Anne Frank’s diary in Japan
It’s extremely popular, but not for the reasons you might imagine:
The popularity has little to do with interest in Judaism, let alone with the Holocaust. It is Anne’s personal story that draws most readers in, particularly young female readers. The diary’s rich description of teenage emotions resonates unusually strongly with 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds in Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima””despite the wholly dissimilar circumstances of their lives.
“More than being Anne Frank the Holocaust victim she’s Anne Frank the teenager here,” said Makiko Takemoto, a Japanese scholar who specializes in modern German history. “The fact that Anne was killed as a result of the Holocaust is rather forgotten.”
“Anne Frank is not even Anne Frank for most people,” said Ran Zwigenberg, an Asian-studies specialist at Penn State University who has written about Japanese perceptions of the Holocaust. “She’s just ”˜Anne,’ a figure of femininity and an early teenager, and everybody learns about her very private non-Holocaust-related life.”
Zwigenberg pointed out that the diary was one of the first books in Japan to talk openly about menstruation. “Drawing on this image, a Japanese feminine-hygiene company actually made a tampon called Anne Tampon, and ”˜Anne’s day’ became a euphemism for a woman’s period.”
You never know how something will be received in a different culture. For the Japanese, the historical aspects of the diary seem to have virtually no meaning. But the universal aspects—the story of a teenage girl as told in her own words—seem to resonate nevertheless.
“You never know how something will be received in a different culture. ”
That is exactly how I felt while reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi.
Beyond the turmoil in Iran – It has an entirely different take on “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov.
Another variation on this theme is a movie called “Freedom Writers.” A young first year high school English teacher (Hilary Swank) has trouble connecting with her minority, East LA students. They complain that she can’t possibly understand them or their lives, because she is a pretty, white, upper middle class woman.
She responds, that she thinks she does understand them because she can read, and she’s read “The Diary of Anne Frank.” She tells them that Anne had it worse than they do.
After studying and discussing the book in great detail, they buy a plane ticket for the woman who helped hide Anne Frank, to come a speak to the class.
They do get into the Holocaust but growing up an outcast in one’s own country is the major theme. Not exactly the Japanese interest, though I wonder if the women there feel a little less than liberated.
This is intriguing because if you’re familiar with Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio, a vast majority of their protagonists are girls – around Anne’s age even. It’s sort of hard to describe, but if you’re familiar with what I’m talking about you might know where I’m getting at. It’s how certain aspects of Japanese culture view young girls.
I have read that Anne of Green Gables is also hugely popular in Japan.
I can’t get the image of the Chinese guy at Tiananmen standing up the tank out of my mind,
The Japanese — who do not bear or raise children at this point — like to imagine themselves as 13 year old girls. Yes, often in school uniforms. It’s both innocent and sexy, and somehow whatever’s in the minds of such girls seems infinitely wise.
Witness such films as Suicide Girls, or Noriko’s Dinner Table, or the one in which an older man sets up an online date with a beautiful young woman and then is tortured and maimed by her.
I remember when I was assigned to review two novels by the tremendously popular Banana Yoshimoto, back when I was writing for the L.A. Times.
There are many more examples of this syndrome than the few I here mention, but it’s too sad to pursue.
Not so concerned with what the Japanese have done with Ann Frank. Cross-cultural (or even intra-cultural) misreading/misprision are to be expected (though no, not all readings are equally legitimate—though I would prefer not to open that can of worms).
Much more egregious is what the European Left have done with her, as anyone who has visited Ann Frank House in Amsterdam could not fail to have noticed.
(But then it takes a special kind of talent—not confined to Europeans, certainly—to exploit the destruction of an individual as the jumping off point for the slandering of her people.)
And BTW, yes, “Reading Lolita in Teheran” is an extraordinary book.