[J-ENT] Through Otaku Eyes / A dream too beautiful to awaken from

In a recent column for “Through Otaku Eyes”, Ishida Kanta of the Daily Yomiuri wrote, “Just two years ago, two 16-year-old girls from France were found and taken into protective custody in Poland. They had left their home in the suburbs of Paris and set out for the “land of dreams”–Japan. They were great fans of the manga Naruto and Japanese image-based “visual-kei” rock bands. They are said to have liked everything about Japan, ranging from the culture to the lifestyle.”

“When I read the news, I didn’t think anything more about it than that there are some strange girls in France. But now I have to change my perception. Visiting the Ninth Japan Expo held July 3-6 in Paris, I learned that “Japan fever” among young people in France is not a trifling matter.”

“The Japanese media tend to regard the event, which drew as many as 130,000 people this year–it was 88,000 last year–as something weird, no different from a cosplay festival. But it is becoming a full-scale exhibition handling an amazingly wide range of Japanese cultural offerings.”

“Expo staff and visitors alike, however, are mostly young people in their teens and 20s. Few among them have actually been to Japan. So the prime sources of their image of Japan are manga, animation, video games and the like.”

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