The following essay is longish, and will mostly only interest people who do creative work.

In Understanding Comics (which, as I've said before, you should read if you do almost any kind of creative work--web design, application programming, scriptwriting, video production, journalism, short or long fiction, biographical non-fiction, etc. Yes, even if you don't like comics. Yes, it's that good. You should buy it), Scott McCloud unlocked many secrets of the storytelling process for me. But one of the things I've been musing on lately is the difference between Japanese and American storytelling styles.

There was a time when I found many Japanese movies, as well as many of their cartoons and comic books, confusing. I knew there was a difference in their style, but it seemed cryptic and weird, almost like there must be something fundamentally different about the Japanese mind. Incomprehensible, sometimes confusing, although I usually dug it even when I didn't get it.

For example, an archetypal scene in a Japanese movie (or cartoon or comic book) might run something like this: the protagonist is unexpectedly struck down by a goon. He goes flying. Then everything slows to a crawl, and you see the character in a falling-backward position, frozen. Maybe his hair is waving a bit is all. Then the camera cuts, and you see the clock on the wall next to the protagonist, and hear it ticking. You see some birds flying silhouetted against the moon in the window behind him. Then you see and hear some children laughing just outside the building. Suddenly (he's still falling, remember), the hero starts remembering some events from his distant past, some conversations he had, and muses upon them. Then the slow-motion suddenly stops, the hero finishes falling, grunts, turns, and pulls a gun on the goon who just hit him.

"What the hell was all that?" was what I thought any time I saw something like that in Japanese cinema or comics. I was utterly mystified. I thought there must be something deeply, fundamentally different about the Japanese, something almost alien. I sometimes hated it ("gaaah, I'm so confused, what the hell is going on?") but I often dug the style. "The Japanese brain must just be wired differently," I sometimes thought.

Indeed, I know people who refuse to read or look at Japanese comics or cartoons precisely because the see things like this and find them so confusing. Which is too bad, because it's not all that complicated or confusing once you understand a couple of things. Once you do unlock those simple secrets, Japanese art seems cooler than ever, and not at all confusing. They're not all that different from us at all, as it turns out, they just have a slightly different frame of reference.

To understand it, you first have to understand something about the American style of storytelling (which is also the style of most Western cultures): It is very action-oriented. And by "action," I do not mean sword and gun fights, either. A kiss, a bedroom scene, a quiet conversation between mother and son. We still tend to tell these in action-oriented fashion.

Let me see if I can't explain further: What's the #1 reason most Americans give for sitting through a movie even when when they're bored by it? "I want to see what happens next." What is the reason that people who hate Howard Stern still listen to his radio show? "I want to hear what he'll say next."

This attitude suffuses most of our cultural storytelling. By "storytelling," I do not mean just fiction. Read the sports page. Read newspaper stories about events overseas. Pick up almost any biography, especially those simple, popular ones like Monica Lewinsky's autobiography, or George Stephanopoulous' memoir of the years he spent working with the Clintons. The default mode of storytelling is usually the same: Event happens. Someone says or does something about it. Then this happens, and then that, and someone does this, and someone says that, and another thing happens and another thing happens and another thing happens, and we end by pondering what has happened, or possible future events. The end.

Almost all stories we Americans tell involve actions, consequences, and reactions. It is not just Americans, either, nor is it something we invented. Hell, Shakespeare worked in this fashion, at least in all of his plays that I've ever seen or read. There is nothing primitive or childish about this, it is just an observation about style.

Now, to be clear, it is also a generalization, not an ironclad rule. To digress, I want to rant about a pet peeve of mine: Every time I generalize about something, someone almost inevitably feels the need to lecture me about why my generalization must not be true because it does not apply to them, or because they can rattle off a list of exceptions. Why do people do this?!?. Of course there are exceptions! Exceptions make life interesting. Exceptional people are usually my favorite people. They add spice to life, and are all kinds of fun. But exceptions do not disprove generalizations. Exceptions disprove stereotypes.

What's the difference between a generalization and a sterotype?

A generalization is a statement of how things generally work, what holds true a very great deal of the time. A stereotype is an attempt to apply a generalization in an inappropriate or inflexible way.

Just look at the following statements: The Irish are temperamental. The Scots are tight-fisted. Jews go in for accounting, law, medicine, artistry, and academia for their careers. Young guys get horny more often than young girls. Lesbians like softball. Minnesotans like lutefisk.

Every single one of these is a completely valid generalization. They become stereotypes when you try to apply them to every situation and person, when you make stupid assumptions about individuals based solely on those generalizations. If you look at a black guy you barely know, smile slyly, and say, "want some grape soda?" you're being an ass. A great big horse's ass, and I would be embarassed for you. But, if you run a convenience store in a black neighborhood, at least in Detroit, you'd be an idiot if you don't keep a lot of Faygo Grape in stock, because black people buy a lot of that stuff. (By the way, if you're black and you're not chuckling at the above, you need to loosen up. You know it's true.)

Generalizations don't need to be angrily challenged and struck down. What we should do is simply acknowledge them, with a little humor and humility--and bearing in mind that no generalization is ever true in all places and times. If we can get past that, then we can have all kinds of great discussions on why the generalization holds true, why there are exceptions, why the exceptions are interesting, why the generalization might change in different places and times. But the dismissive, "well this isn't true of me, therefore it is not true" attitude destroys a good conversation. Generalizations are not stereotypes, okay? They're rules of thumb, cultural markers, not God's Law About How Everything Always Is Or Should Be.

Generalizations are also lots of fun. So long as we keep them in perspective. Hey, I'm from Texas, and I gotta tell ya: don't mess with Texas. I'll hurt ya. (Hee!)

My, this is turning into a rather Den Bestian essay, isn't it? Well, digression over. Back to storytelling styles:

Americans tend to tell stories in an action-oriented fashion. Even our soap operas, our gentle romantic comedies, and our news reports are written this way. We set a scene, and then describe events and reactions.

This is not a primitive or crude or inferior or childish way of telling tales, by the way. Not at all. Like I said, almost all of Shakespeare's work was written in exactly the same fashion. Furthermore, most of the greatest movies in American cinema, all-time classics like Casablanca, It's A Wonderful Life, The Ten Commandments, Star Wars, The Dirty Dozen, or even Sleepless In Seattle were written just like this. It's just how we tend to see things, how we tend to think of the world.

If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it should be good enough for us, right?

But the Japanese (and other southeast Asian cultures--I just concentrate on Japan because I've seen a lot of Japanese cinema, read a lot of Japanese fiction) have a slightly different frame of reference. It is not alien, nor is it either superior or inferior. It is just different, in an interesting, thought-provoking way. Nor is it difficult to understand. Once you get it, you can appreciate their artistic works more. Furthermore, if you're a creative type, you can draw a good deal of inspiration from it.

So what is the difference? Japanese art tends to put more emphasis on being there rather than getting there. Being somewhere, rather than doing something. There's often a great deal more emphasis on setting a scene, and looking at the scene from different angles.

Especially in their more sophisticated, mature works.

Go watch Akira Kurasawa's all-time classic movie, The Seven Samurai. This is a great movie. In fact, it was so good, some Hollywood producers decided to buy it and turn it into another classic American movie, The Magnificent Seven. (Indeed, as a masculist, I think that Robert Blake has a sililoquy in there on what it is to be a man that I will one day write a long essay about. Men have gotten a horrible bum rap in this country for a very long time, and I'm tired of it. In that one short sililoquy he says more than I'll be able to in a thousand words. Powerful stuff. But, it's a subject for a different essay.)

Anyway, Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai is a great movie. From start to finish. But parts of it seem weird and a little hard to watch, to most Western eyes. There are scenes where we tend to just look and say, "what's going on?" Two Samurai are crouching toward each other, katana drawn. They're frozen, just staring at each other. At some point, they are going to charge, and one or both of them will likely be dead within seconds. But they just stare at each other. The camera flashes to one, then the other. Then to the faces of individual spectators. Then to the background, the skies, the fields. Nothing is happening. We're just being shown flashes of images surrounding the scene.

"What does the field have to do with anything? What do the blank expressions on these random people watching have to do with anything? What does the sky have to do with anything? Why is he showing us this stuff?"

The answer: Kurosawa is emphasizing being there over doing things. The experience of that moment. The scene itself is the important thing, and not what is happening. In fact, other than the psychological tension, nothing is happening. Kurosawa just wants you to feel what it was like to be in that moment.

Let's go back to my example above of the Japanese cartoon, where the hero is struck, and falls. What is the director trying to do with this weird sequence where the hero suddenly freezes in mid-fall, and we see the clock, the birds, the children, these conversations and events from our hero's past? What's happening here is something that has happened to all of us at one time or another: something startling and traumatic happens to you, and all of a sudden time seems to slow down, and the world closes in around you. You suddenly become hyper-aware of your surroundings, details like the clock ticking and the song playing on the radio, and, you start remembering things from your past that relate to this. It all happens in a flash. In just seconds you're flooded with all these impressions.

Well, it's happened to me anyway, and I'm pretty sure it must have happened to most of you at one time or another.

The Western style of storytelling has a hard time showing those moments. We want things to happen, and are confused when things aren't happening.

But the Japanese style has an easy time with this, for they like to put emphasis on the experience of being there in the moment.

The Japanese also like to show things from the perspective of the protagonist looking outward, rather than the experience of the audience watching the protagonist.

Once you get this, an awful lot of their artistic works crystallize for you, and it doesn't seem that odd at all. You just have to wrap your head around it.

So tell me, does that make sense? Do those of you who've watched anime, read manga, or seen some Japanese live action films, see what I'm talking about? Because I find it quite instructive and useful from a storytelling perspective, and I do draw inspiration from it.