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NOUNIFICATION

                                          February 24, 2011

In studying the ways of j-pop culture,
it becomes clear that there are odd
nouns all over the place, nouns invented    I would guess that this is
to cover every quirk of the subject.        an oddity of the Japanese
                                            language itself.

            Otaku,
            yaoi,                       SHAMELESS_DEVOTION
            fujoshi...

  There's a manga titled "Otomen",
  which makes it clear that "Otomen"       In retrospect, I see that
  are straight-guys who really like        one of the characters in
  doing girly things like sewing,          Bleach (the "Quincy")
  baking cakes, arranging flowers...       was an "Otoman" when he
                                           was introduced, displaying
                                           ninja-level knitting skills.

                                              Nami and Nyoko reviewed a manga
                                              called "Yakitate!! Ja-pan",
                                              where the main character
                                              is a guy who has "Solar-hands":
                                              he's a genius at bread baking.

  The reason this matters, I think,
  is that in English at least, if
  you have a noun for people who
  do something that changes the
  way you look at it.  A verb is
  something you might-or-might not           Consider the
  do, when you have a noun for people        case of "queer".
  who verb, then deciding whether to
  do it is a question of identity.
  You're no longer just doing something,
  you're making a committment to being       And as with the case of
  something.                                 "queer", there seems to be
                                             pattern of adopting
                                             "negative" labels and
                                             putting a positive spin on
                                             them.

                                                 SHAMELESS_DEVOTION

                                              (May 21, 2010)
 I noticed that there was a standard
 line of dialog: "You have to tell
 her how you feel!"  Nothing seems        Well... one thing that seems
 unusual about saying that, but it's      unusual about it is that it
 frequency of occurence started to        doesn't really work, does it?
 seem funny... clearly there's            In American life, at any rate,
 something going on there about the       you learn pretty quickly that
 famously "reserved" Japanese culture.    you're better off "playing it
                                          cool" more often than not, and
                                          trying to act casual about
                                          everything.
      Commentary on the disk for the
      film "Linda, Linda, Linda",
      reveals that there's a *name*
      for the act of "declaration of
      feelings".                              Is everything ritualized
                                              in Japanese culture?



     Dangerbaby points out that
     there's another line that
     comes up frequently:

       "I'll do my best!"

     She speculates that there's
     some connection between that
     and the tendency to wave
     the flag for a category noun.

     They're not half-hearted (cool?)
     about anything: if they're going
     to be a Fruit, they become one
     of the fruitiest fruits you've
     ever seen.



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