What does Japan want us to see?

So far all these clips and pictures (with very few exceptions) have been meant to be seen or experienced by Japanese people. So what then are people outside of Japanese culture supposed to see?

Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Sasuke videos of course……

This is a short film made with the intent to make an American audience find Japanese-esque comedy funny. The style is more American than what Matsumoto Hitoshi is often seen using in other comedy projects. In this film, Matsumoto portrays a ninja hired to baby-sit a rather obnoxious “American” child. It was taped in the United States and screened before an American audience. Let’s watch…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

From this it can be discerned that ninja can transform into lawnmowers or cartoon cutouts, flip out and try to kill things when frightened, commit hara-kiri when sad, generate Okinawa music when happy, and command giant robots. This seems contradictory to the last post I made. As serious as I always want martial arts to be, it seems the message is clear. Have fun with it, and if you can, make money off of it. Martial arts were once used to unite a country through force; now it’s used primarily to promote items or ideas.

Edit: It seems these videos didn’t go with Youtube’s policies *cough* google buyout *cough* so it has unfortunately been pulled, and the person who posted the videos has been suspended from Youtube. Although I can no longer prove it on this blog, the video was actually funny if somewhat simplistic at times. If anyone knows where a copy is still up, I’d like have a cop… see the video one more time for research purposes.