The simplest answer may be 6 words, Because Japanese kids don’t understand English.
But this is not very accurate.
When I say he isn’t popular in Japan, I’m comparing his popularity among Japanese to among South Koreans and Taiwanese. It's may be a fair comparison since all of them are not English speaking countries.
According to
his Youtube page,
In SK, Ryan is
#20 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - South Korea
#4 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Comedians - South Korea in Dec, 2011
and in TW,
#12 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Taiwan
#4 - Most Subscribed (This Month) - Comedians – Taiwan in the same month.
But there’s no information about Japan. If you see the ranking of Youtube channel in comedy category of Japan, Ryan’s is even not on the list, while he appears in both South korea’s and Taiwan’s ranking . So why , even though he is Japanese-American from Hawaii, which sounds very familiar to Japanese fellows, he isn’t that popular in Japan? There must be more of a simple reason of language.
Don’t misunderstand me, I love his videos more than almost all Japanese comedy (actually I never watched Japanese TV for these last 10 years so I simply don’t know much about it)
 |
| I watch comedy to smile, laugh and feel happy and the role of comedy in this world is to make the world nice and happy, that's the way I feel. |
It's not just about quality. It's about whether it can leave people's mind with feelings that the world is or can be a nice place. And the fact that Ryan has a big and kind heart and many nice friends always assure me that this world will be nice a place if we will be nice guys/girls like him.
But the reality, as far as I can see, is Japanese people seem to be unable to get his awesomeness easily.
Here are some reasons I thought of.
1.
Do you know what happens when a small island on the far edge of Far East Asia which has homogeneous demographic and highly sophisticated oriental culture has been the world second largest economy over decades?
You'll know it when you see Japan. Everything in the market is customized to Japanese version. It’s really difficult to see things from overseas are remaining with it’s original description in English, Macdonald’s, Starbucks, Apple, Novels, Games… everything was translated in Japanese. (and I hate it, I love things unchanged from their original)
For instance look at iTunes ranking and compare Japan’s ranking to other countries’ ones. You must understand how Japan is different from others… say western countries. Taiwan and South Korea are somewhere in the middle.
Even though Japanese people generally have a good and subtle sense of beauty and humor, vast majority of Japanese people don’t reach to original English entertainments or everything not Japanese unless they are introduced & translated.
2.
This relates to the previous reason. Japanese has developed their own version of the enormous web communities, for instance, Nico Nico Doga is similar to YouTube, Mixi is to facebook, and 2ch is the biggest forum on the Internet in Japan. So even though there are more than 80 millions of Internet users, most of them stick around those websites but aren't as familiar with the worldwide websites like youtube, facebook as with Japanese equivalents. (So far, the only exception is Twitter, since 140 characters is ideal length to write a short message in Japanese, not too long, not too short.)
Btw since Japanese pop culture is so popular all over the world, there are a certain amount of population visiting Japanese big websites from overseas, especially to Nico Nico Doga where so many anime pictures has been uploaded and Nyan Cat was born.
But interaction between japan and the world in the online world is more like foreigners who are interested in Japanese culture introduce Japanese websites to the world population than Japanese introduce international culture to Japan.
And that imbalance is, I guess, somewhat making foreigners more interested in Japan, that they may think they know the originals not say... American version and may help them feel some kinds of superiority. But that's an another story.
3.
I’m not sure but it seems many of Ryan’s fans are girls, because they think he is funny, lovely, cute, handsome, hot, sexy, smart…. And for me he actually has some heroic air around him as a internet born Asian-American star.
But for a majority of Japanese girls, things are rather simple. Is he able to find the spot in the range of their definition of being hot? I have no clue since I’m not a girl but I have to say, he may be attractive for some people but his looking is rather normal in Japan. And he is definitely not a Kawaii type of man*.
Is there any chance to get Japanese girl know who he is and what he is like, and realize how cool he is… ?
*So who is considered Kawaii type of man? I often heard girls saying Yoochun, a former member of South Korean pop group Dong Bang Shin Ki (known as 東方神起 in China and Japan) is Kawaii, or Koike Teppei used to be said Kawaii.
4.
I mean… Rebecca Black or Justin Bieber…. he’s sometimes very harsh to such people in his video. And it’s not only him but also his fellows such as Kevjumba, D-trix have made similar videos.
Unlike American people, Japanese people don’t like negative campaigns such as Apple’s ads or Pepsi’s ads taking shit on their competitors. Japanese do it more imperceptible way, or at least not in that blunt manner. And when Japanese do beef, it often ends up with emotional and angry argument, and ends with no smile exchange like Piers Morgan’s interview to Ann Coulter on CNN.
Of course Ryan’s video is not just about mocking other people who he found something funny or strange, but he always adds his own creativity and humor to it. But still his beefing videos might leave something awkward, bitter feeling when Japanese people watch them.
But above all, who is Rebecca Black, and why so many people diss Justin Bieber?? Japanese people just don’t get it.
5.
He is so… American.
Of course he is American, but my point is that he is more of American than Japanese.
I’m sure he respect and proud of his Japanese legacy and maybe actually practice some of Japanese traditional arts. But tradition is, in the end, just tradition. The fact he grew up in USA makes it almost impossible to find any Japanese way of life from him. Maybe I went too far, what I'm trying to say is that his sense of humor has totally nothing to do with Japanese sense of humor that sometimes it’s difficult to understand his joke.
Actually for me, and I’m sure for most Japanese, British comedy always beat American comedy. But this is an another story.
Some might say he is not just American, but Asian-American. But being an American is a starting point for being Asian-American just as being a Japanese is a prerequisite for being Asian. If you say he is Asian, I'd rather want to say he is human. Why you need to categorize him as Asian or Asian-American? He is just American and Human.
What makes me as well as so many non american fans happy is some of his videos are more than just for American. They are generic and universal, they are for all humans. For instance “Nice guys” music video tells a simple but strong message and it’s something that everyone can relate to, and his acting is really funny and hilarious yet captivating as hell.
My all time favorite is “Best crew” video. The line David Choi is dancing for the audition is something I can relate to Japanese comedy and British comedy…. means it is surely generic. You can't please everyone but if you also need somebody who seriously critique you in order to continue. There is no more important thing than 'Balance'.
One of the most crucial thing for Ryan to keep continue is not to get bored of his own work. He doesn't have a large crew, professional techniques, big budget, and using only YouTube as a media for distributing films has its own unique limitation. It is possible that these factors let his works lack flexibility and look all similar. This doesn't affect his fans if he keeps making good stuffs, but if he ends up get boring of what he is making... well that's an awful thought I hope he will ever be creative.
So, in the end, is there really no chance that he would become popular in Japan? Probably Youtube will continue to grow in Japan and in the world, and so does Ryan. Whether he will be known in Japan or not just depends on how much Youtube will be localized and how much the border between English videos and Japanese videos will remain strong or become blurred.
Starting mandatory English education in elementary school is a very good news for connecting Ryan and Japanese audiences, since if Japanese kids become interested in English from such an early age, what they will do is nothing but to watch youtube videos in English. Then they must find watching Ryan's video is hundreds times as fun as boring English class at their schools. Even my mom says it may be fun to study English with his funny videos when she just only take a peep of one of his videos playing on my laptop.
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