The Power of Popeye and Astro Boy
I am sure that you are familiar with the American animated cartoon Popeye. Popeye was broadcast on Japanese TV for many years after the war. When Popeye the sailor man downs a can of spinach, he is suddenly endowed with huge muscles and is able to take on his scoundrel rival Bluto and win back his true love Olive Oyl.
Now what kind of impression would watching that kind of cartoon leave on Japanese kids? The image that American sailors are on the side of justice, of course.
Similarly, there is an American comic strip called Blondie, which some of the younger people here might not be familiar with. gBlondieh in this strip is the name of a housewife, and her husband, son, and daughter join her in the strip.
Blondie was run in Japanese newspapers from the 1940fs into the 1950fs. What emerged through this cartoon strip was a bit of a dream for the average Japanese housewife, this American way of life Blondie led, taking care of just her husband and her kids without a care about her mother-in-law, in a house in the suburbs with an entire array of household appliances. You could find the dreams of post-war Japan all wrapped up in that one household.
Popeye and Blondie caught hold of the hearts of Japanese children and mothers in an era in which Japan was still under American occupation. Now, this means that the people of post-war Japan had such a strong infatuation with the United States even though just a little while before Americans had been something akin to devils. I would argue that American comics had an influence that we simply cannot ignore.
My message to you here is that Japan has held its own very nicely in this area. I would even say that Astro Boy deserves to receive the Peoplefs Honor Award.
The word groboth is said to have come to us from the Czech word robota, which means glaborh or sometimes even gdrudgery,h and thus is a word that originally carried a negative connotation.
But through Japanfs Astro Boy or the cat-like robot Doraemon, the meaning of the word groboth shifted, instead becoming a benevolent friend who helps human beings. In Asia and elsewhere around the globe, robots came to be understood as the gwhite hatsh \the good guys.
The impact of this situation is that countries with an affinity for Doraemon do not have workers who reject industrial robots, and thus in those countries, industrial productivity rises. In addition, you find that Japanese-made industrial robots sell well.
Yaskawa Electric Corporation and the other firms of Japanfs gbig threeh hold a market share of half the global market in the area of robots for welding or applying coatings. Of course, Astro Boy and Gigantor\what we in Japan know as gTetsujin 28h\are there in the background to all this. In other words, what created the climate in which all this could take place was Japanese culture, and I am continually speaking of culturefs significant contributions in this area.