Some days, I feel like I need a Japanese pen name
Imagine a TV show with no sex, no violence, no guns or explosions, just engineers designing new things, figuring out how to make them and then landing the contracts to sell them. It would never work, right?
Well, not in this country. But elsewhere...?
Shitamachi Rocket returned to Japanese TV screens this season for a second run, telling the story of a little factory (about the same size as the ones I've worked for) where they build tractor engines to pay the bills, but where they also build parts for rocket engines, prosthetic heart valves, and other neat stuff. There's a bit of silly melodrama about corporate politics with their customers, but for the most part the story is driven by the quest to overcome the technical and manufacturing challenges they're presented with.
Thanks to the internet, I watch far more Japanese scripted programming than American these days. Not all of it is like Shitamachi Rocket, of course, but real-world math and science turn up a lot more often. Even in the awful shows, like the one where the high school girls use trigonometry to figure out whether or not a boy was peeking up one of their skirts. (He wasn't, in case you were wondering.)
I even made a comparison clip that I use in my author talks, showing the difference between Japanese and American TV detectives.
On American TV, the math and science is done by nerds off in a corner somewhere, and most of it is meaningless technobabble, disconnected from reality. On Japanese TV, it's very often real, very often done by the person at the center of the story, and very often with the people around the person doing it following along. Which means, by extension, that the audience is expected to follow along, too.
Eventually, I'm going to be ready for a fiction project again, and I can't help wondering what kind of audience I'll have for stories that use real math and science. I've actually looked into what it would take to reach the Japanese market. Even without the translation issues, it would be difficult. But maybe there's a Japanophile market in the US that would be interested...?
Well, not in this country. But elsewhere...?
Shitamachi Rocket returned to Japanese TV screens this season for a second run, telling the story of a little factory (about the same size as the ones I've worked for) where they build tractor engines to pay the bills, but where they also build parts for rocket engines, prosthetic heart valves, and other neat stuff. There's a bit of silly melodrama about corporate politics with their customers, but for the most part the story is driven by the quest to overcome the technical and manufacturing challenges they're presented with.
Thanks to the internet, I watch far more Japanese scripted programming than American these days. Not all of it is like Shitamachi Rocket, of course, but real-world math and science turn up a lot more often. Even in the awful shows, like the one where the high school girls use trigonometry to figure out whether or not a boy was peeking up one of their skirts. (He wasn't, in case you were wondering.)
I even made a comparison clip that I use in my author talks, showing the difference between Japanese and American TV detectives.
On American TV, the math and science is done by nerds off in a corner somewhere, and most of it is meaningless technobabble, disconnected from reality. On Japanese TV, it's very often real, very often done by the person at the center of the story, and very often with the people around the person doing it following along. Which means, by extension, that the audience is expected to follow along, too.
Eventually, I'm going to be ready for a fiction project again, and I can't help wondering what kind of audience I'll have for stories that use real math and science. I've actually looked into what it would take to reach the Japanese market. Even without the translation issues, it would be difficult. But maybe there's a Japanophile market in the US that would be interested...?
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