The Ideal Speaker of Japanese English as Portrayed in ‘Language Entertainment’ Television

Abstract

It is somewhat difficult to have a unified response to the presence of English within Japanese popular culture. English is frequently used decoratively, as it is in J-Pop music, to suggest that songs are more internationalized than the audience they are written for. English loanwords might pepper the speech of comedians and celebrities as a joke about a particular style of cosmopolitan Japanese. But nowhere in Japanese popular culture is English more prevalent than within the television genre of ‘language entertainment’ programmes. Presented to viewers as a type of amusement, these programmes portray several characteristics — competence, yuuki ‘courage’, jigyaku ‘self-effacement’ and genki ‘enthusiasm’ — that together may be taken as the characteristics of an ideal speaker of Japanese English. This examination of Japanese television will illustrate and examine how each of these four characteristics of an ideal speaker are actively modelled within Japanese popular culture. In response to the professional and popular view that Japanese speakers are overly anxious about speaking English, the ‘language entertainment’ genre of Japanese television presents alternative images of Japanese speakers who are both highly trained in their professions and highly proficient speakers of English. At the same time, the genre also models yuuki, jigyaku and genki as personality traits that favour the successful use of English.