Thread by @lainasparetime

Okay, we've got a cool entry on the #LainaWatchesAnne front today!

SOMEHOW and honestly I don't know how because my adaptation choices have not gone in any order but "I want to talk about them" @fromankyra guessed correctly and we will be talking about the anime series today!

#LainaWatchesAnne Congratulations, you get a... whatever I promised in my tweet. Star sticker maybe?

#LainaWatchesAnne So, welcome to the Akage no An thread!

#LainaWatchesAnne Disclaimer before we start: I am REALLY not an expert on anime or, like, Japan or Japansese culture, and I'm not claiming to speak for anyone in anyway.

#LainaWatchesAnne I just want to talk about an adaptation I think is neat and some of the history behind it because I don't think it's super well-known for a lot of us. I've done some reading, but obviously that's not the same as a lived experience and I'm trying to claim it is.

#LainaWatchesAnne If I screw up, please call me out and I promise I'll be cool about it.

#LainaWatchesAnne My DMs are open if you don't want to be public. Or my email is on my blog!

#LainaWatchesAnne With that being said... so Anne is kind of a BIG deal in Japan?

I've talked about this very briefly in other threads, but it's really popular.

#LainaWatchesAnne Depending on what source you're looking at, the origin of Anne in Japan changes a bit.

The Washington Post, for instance, says "According to local legend, Montgomery's first Anne book -- she eventually wrote eight -- came to Japan via a Canadian teacher (cont)

#LainaWatchesAnne (cont) in a missionary school in the 1930s. When the teacher was expelled in 1939, she left a copy behind with her favorite student, who spent the war years lovingly translating it."

I think this is, uh, kind of racist.

#LainaWatchesAnne This is also kind of a common narrative in certain places but like. It's really weird to call it a "local legend" when we know the peoples' names and have their like writing and stuff?

So I'll be going with the other sources that actually use FACTS.

#LainaWatchesAnne (I'm just being incredibly salty to the Washington Post now.)

#LainaWatchesAnne So here's the truth from what I've found.

A missionary teacher named Loretta L. Shaw went to Japan to teach at the Bishop Poole Girls' School in Osaka. Apparently she finished her learning Japanese course in one year instead of the usual two. Sound familiar?

#LainaWatchesAnne It is said that the school was very successful educating girls in a time when education FOR girls was considered relatively unimportant. She's quoted as saying the "unfair idea of lower standard for girls" was "unwise and unmoral".

#LainaWatchesAnne Shaw said she wished "to bring greater friendship and greater education between the people of her own country and that of her adopted country."

(Please note the quotes in this section as these are not my opinions.)

#LainaWatchesAnne She also brought a lot of things home from Japan and donated them to them to The New Brunswick Museum, like books, dolls, coins, photographs, etc, which I could see being really education and humanizing to people in 1924.

#LainaWatchesAnne HOWEVER take all this with a heavy grain of White Savior Salt, because, you know, missionary. She also claimed female missionary teachers were why Japanese women discovered feminism. Because women of colour wouldn't know their worth without white women.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anyways, in 1932 Shaw was appointed head of the department for womens' and childrens' lit at an organization called the Christian Literature Society of Japan. (I promise this will be relevant later.)

#LainaWatchesAnne They, and she, apparently thought Japan was being flooded with European and Amerian trash, so they published "good wholesome" works and distributed Christian magazines.

Please refer back to my "heavy grain of White Savior Salt" line.

#LainaWatchesAnne Now let's introduce Muraoka Hanako! She's pretty cool herself. She was the first daughter of 8 siblings and her father thought it important she be educated so she was transferred to the Toyo Eiwa Mission School for Girls as a scholarship student.

#LainaWatchesAnne Pros: She studied many things beyond what she would have been able to only going to school to the "compulsoy level". Cons: Sounds like there was probably a lot of compulsory Christianity.

Not sure what side learning about Canada fall on?

#LainaWatchesAnne Muraoka published her first book in 1917, at the age of 24, which is actually a year before Anne of Green Gables was published.

VERY interestingly, it's called Rohen, or "Ingleside" in English. It consists of 12 translated short stories and 1 original story.

#LainaWatchesAnne Two of the translated stories are set in Canada.

Jumping ahead in the AOGG series, we find "Anne of Ingleside" and "Rilla of Ingleside". Ingleside is a town in Ontario and it's just a coincidence as far as I know, but it's a cool one.

#LainaWatchesAnne Muraoka began to work for the publisher that became known as *drumroll please* the Christian Literature Society of Japan as a translator.

Remember that?

#LainaWatchesAnne She also taught for 5 years, was the primary breadwinner after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 destroyed her husband's printing company, and hosted a radio news show for children so popula she became known as "Rajio no Obasan" or "Aunty Radio".

#LainaWatchesAnne When WWII began, however, she resigned as she both did not want to call Canadians enemies as she considered many to be dear friends, and found the war news too hostile too read to children.

#LainaWatchesAnne So! At this point, we've got two people working at the publisher CLSJ! Now I don't have a ton of sources on this one because I don't have Muraoka's memoirs or anything, but it seems like they both worked as editors, and worked together.

#LainaWatchesAnne "Two adults working at a publisher that publishes translated literature" is a BIT of a different story than "A teacher giving a student a book", isn't it?

YEAH I'M LOOKING AT YOU WASHINGTON POST WITH YOUR WEIRD "LOCAL LEGEND" THING.

#LainaWatchesAnne No one really seems to be sure of exactly when this next bit happened. Muraoka says 1939 in an essay, but some sources say Shaw had left Japan in June 1936. She died in 1940 so it was definitely before then, and I suspect by a while because she was pretty ill.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anyways, Shaw gave a copy of Anne to Muraoka as a token of friendship. She hoped Muraoka would translate and publish it.

#LainaWatchesAnne There's a lot of romanticizing of the translation process by white people, honestly, but there's no doubt she was doing a very brave thing translating it. English was forbidden in Japan and she risked being arrested.

#LainaWatchesAnne She said she would take her manuscripts into air-raid shelters with her. This one website calls it "an oath of friendship to her Canadian friends who were expelled from Japan at the outbreak of World War II."

#LainaWatchesAnne I don't want to, like, gloss over any problematic elements here because some sources get really weird about the whole thing, but I think that's a pretty cool story regardless.

#LainaWatchesAnne And so, Anne of Green Gables, known as Akage no An (Red-haired Anne) was published in Japan in 1952!

Now, why did a random Canadian book get so popular? Well, this will take a minute to talk about.

#LainaWatchesAnne So what I've read is that Japanese childrens' books during the war were... not super fun. Possibly they could even be called borderline propoganda?

#LainaWatchesAnne There's a bunch of stuff here I'm not educated enough to explain without sounding real ignorant, but apparently Douglas MacArthur, like the US war dude, "encouraged" the translation of American/Western juvenile literature to... boost morale, essentially?

#LainaWatchesAnne Honestly it's kind of a weird idea, but I guess the idea was to publish books that would give hope to "young readers in Japan as they rebuilt their devastated nation".

#LainaWatchesAnne MacArthur particularly suggested the Little House on the Prairie books which, you know. "Isn't America GRAND and totally not racist" is a whole DIFFERENT form of propoganda, at least, I guess???

#LainaWatchesAnne Apparently a lot of fantasy and adventure books did very well, but the genre known as "romance" or "domestic fiction" and books with female protagonists were both pretty scant.

#LainaWatchesAnne The domestic Japanese publishing industry was apparently not so quick to catch up to the new vibes of the books people wanted so kids were way more into manga, magazines, and comics along with anime rising even more in popularity.

#LainaWatchesAnne So, translations already have a bit of a leg up at this time. But why did Anne specifically connect so much?

#LainaWatchesAnne Well, there's really no one answer. But here are some things I've read.

Anne is, obviously, an orphan. WWII obviously left a lot of orprhans in its path. Obviously many children sadly related to her situation.

#LainaWatchesAnne Other reasons suggested are Anne's love of nature. Some say it appealed to "an increasingly crowded, urban nation".

#LainaWatchesAnne Montgomery's granddaughter, Kate MacDonald Butler, suggested one factor may be that Montgomery's "way of describing nature is also very similar to traditional Japanese texts", her words, not mine, I can't neither confirm nor debunk this.

#LainaWatchesAnne Muraoka Eri, a granddaughter of Muraoka Hanaka, suggests one reason may be that it "depicts a feature in human society that never changes over 100 years - to coexist while showing compassion to one another."

#LainaWatchesAnne One article quotes Yoshihara Yukari who says some of the appeal is that the world of AoGG is very kawaii, and that the puffed sleeve and tea party aesthetic is all that and a bag of chips, basically. And tbh I can see that being a draw myself.

#LainaWatchesAnne I mean, I can't deny I love a puffed sleeve myself.

Also, from what I know, the Lolita fashion subculture, especially classic Lolita, draws a lot of inspiration from the Victorian era (and Rococo which isn't relevant but I just like saying Rococo).

#LainaWatchesAnne I am really not the person to say one way or the other how much the rising popularity of those fashion elements coincided or influence Anne's popularity, but I will point out it got very popular in the 80s, so, you know. Aesthetic or something.

#LainaWatchesAnne Anne herself is also obviously a thing people talked about in articles I read. People liked that she talks a lot, that she's compassionate. They mention that she chose to give up her schooling to care for Marilla, while still being independent.

#LainaWatchesAnne A lot of people, too, specifically tlk about Anne relating to gender and gender roles. Yoshihara says she uses the book as a gateway to talk about gender in her classes.

#LainaWatchesAnne She says, "We do not usually teach kids about how gender is related to our day to day issues, education or fashion or how we behave."

And she's not the only one - Kate Macdonald Butler also suggests Anne was a "sort of freedom story for a woman to read".

#LainaWatchesAnne A 1994 academic study found young Japanese women would reread the book before applying for jobs to "emulate her courage and candor". How cool is that???

#LainaWatchesAnne One article quotes Adilman Toshiko saying that "high spirits and opinions" were frowned upon in girls in 1940s Japanese society and that was very similar to Anne's Victorian era one. Generally, Anne's free spirited nature is remarked upon often.

#LainaWatchesAnne I worry this is beginning to sound a bit condescending - "why did people like a book" sounds like a silly question. After all, why does anyone like Anne of Green Gables? Why do I?

#LainaWatchesAnne So I think I need to talk more about just HOW popular Anne became in Japan. (It may be somewhat less so now - I had trouble finding information about its current popularity.)

#LainaWatchesAnne Y'ALL THERE WAS A THEME PARK.

It's considered semi-abandoned now, joining the Flintstones theme park turned bird sanctuary in closed theme parks I'd visit in a heartbeat.

#LainaWatchesAnne ("Anne of Green Gables" also joins the list of my favourite theme park themes along with the cheese theme park in South Korea and any and all slightly sketchy Christmas/Santa themed theme parks.)

(I may die if I ever go to the cheese theme park.)

#LainaWatchesAnne The Anne theme park opened in 1993, went bankrupt in 1997, and was adopted by the city and turned into a municipal park... municipal theme park? Municipal theme park.

#LainaWatchesAnne There's an EXACT REPLICA of Green Gables! And a tiny village! They crushed bricks to make the red roads! They built the pond, the Lake of Shining Waters! There was a TRAIN. They even hired Canadian actors to play Anne and Diana.

#LainaWatchesAnne This place was sick. It's called Canadian World and I love it so much. Like, look at this

#LainaWatchesAnne The Anne musical had HUGE success in Japan, along with a very successful Japanese-language version that was still touring pre-COVID.

#LainaWatchesAnne In Okayamo, there's an Anne of Green Gables School of Nursing. And it's not a joke - it's a very well-regarded school.

#LainaWatchesAnne To quote Terry Dawes, a documentary filmmaker, "They're here to live up to a standard, a standard that has been set very high by the example of Anne herself" - and the article I'm quoting was written in 2013.

#LainaWatchesAnne So, Cavendish, PEI is where the Green Gables Heritage Place is located and that's where you go to visit Green Gables, right? They get probably between 150-200,000 visitors a year, and at least 10k of them are Japanese tourists.

#LainaWatchesAnne The New York Times claims Anne of Green Gables is taught in school in Canada, but I don't think that's very common at all. However, several sources I've seen have said it's required reading in many Japanese public schools and in, like, textbooks!

#LainaWatchesAnne It truly was a cultural phenomenom, as much if not more than it is in Canada, and I think it's important to understand that.

#LainaWatchesAnne "Okay, but get to the point", I hear you all saying. I promise I am!

One of the reasons Anne has stayed in the public eye in Japan is the 1979 anime, also called Akage no An.

#LainaWatchesAnne My sources say tons of people grew up watching it as it aired basically constantly on Japanese TV stations. People *really* like it.

And we're going to talk about that NEXT TIME.

#LainaWatchesAnne I knoooow it's kind of a letdown to not even GET to the anime, but I started this thread almost 3 hours ago! So I'm going to wrap it up here and we'll continue to talk about it on Thursday.

#LainaWatchesAnne If you liked this thread, yay! I worked really hard on it - I even got a paper from a university library to use as a source for it. So please, please RT it so other people can find and read it.

#LainaWatchesAnne And if you're capable, I would not say no to having something dropped into the tip jar to help with, you know, bills and stuff ko-fi.com/A0602GN

#LainaWatchesAnne This has actually been my favourite adaptation thread to write so far because I found it so interesting, and I hope you've enjoyed it too.