Anne of G.G. in Japan
Leah M. Oppenheim
I just read in the New York Times magazine that someone in Japan is
building developments of houses modeled after the "Green Gables" house (in
Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada). Apparently Anne is wildly
popular in Japan.
Wow. I would rather live in Emily Starr's New Moon. But most of all, I
would like to live in a country where anne of Green Gables, and not the
Babysitter's Club, is a commercial success.
Maybe I'll pack up and go to Japan.
Leah
*********************************************************************
He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he still hoped, probably, in a butterfly's unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting. . .
--Harold Brodkey, "The State of Grace"
Derek Janssen
Leah M. Oppenheim wrote:
>
> I just read in the New York Times magazine that someone in Japan is
> building developments of houses modeled after the "Green Gables" house (in
> Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada). Apparently Anne is wildly
> popular in Japan.
>
> Wow. I would rather live in Emily Starr's New Moon. But most of all, I
> would like to live in a country where anne of Green Gables, and not the
> Babysitter's Club, is a commercial success.
>
> Maybe I'll pack up and go to Japan.
Although you realize, it'd also be a country where Sailor Moon IS
popular... ; )
Derek Janssen
dja...@ultarnet.com
BoxHill
>I just read in the New York Times magazine that someone in Japan is
>building developments of houses modeled after the "Green Gables" house (in
>Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada). Apparently Anne is wildly
>popular in Japan.
According to what I read while visiting PEI a few years ago, many Japanese
couples come to PEI to be married at Green Gables! There were a LOT of Japanese
tourists there......
Janet
//Dear Artemesia! Poetry's a snare:
//Bedlam has many Mansions: have a care:
//Your Muse diverts you, makes the Reader sad:
//You think your self inspir'd; He thinks you mad.
D. Gascoyne
Leah M. Oppenheim wrote:
>
> I just read in the New York Times magazine that someone in Japan is
> building developments of houses modeled after the "Green Gables" house (in
> Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada). Apparently Anne is wildly
> popular in Japan.
>
It's true! I live on the other side of the country from P.E.I., and
Victoria gift shops do quite good business with Japanese tourists for AGG
dolls, tea towels, etc. etc. (including a revolting red braids thing that
goes under a straw hat). They also really like Moomins in Japan. I
briefly did a stint as an E.S.L. teacher, and one of my students had a
Moomintroll doll strapped to her backpack as a kind of mascot. Boy! did
I covet that doll ...
Do you (in the U.S.) get the new C.B.C. series of _Emily of New Moon_?
It's quite good, though some people have complained that it's not
faithful enough to the book(s). I never read the New Moons and am
beginning to think I may have missed something.
- Debbie
Meredith Dixon
>Wow. I would rather live in Emily Starr's New Moon.
I'd rather live at Silver Bush. Before it burned down, of course.
Meredith Dixon
dix...@access.mountain.net
BOOKWORMJJ
Meredith wrote:
<I'd rather live at Silver Bush. Before it burned down, of course.>
You do relize if you lived in the house before it burned down your house would
have burned down? (Sorry, just like to be a smart Alic.)
BookWormJJ
Sandy Drobic
When on 01.05.98 I read a letter from boxhill
about: "Re: Anne of G.G. in Japan",
I decided to do war and invoked my tribal gods with:
b> >I just read in the New York Times magazine that someone in Japan is
b> >building developments of houses modeled after the "Green Gables" house (in
b> >Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada). Apparently Anne is wildly
b> >popular in Japan.
b>
b> According to what I read while visiting PEI a few years ago, many Japanese
b> couples come to PEI to be married at Green Gables! There were a LOT of
b> Japanese tourists there......
b> Janet
Here's an Article about Anne (spelled with an E) in Japan.
Japanne
The Japanese fascination with the red-haired orphan is complex and
illuminating
By Judy Stoffman Toronto Star Publishing Reporter
TOKYO - ``If you asked a Japanese person who are the three most famous
Canadians, he will say Pierre Trudeau, Ben Johnson and Anne Shirley,''
says Masashi Matsumoto, a writer in his 30s.
Anne Shirley was born 90 years ago in a children's story written by
Lucy Maud Montgomery, and has been growing ever since. Nowhere more so
than in Japan.
I recently spent two weeks in Japan meeting Anne's devotees,
popularizers and scholars in an attempt to understand how an
old-fashioned Canadian children's story has managed to travel so far in
time and space.
Anne is also popular in Scandinavia and Poland but the Japanese outdo
everyone in their enthusiasm not only for Anne Of Green Gables but for
the entire sequence of eight books tracing Anne Shirley's life through
her teaching career in Avonlea and Summerside, marriage to Dr. Gilbert
Blythe, and the birth of her six children (including a set of twins),
up to the death of her gifted son Walter in World War I.
Kinokuniya, Japan's largest Internet bookseller, lists 189 Anne-related
Japanese titles in print, including various versions of the novels
themselves about the fictional orphan girl sent by mistake to the
elderly Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.
But the Japanese Akage no An, meaning Anne of Red Hair, and the Anne
generations of Canadian girls have grown up with are not the same.
Montgomery's works do not appear on school or college curricula in
Canada. But they do in Japan, where literature, in the Confucian
tradition carried over from China, exists to inculcate morality.
Prof. Yoshiko Akamatsu teaches English at Notre Dame Seishin women's
college in Okayama. She uses a different Montgomery novel as her text
each year. At the moment her class studies Rilla Of Ingleside, the last
of the An books.
``The books give the reader hope, to keep trying; if you have dreams,
they may be fulfilled. It is good, helpful literature for study,'' says
Akamatsu. An is read in Japan by men as well as women, and by adults as
well as 10-year-olds. Many others who may not have read the books know
the character from comics, films, TV shows and ``An atmosphere''
magazines like Moe, which often publish pictorial spreads illustrating
the tale.
Matsumoto edited a book of essays three years ago titled After All, I
Still Like An in which more than two dozen celebrities describe the
role the book played in their lives. In contrast, when author Arlene
Perly Rae asked some well-known Canadians what children's books
influenced them - she compiled the results into Everybody's Favourites
- no one mentioned Anne Of Green Gables.
Under the influence of Montgomery's Anne Of Green Gables, Matsumoto
converted to Christianity. (Only 1 per cent of Japanese are
Christians.)
Sempei Sato, whose cartoon strip satirizing the typical sararyman
(office worker) appears in a host of Japanese papers and magazines,
first read An 20 years ago when he was in his 40s. ``The book inspired
me to be more daring and to work harder,'' he says.
Tall, willowy and articulate, Fumi Dan is one of Japan's most
celebrated actresses. Since her childhood, she has read the An books
more than 100 times and has modeled her perky personality on her
heroine.
``When my mother told me not to talk so much I answered her the same
way An answered Marilla: If you knew all the things in my head that I
restrain myself from saying, you would not think I talk too much.''
At 39, Fumi Dan is still single because, she admits, she has not found
her Gilbert.
`The way An is read in the East is not your way'
Minol Saitoh
A fan club member
``The way An is read in the East is not your way,'' a young man named
Minol Saitoh explained, as we ate apple pie with members of the biggest
An fan club, the Buttercups. ``We are curious what kind of cookies she
ate, what she wore - Japanese adore the lifestyle of Western culture
because we feel that Western style is the goal to achieve.''
Bakeries are now widespread in Tokyo but Japanese homes have no ovens
and girls who can bake cakes in their own kitchens fill Japanese
readers with wonder.
Formed in 1983, the Buttercups currently number 137, but many hundreds
have joined and left over the years. At a tea party in Tokyo, I met
Buttercups ranging in age from 21 to 55. All spoke of An as of a
personal friend whose example encourages them when life seems
difficult.
Another An fan club named Lupins meets in the Osaka area, founded by
Aoi Nozawa, an An promoter who has assumed the role of a goodwill
ambassador for P.E.I.
``When I first read An, I was so timid I was afraid to speak. She
helped me to change,'' Nozawa says.
Four years ago, when Nozawa organized a promotion of P.E.I crafts and
other products at Hankyu department store, she persuaded a local
confectioner to make a scale model of Green Gables in sugar. She has
since donated it to a P.E.I museum.
An fans raised $180,000 to help rebuild the Green Gables house after a
fire gutted it last June.
Canadian literary scholars at Guelph University, where Montgomery's
papers are kept, argue that Montgomery encoded a critique of
patriarchal society in her books. Anne is a model, they say, of female
self-respect and assertiveness, a feminist precursor. But this reading
is rejected in Japan.
When I asked the cartoonist Yumiko Igarashi, creator of a five-part
``manga'' comic covering Anne Of Green Gables, Anne Of Avonlea and Anne
Of The Island, if she thought An was a feminist she looked puzzled.
``A feminist? I don't think so,'' Igarashi said. ``That gives the
impression that she is self-centred. In Japan, when you say `He is a
feminist,' it means he is kind to ladies. `She is a feminist' means she
cares only for herself.''
Sumiko Yokokawa, professor of children's literature at Mimasaka Women's
College in Osaka, has published a book titled The Challenge Of Akage
no An. She is one of the most sophisticated critics of An in Japan.
``Some readers think An is very progressive and independent; she wants
to have a job, be a teacher. But I don't think so,'' she told me. ``I
am very interested in her motivation - why she wants to be excellent at
school. It's not for herself, but to please Matthew and Marilla, to
make them proud of her and maintain contact with Gilbert Blythe. She
does not have her own ambition. So I don't think it's a feminist
book.''
Akage no An first appeared in Japanese translation in 1952, 10 years
after Montgomery's death, but to understand how she became so deeply
embedded in Japanese popular culture, one must go back to the Meiji
period in the late 19th century. Japan, conscious of how far behind it
had fallen during its centuries of isolation under the shogunate,
became enamoured of all things Western. King Meiji, who today is
revered as a god, opened the door to Westerners, including the first
Protestant missionaries.
Hanako Muraoka, who became An's translator, was a Christian who learned
English at the Toyo Eiwa girl's school, established by Methodist
missionaries from Canada in 1894, a year after Muraoka was born, and
still in existence.
Muraoka herself wrote haiku poems and stories for girls; many of the
classics of Western literature for young adults including The Prince
And The Pauper, The Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, Little Women
and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn arrived in Japan via her pen.
Anne Of Green Gables was her favourite. A Canadian missionary friend,
Loretta Shaw, gave her a copy as a parting gift when Shaw was forced
to leave Japan on the eve of World War II. Muraoka was delighted to
discover the heroine had an education much like the one she received at
Toyo Eiwa, where Canadian textbooks were used and the students wrote
on slates.
``My grandmother worked on An throughout the war and whenever the air
raid siren sounded she took the manuscript, tied in a silk scarf, with
her to the shelter,'' says Mei Muraoka, who lives with her sister Rei
and her parents in the old Muraoka home on the outskirts of Tokyo.
``It was dangerous because anyone caught with foreign literature was
suspect.''
Mei and Rei showed me around their grandmother's booklined study, now a
museum.
After the war, when the shattered publishing industry was
re-established, Muraoka's lively and literate manuscript was ready.
Anne Of Red Hair was an immediate hit, in part because there's almost
no realistic Japanese children's literature, particularly for girls. A
female in traditional children's stories usually turns out to be a
ghost or a malevolent spirit.
Then, too, An fits perfectly into the Japanese value system, which
prizes filial duty. She fits the paradigm of Momo-taro, the Peach Boy,
hero of a tradition tale in which a boy springs from a peach, is
raised by an old couple, and ends up slaying a monster and bringing
back a treasure to his adoptive parents.
The novel appeared on the list of books recommended by the ministry of
health and welfare Anne wins the Avery scholarship - her treasure -
but then gives it up to stay with the ailing Marilla, just as any good
Japanese daughter would.
Extracts from the book made their way into school readers and the
novel appeared on the annual list of books recommended by the ministry
of health and welfare, which carries weight with librarians and
educators. In 1979, Japan's top animation artist Hayao Miyazaki
created an animated An TV series which ran every Sunday evening for a
year. It raised the An craze to a new high.
Tokyo librarian Hitomi Ando has has read the entire works of Lucy Maud
Montgomery and has visited P.E.I. annually since 1989. ``It is my
spiritual home,'' she says.
On one of his trips to P.E.I., Matsumoto hired a horse and buggy to go
from Bright River railway station to ``Green Gables'' (modelled on the
home of Montgomery's Campbell cousins) so that he might calculate how
long it took Matthew to drive the distance when he met Anne.
That Matthew never existed is lost on most Japanese.
Matsumoto has not only visited P.E.I. four times, but travelled to
Prince Albert, Sask., where the motherless young Montgomery lived for
a year with her father and his second wife before returning to the
home of the repressive grandparents who raised her. He belongs to the
Japan-Prince Edward Island Society, which promotes travel to the
island.
He also went to Dalhousie University, where Montgomery studied for a
year, and made a pilgrimage to Norval and to Leaksdale, Ont., where
she settled with her husband the Rev. Ewan Macdonald, a Presbyterian
minister, in 1911.
``I interviewed women who she taught in Sunday school,'' he says.
``They were very old.''
An is more than a fictional character; she's an engine of commerce.
You can sip tea at An's Cafe in Tokyo and buy puff-sleeved dresses at
the An's Room boutique.
In Chiba-ken, An's Flower House will sell you a bouquet; in Nagano,
you can stay at several An guest houses; in Osaka, go to the An
Shirley Cookie Store or the Green Gables gift shop; and learn English
at An's Academy in Kyushu or by reading Anne's World magazine.
In Okayama, the School Of Green Gables nurses' training institute is
dedicated to turning out cheerful, helpful graduates like Anne. The
halls are decorated with photos of P.E.I.'s meadows and shores and
students travel to Charlottetown for part of their training.
Not everything has been a success. Ashibetsu Canadian World, a theme
park on the island of Hokkaido that was a recreation of P.E.I.,
opened in 1990. But the Sapporo beer company which built it has
recently sold the money-losing venture - its remote location proved
an obstacle - to the city of Ashibetsu, which has closed it down
until further notice. The newspapers joked that perhaps Red-Haired An
should be called An in the Red.
But last year, Atlantic Canada Home - a joint venture of 36 Atlantic
building supply companies - began marketing Victorian-style houses
in Japan resembling Green Gables.
For the Japanese, Anne is not a girl of the late Victorian period,
but their contemporary.
The Japanese are torn between their desire for Western-style
me-first individualism and their traditional values of community and
respect for elders. This struggle, so well expressed in the recent
Japanese film Shall We Dance?, is the key to the Japanese psyche.
Anne, marked as a unique individual by her red hair and her soaring
imagination, is ultimately enfolded into her family and community.
Her individuality never rends the social fabric. It is safe.
The reassuring message that you can have it both ways may be the key
to the book's immense popularity.
_____ _
/ ____| | |
| (___ __ _ _ __ __| |_ _
\___ \ / _` | '_ \ / _` | | | |
____) | (_| | | | | (_| | |_| |
Gruss, |_____/ \__,_|_| |_|\__,_|\__, |@TINDRUM.tng.oche.de
__/ |
|___/
--
GAU: Groesster anzunehmender UMfall (FDP-Generalsekretaer zum
Gruenen-Sonderparteitag in Juechen am 17.01.1998)
Amy Garber
In article <354fe842...@news.cyberplanet.net>,
dix...@access.mountain.net says...
>I'd rather live at Silver Bush. Before it burned down, of course.
Is there a sequel to "Pat of Silver Bush?" I never knew the house
burned down!
Did Marigold's house in "Magic for Marigold" have a name? Was there a
sequel to that book? I only just recently discovered it, and I love it
almost as much as A. of G.G.
Thank you!
Amy
BoxHill
>Here's an Article about Anne (spelled with an E) in Japan.
Thank you, Sandy, for the fascinating article.
D. Gascoyne
M.L. wrote:
>
> > Do you (in the U.S.) get the new C.B.C. series of _Emily of New Moon_?
> > It's quite good, though some people have complained that it's not
> > faithful enough to the book(s).
>
> Avonlea type?
> It's a continuing series of the Avonlea type, though not, IIRC, produced
by the same group. But like the Avonlea (or your Little House series),
it starts out with the basic plot line of the book and then, I think, is
more "based on" than entirely plot by plot accurate. I may be wrong
there; as I said, I haven't _yet_ read the books though yesterday I went
and got the first one from the library! The production values are
excellent as are all the actors. The little girl who plays Emily is
wonderful.
- Debbie
Leah M. Oppenheim
> > Do you (in the U.S.) get the new C.B.C. series of _Emily of New Moon_?
> > It's quite good, though some people have complained that it's not
> > faithful enough to the book(s). I never read the New Moons and am
> > beginning to think I may have missed something.
> > - Debbie
>
> Is there a Emily of New Moon series? Is that a tv movie, or a show like
the Road to
> Avonlea type?
I second the question, and with great excitement!!! I am not sure how I
would feel about seeing my beloved Emily on the small screen (she belongs
in my, and Maud's imagination) but I'm glad to hear she's gotten some
well-deserved attention.
Leah
P.S. and I suppose the answer to your question is no, we haven't seen it
in the US yet. But I hope we do soon.
*********************************************************************
You get right inside her suffering, and it becomes your suffering, too. That's empathy, and it's something all artists are afflicted with.
--Madeleine L'Engle, "Meet the Austins"
D. Gascoyne
Leah M. Oppenheim wrote:
> > Is there a Emily of New Moon series? Is that a tv movie, or a show like
> the Road to
> > Avonlea type?
>
> I second the question, and with great excitement!!! I am not sure how I
> would feel about seeing my beloved Emily on the small screen (she belongs
> in my, and Maud's imagination) but I'm glad to hear she's gotten some
> well-deserved attention.
>
Hope you get it soon; you got the Avonlea series, so maybe Emily will
come along on the Disney channel or somewhere. We've just had the season
finale here, but rumours are it's going to continue next year.
- Debbie
BOOKWORMJJ
I with we got some Anne of G.G. TV stuff here in the US! I used to watch the
movies of Anne all the time. Then I read the books. Oh how wonderful! The
movies didn't do them justice!
BookWorm
Meredith Dixon
On 1 May 1998 14:58:25 GMT, rr...@crosslink.net (Amy Garber) wrote:
>In article <354fe842...@news.cyberplanet.net>,
>dix...@access.mountain.net says...
>>I'd rather live at Silver Bush. Before it burned down, of course.
>
>
>Is there a sequel to "Pat of Silver Bush?" I never knew the house
>burned down!
Yes; the sequel to *Pat of Silver Bush* is *Mistress Pat*. It should
be in print, too -- it was reprinted quite recently.
Meredith Dixon
dix...@access.mountain.net
Dozy
Could someone post a list of all Montgomery's books? I am rather vague
about what she wrote, apart from the Anne books.
Rosie
--
I have never minded the walls of denominationalism, but I have always
objected to broken glass on top of the walls.
(Nick Mercer)
Leah M. Oppenheim
In article <6ikk75$35b$1...@sirius.dur.ac.uk>, Dozy
<R.A.Bu...@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Could someone post a list of all Montgomery's books? I am rather vague
> about what she wrote, apart from the Anne books.
>
> Rosie
I don't think this will be a complete list, but since no one else has
posted yet I can't resist:
Anne series
Other stories about Avonlea, published as Chronicles of Avonlea and
Further Chronicles of Avonlea
Emily trilogy (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, Emily's Quest)
Magic for Marigold
Pat of Silver Bush, Mistress Pat
The Tangled Web
The Story Girl, The Golden Road
several Bantam-compiled books of short stories, one is stories about the
sea, another is stories about orphans
The Blue Castle (for adults--this is the book Colleen McCullough was
accused of plagiarizing)
Leah
Leah M. Oppenheim
> Hope you get it soon; you got the Avonlea series, so maybe Emily will
> come along on the Disney channel or somewhere. We've just had the season
> finale here, but rumours are it's going to continue next year.
> - Debbie
The season finale? So, they've made it into a continuing series? And
turned Emily into the non-Montgomery character that Sara Stanley was
rendered?
Oh, I've changed my mind. I don't want to see this.
Laurie Amster-Burton
The only one I can add to Leah's list is Kilmeny of the Orchard.
And if anyone is wondering--the McCullough book that is very like The Blue
Castle is The Ladies of Missalonghi.
Laurie