us fast enough to invoke this stickiness. If you flash these still images…