The Unknown Japanese Invasion

While everybody's shrieking about the Americanisation of our culture, there's an underground Japanese invasion going on.

The country's college-going youth, especially engineering youth, the people we tend to call the brains of our country, are totally hooked to Japanese cartoons (or 'anime', as a diehard fan would force me to say) and comics ('manga', for that fan).

Comics and cartoons are fun you think. That's true. However, the fan doesn't just stop with them. To their credit, the Japanese have a distinct touch of their history and culture in their comics and cartoons. And those fans who dote over these, also come to dote over Japanese history, clothing, language... basically the entire Japanese culture. If you go to any Japanese language learning site (try "thejapanesepage.com") you would find that what i'm saying is true - people inspired by the comics and cartoons are actually lining up to study the Japanese language. Possibly, not many of these are Indians, but the day is not far when many would be.

Well, the credit goes to the Japanese for their creative abilities. But then, there's a similar Indian movement going on as well (think Hanuman). If this catches on globally, we'll basically be seeing a global urge to learn about different cultures; and that is nothing but good.

Kudos to this new face of globalisation.