Twelve Kingdoms: Interview with the Translator, Children in Anime, Manga, and Modern Japan

Kate: I'm sure that someone somewhere has written a massive intellectual treatise on the plethora of children in Japanese manga/anime. From a popular culture perspective, what accounts for it? Why do children in adult positions/situations show up so much in anime/manga/light novels? Or as long-lived children? Like with C.S. Lewis, very little hand holding is expended on these kids. Their youth is part of their attraction, not an excuse for their behavior.

Are wise-beyond-their-years children a trope in Japanese literature, specific to certain authors, part of the cultural mindset?

Are Westerners the outliers, being squeamish (and more committed to the Victorian ideal of innocent childhood)? Are children in Japan seen as more adult-like? Or am I mistaking a literary trope for a cultural condition?

Eugene: The most obvious answer is marketing. The editorial content of the numerous manga periodicals and imprints are designed by publishers to target specific demographics. Because consumers of manga and anime outside Japan tend to be older, they often overlook material aimed at younger audiences.

Several of the most popular and long-running anime on Japanese television are practically unknown in North America. Chibi Maruko-chan (over 1200 episodes to date) is a lighthearted melodrama about a traditional Japanese family in the 1970s. The POV character is a nine-year-old girl, so we see that world through her eyes.

There are a lot of authorized videos on YouTube. They're not localized, but it's worth watching an episode or two just to hear Tarako Isono as Maruko.

Delving more deeply into the social psychology of the matter, helicopter parenting simply hasn't become a thing in Japan. Basically, the kind of hands-off approach that kids enjoyed growing up in the American suburbs fifty years ago remains alive and well.

Elementary school students walk to school. By themselves. This expectation that young children can handle such responsibilities is taken as a given. The video at this link above is from a reality show in which little kids are given fairly complex tasks to accomplish by themselves.

In Non Non Biyori, once school is out, there is barely an adult in sight, also true of the elementary school kids in the more urban Den-noh Coil. At the end of Super Cub, three high school girls ride their scooters all the way to the southern tip of Kyushu. By themselves. And then there is the whole school government thing.

All this means that kids in Japan are not only allowed to do more interesting things, but it is easy to push the boundaries a bit and have them do really interesting things. Frankly, the spelunking expedition at the end of The Phantom Doctor strikes even me as crazy dangerous, but it would have been hugely appealing to Edogawa's readers.

In other words, Japanese not only expect more of (and grant greater latitude to) real children, but fictional children as well. It is the freest time of their lives, after all, and should not be wasted. (The girls in Super Cub go on their adventure during the spring break before their senior year, because that's when the fun pretty much ends.)