Hollywood Japan
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"Moon over Japan, —H.P. Lovecraft, Poetry of the Gods
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Japan in modern Hollywood is a mix of old and modern. All Japanese are polite but inscrutably indirect, superintelligent, great at technology, and salarymen, Otaku or Kimono-clad Yamato Nadeshiko. They love green tea, ramen, sake and sushi, sleep in apartments the size of shoeboxes, squeeze into overcrowded trains to go to work, worship at Shinto shrines, and make fantastic electronics. Pop culture is composed entirely of Weird Japanese Things, and they also know martial arts lest they be menaced by the Yakuza. Some of this, though, is Truth in Television - but only some of it.
A common manifestation of this trope is that, similar to Britain Is Only London, the only part of Hollywood Japan that is ever shown - establishing shots of Mt Fuji aside - is Tokyo, or a city that just happens to look exactly like Westerners imagine Tokyo looks like. Osaka, The Rival? Yokohama, the Always Second Best neighbor? The island of Shikoku, home to a famous 88-temple pilgrimage? Might as well not exist. Kyoto, the old capital, might get a mention if "traditional culture" is the topic of the day, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki might appear if World War II comes up, but anywhere more obscure? Forget about it. Even Tokyo itself is far more diverse than the stereotypical concrete, glass and neon depiction, with vast parks like Shinjuku Gyoen, farms, and even outlying mountains - not that you'd see this reflected in most foreign media. Otherwise, it'll be some generic Far East place; compare Animeland.
Oh, and by the way- Aaaaauuugghh! It's GOJIRA!!!![1]
Film
- Though filmed on-location in Japan with Japanese actors, You Only Live Twice has some funny ideas about the country. This includes (but is not limited to) Japan's single most famous castle being a "secret" Ninja training base. Well, what better way to learn stealth than to avoid those pesky tourists?
- Sayonara uses many stereotypes of Japan: bunraku, Cherry Blossoms, geisha, kabuki and Yamato Nadeshiko. On the other hand, it is filmed on-location involving actual Japanese actors in Kobe, Japan, with Tokyo only coming into the picture later and being clearly distinguished when it does. It also has strong words regarding racism and prejudice despite its 1950s setting and release, and is overall Fair for Its Day.
- Bullet Train. Between the Mt Fuji shot, taking place on the eponymous most iconic of Japanese public transport, the cyberpunk neon colouration, the demon-masked mooks, the Cherry Blossoms raining on katana-wearing Yakuza - one of whom is even wearing a kimono - framed by a torii, cute mascots and fancy toilets, it is an unabashed greatest hits of Cool Japan.
- Lost in Translation has Bob and Charlotte encounter many "only in Japan" things including but not limited to drum arcade games, flower arrangement classes, Japanese weddings, karaoke boxes, pachinko parlours, shabu shabu eateries, and wacky talk shows.
- Big Hero 6: San Fransokyo plays on the reputations of Tokyo and Silicon Valley as high-tech hubs, but also incorporates traditional elements like an alternate Golden Gate Bridge modelled after torii.
Tabletop Games
- Rifts Japan is literally a mix of old and new—the city of Hiroshima and the surrounding towns were sent hundreds of years into the future during the apocalypse and largely survived intact, while much of the rest of Japan deliberately forsook technology, going back to the customs of the feudal era. Other areas of the now-divided country retained varying levels of technology. The conflicts, cultural and martial, between the two versions of Japan drive a lot of the story in the setting, although in unexpected ways (the Anti-technology Empire actually likes the time-lost Republic (and vice-versa), even if they wish they would give up their tech; it's some of the people that have held on to theirs that are the right bastards). Well, them and the Oni.
- TORG, with a similar premise as Rifts, got Japan conquered by the most subtle of the High Lords, and got turned into a country of high tech and Mega Corp intrigue. Nobody outside the nation noticed that anything had changed.
Video Games
- Tokyo Field from Backyard Baseball (an obvious spoof of Tokyo Dome) definitely fits this trope.
- Italian-produced adventure game Nippon Safes, Inc. is set in a fictional Japanese city that is guilty of almost every stereotype: Advanced technology, geisha, monks and salarymen on the streets, pachinko parlours, sumo fights, Yakuza in hot baths, suicides, you name it.
Web Comics
- In the webcomic Starslip Crisis, the entire Japanese archipelago has been converted into a starship which roams the galaxy selling its state-of-the-art electronics. Japan is in fact the second Earth landmass to have undergone such a conversion, but the first one to do so successfully - the tragedy of "Hyper-Maine" is, of course, not spoken of in polite conversation, apparently being so grotesque in nature that one character refused to talk about it because they planned to eat lunch that day.
- Leading to the following exchange between a man of the strip's time and a recently released robot:
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Colonel: "They don't make 'em like you anymore." |
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Western Animation
- Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo hits every single stereotype about Japan you can name.
- Generally how Japan is portrayed in any comic book, really, although this is fading as comic fandom and anime/manga fandom increasingly cross over.
- The Simpsons had an episode named "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", which jabs at anime (the entire family suffers seizures à la that one Pokémon episode when watching one), their culture (Homer and Bart learn the language, origami and tea ceremony, among other things, when in prison), and even their weird TV shows, much in the vein of Takeshi's Castle (which they have to "survive" in order to get free tickets back to USA).
- The automobile version of Tokyo seen in Cars 2 is every bit as glitzy and colorful as the real thing, mixing nicely the culture and the high technology, right down to the toilets! (just ask Mater)