HOW HE SEES IT Japanese anime gets a global reception

By DANIEL SNEIDER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
The popular image of globalization is of a one-way street, transporting Hollywood movies, Big Macs and Windows software to a captive world. Actually globalization is a vast multilane highway, with many connecting roads that never seem to pass through America.
In Japan, for example, housewives are enthralled by a Korean soap opera. In the cinema houses of Central Asia, the brash Indian musicals rolled out of the studios of Bollywood are the rage.
But one of the oddest pathways of globalization stretches from a cramped artist's studio on the outskirts of Tokyo straight into tens of millions of American homes, including my own. On Saturday mornings, children, mostly boys like my son Ben and his brother Eli, are enthralled by the complex animated adventures of a boy named Yugi and his friends.
Successful export
The tale of "Yu-Gi-Oh!" has dwarfed the cute creatures of Pokemon as the most successful export of Japanese anime, or animated cartoons. The Duel Monsters card game in which Yugi and his friends battle a bewildering array of monsters is played in school yards from Australia to Germany. A film-length "Yu-Gi-Oh!" will hit theaters this summer.
The comic artist who created this multibillion dollar industry, Kazuki Takahashi, finds the globalization of his creation completely surprising, if not bewildering. He is a shy man who rarely gives interviews. But he recently talked with me for hours in his studio, surrounded by his creations captured in everything from plastic models of monsters to movie posters.
My son Ben is immersed in the world of "Yu-Gi-Oh!," I told him, but his attempts to explain it to me are hopeless. "That's what I am aiming at," Takahashi, 42, said with some satisfaction. "I am trying to create a world that people over 17 can't understand."
"Children want to possess a closed, secret world as their own world," explained Takahashi, who draws for the popular Japanese manga, or comic, weekly Shonen Jump. "They want to draw you into that world, but they also enjoy the fact that you can't really enter it."
Reflects broader movement
The phenomenal spread of Japanese anime is part of a broader boom in Japanese culture, says Kaori Shoji, who writes about popular culture. From the popularity of Japanese consumer design to teen fashions, things Japanese are "hot" in Paris and New York.
But unlike earlier waves of export of Japanese culture, such as the samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, the creators of this new boom "are not concerned about being Japanese or sending a Japanese message," she says. Indeed, Takahashi finds the idea that he is a representative of Japanese culture completely bizarre.
"I don't particularly think about Japanese culture," Takahashi told me. "There are many things in common among different cultures. When you are a child, you go to school and meet friends. These things are common everywhere."
Universal experience
He sees the roots of the popularity of "Yu-Gi-Oh!" in his ability to tap into a very universal experience of childhood -- the overcoming of weakness through friendship, all in a battle of good against evil.
"All children have an inferiority complex," Takahashi explains. "They all want to become stronger." In Yugi's case, the magical cards transform him, allowing him to fight evil and win.
The inspiration for his work is both Japanese and global. It includes Japanese monster movies, the Japanese Masked Rider trading cards he collected as a child, Star Wars, and Disney films. His first trip to the United States, 10 years ago, was to Disney World -- he has been back to the theme park three times since.
Takahashi's first goal was to become a designer of monster costumes. But he dropped out of design school and left home at the age of 18 to be an artist, to the disappointment of his father, a house painter.
Earlier this year, Takahashi brought the manga saga of "Yu-Gi-Oh!" to an end -- the animated television and films based on the comic will continue.
While he ponders his next creation, Takahashi plans to visit the United States to try to understand the amazing popularity of his work.
"If I knew this would happen," he says with a smile, "I would have learned English."
XSneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.