Ask John: Why is There So Much Italian in Anime?

Question:
Why are the Japanese so obsessed with Italy and Italian food and culture? There are so many other countries in Europe with their own unique cultures, languages and food, like Spain, France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc., but they only pay attention to Italy. Why? It shows a lot in their anime, like Gunslinger Girl.

Answer:
On the contrary, I don’t think that Japanese culture, and anime in particular, does have a particular obsession with Italian culture. Furthermore, I don’t think that one example, Gunslinger Girl, constitutes an “obsession.” Rather, I think that Japanese society, and anime in particular, have a fascination with international, modernized, and intellectual cultures. I don’t wish to make racially biased distinctions, and I don’t want to make an unfair criticism of Japan. So please approach this observation with the objective and sterile reason it was constructed with.

Anime’s fascination with Germany is relatively well known. Anime including Nalice Scramble, Urotsukidoji, Kujaku-Oh, and Angel Core contain direct reference to German culture and history. Anime including Weiss Kreuz and Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer include German references. Anime including Rose of Versailles, Chevalier, and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne make reference to French history. The anime film Run Melos is set in ancient Greece. Greek mythology inspires anime including Arion, St. Seiya, and Hermes, Wings of Love. Gunslinger Girl occurs in Italy. Porco Rosso is an Italian pilot. The Victorian Romance Emma anime details Victorian English society. The 1979 TV series King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is based on English myth. Ah! My Goddess draws inspiration from Scandinavian mythology, and Horus is based on Scandinavian legends. Lupin the 3rd has its “From Russia With Love” movie. And characters including Maria Tachibana from Sakura Wars and Balalaika from Black Lagoon are Russian. There are also anime series including Heidi of the Alps, Romeo’s Blue Skies, and Perrine Monogatari that are set in various or unspecific European countries.

Consider also how many anime are set in America, or contain American influences. The cowboy is a distinctly American archetype that appears throughout anime. Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed was inspired by American legend Johnny Appleseed. The globe trotting hero of Gallery Fake is a former employee of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ll also point out that in the Hana Yori Dango anime, Tsukushi travels to Canada. And the Yawara! anime prominently features a Canadian character.

All of these, and countless other examples, taken in association with the rarity of anime set in Africa, South America, and the Middle East jointly create an image of Japan’s fascination with Western culture. It’s not specifically Italy or Germany alone that interests Japan; it’s the literary, artistic, intellectual, and cultural advances and freedom of expression evident in all Western culture that seem to fascinate Japan. Perhaps because Japan is such an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society that its citizens enviously romanticize industrialized Western culture. I don’t mean at all to dismiss the intellectual or artistic value of the third world, but I do think that Japan’s obsession with education and modernization lead the country to be more interested in similar Western industrialized nations more than the cultures of South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Probably as an effect of natural human instinct, Westerners have a similar interest in Asian culture. Particularly anime fans tend to romanticize Japanese culture and maintain a great interest in Asian art and culture because it’s different from our own experience.

I’m not going to even attempt to criticize or praise any society’s aesthetic appreciation or interest in another culture. I’m merely trying to point out that I do think that Japan and its anime creators have a sublimated interest in the Western equivalents for Japan. References to Italy and Italian culture that appear in anime, I think, aren’t an isolated illustration of Japanese fascination with Italian culture. Rather, they’re select illustrations of anime’s larger fascination with all Western society. And examples of that curiosity and envy appear often, in a variety of forms, in countless anime.