I don’t think I’ve heard a genuine complaint from a Japenese person about Japan, or a Spanish person about Spain, or any other country from a native.
I don’t think I’ve heard a genuine complaint from a Japenese person about Japan, or a Spanish person about Spain, or any other country from a native.
Everyone complains about their own country. The Japanese complain about Japan all the time too - the whole “salaryman running off to start a ramen shop” dream is a complaint about th country. Just because you can’t see it means you’re not understanding subtext.
It’s not “subtext” when you straight-up can’t read the text (i.e. don’t understand the language) :D
You don’t need to read the language to understand what they’re meaning by it (I don’t speak Japanese) and there’s examples in other countries of this too, including English (in the UK it used to be the dream to run a pub). Anyone who “has a dream” where they escape the rat race and/or becomes their own boss and/or moves to “the country” or even out of the country is making a political statement with every one of those thoughts/dreams.
THAT is the subtext, not the actual text. It requires no deep understanding of verbal/written language, just an understanding of human communication which is more nuanced than simply what we say or write.
How are you even going to know about that if you don’t understand a word of it? Machine translation is too inaccurate to read forums and I’ve never encountered this specific dream of opening a ramen shop in manga or anime. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen a UK person who dreams of opening a pub, either; I think you need to seek out very specific online spaces to see that kind of thing or talk to the people face to face.
This isn’t something I’ve seen online either tbh. But the UK thing was certainly very popular having talked to people in their 30s-40s, though admittedly this was about 25 years ago. Nowadays life is much harder so just the idea of maybe one day affording a house and having survivable wages is more of concern! The dream of owning a pub is so far above what current 30yos could reach. Plus, pubs are all owned by breweries these days so the of the old freehold pub has died.
In Japan, it’s something I’ve seen several times in Japanese documentaries on NHK, which have been translated. Again, I don’t know if this is still the dream of the younger folks - it was 50yos that wanted to do that previously. The US equivalent was “the American Dream” that people still wish for, even though it’s unlikely. It’s a similar feeling, or hope, that for most won’t come true, no matter what they do. These aren’t “specific online spaces”. These are the hopes and dreams for a better future - if you need to have those, you’re making a statement.