It was even worse with the old regular Japanese spring break Doraemon, whose TV series was put together by Onuki Nobuo and so on in 1973. That darn bouncy blue cat never came to Indonesia until 1990. And it was a fever, too, back then. Just like what happened to the foul-mouthed kid Shin mentioned in the above, images of Doraemon appeared on every emblazonable thing on the Indonesian soil -- giving temporary ways to make a living to those creative enough to make the stuff and reckless enough to have absolute faith in the inexistence of copyrights.

But that's what you got when any scrap of whichever old good show on TV must be taken as a surprising treat -- since TV stations obviously never think of good shows as part of their job. And, typically Indonesian, this; after the political overhaul involving the sacking off of a regime that had been dictatoring Indonesia for 30 years, this has changed, too.

Moreover, it is always several bytes different when it comes to Indonesians who could be said of as active fans of anything Japanese. All foreign languages -- especially those written in the Chinese scripts -- were forbidden to get distributed in Indonesia, except (thank God) English. This included spoken tongues. So we got no Japanese movie where the general public was supposed to be present. But fans are the hardest to lock in. Despite everything, a tiny clot of Indonesians went to see Kurosawa Akira's movies shown at the Japanese Cultural Centers, in small local cinemas, and around cine-clubs in universities, since 1970's. Another little flock of Indonesians kept collecting Japanese anime videos and comic books in 1980's -- although most of them were virtually illiterate when encountering the language.

1990's were not so heartbreaking in this territory of popular Japanese export items. By mid-decade, the internet has enabled Indonesians to see what they previously couldn't even have dreamt of, and consumerism around the area of Japanese stuff went beyond the stratosphere by the year 2000 -- it was probably the anime series Gundam's and Sailor Moon's and the musical maestro Kitaro's doing. Anyway, model kits started to be daily time-wasting to some Indonesians. Japanese comic books were just translated into our language and made to hit the shelves just a wee bit late compared to their initial release in Tokyo. Anime videos -- a lot of which were, sorry to say, coming to Indonesia as pirated versions bearing Chinese labels -- were no longer so scarce. And, as more TV stations were optimistically set up in Jakarta and all major cities in Java (the main island of the Indonesian archipelago), the thing we now refer to as 'J-Pop' began to induce osmosis among the Indonesian masses.

Ayumi Hamasaki's CD's can be found in any Indonesian record store since 2004. So is the case with Utada Hikaru's. It's just my bad luck that no one so far has considered importing T.M. Revolution, Bonnie Pink and Yellow Monkeys.

Anyway, yes -- all of today's J-Pop in Indonesia got its fandom via anime. We have been having several anime magazines since the end of last century, and it is through them that we came to know recent Japanese popstars and the latest fad around Ginza. After 2000, most Indonesian actors, actresses, singers, and models, as long as they haven't yet been older than 25, have been looking toward Tokyo rather than L.A. as the source of reference to give their hairdressers the right orders. Ben Affleck didn't create a new wave in this area, but Kimura Takuya did massively.

All in all, the Indonesian fandom has always been more tuned in when it comes to Hong Kong pop cultural products. Since the Run Run Shaw days of 1970's -- these producers seemed to turn out one movie every Monday, or so it felt -- from Chen Lung to Bruce Lee to Jacky Chen to Jet Li to Zhang Ziyi Indonesian moviemaniax never miss a beat. For one thing, Indonesians have always been preferring kung-fu rather than karate, Shih-huang-ti's warring states period rather than Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 'sengoku', the Wu Tang school of swordsmanship rather than Yagyu (click here if you have no idea what I'm talking about).

This might have been so because of our national history (Japan colonized us between 1941-1945; on the other hand a chunk of this country's citizens have always been Chinese-Indonesians), or maybe it's something else; the fact stays the same, although there has been a sizable cultist fans of Miyamoto Musashi since Yoshikawa Eiji's novel was translated into Indonesian in 1980's.

So there is bound to be a lot more Chinese-related stuff among the pop cultural cargo unloaded at Indonesian customs than the Japanese. But the latter has been increasing steadily though randomly -- we got the best of Watanabe Ken and Sanada Hiroyuki and Kitano Takashi; we also got a downpour of infinitely crappy flicks of those I can't even remember the names of. We got Studio Ghibli's wonderful videos; we also got unwatchable bulks of anime trash. But, again I must say, it's a good thing that we can pick from the assorted tomes now, since at least there is a supply.

NOTES FOR THE UNINITIATED:

What is 'anime'? Ueto Aya's killing-spree Why Kitano Takashi really earns the nickname 'Beat' What happens when Sanada Hiroyuki dabbles in black magic About a very good actor that Indonesians never remember the name of What the heck is 'Gundam', 'Doraemon', 'Sailormoon', etc.?

Postscript:

Even as late as 2005, these Indonesian fans still have no choice but to get masturbatory, culturally-speaking. They trade things and news and 'what's up with Kaneshiro Takeshi' (or Ito Hideaki or anybody of the kind) among each other only.

There's a major roadblock causing all this.

Virtually all Japanese sites -- including the so-called official homepages of everything and everyone on planet J-Pop -- are in Japanese script. They seem to kick away everybody who doesn't speak and read and write their language from the sphere, some spirit that runs exactly against the tide of the times and is decidedly the opposite of the Japanese entertainment industry's ambition to get worldwide marketplace at their disposal. Even as the entire nation itself has been notoriously hard to do with English, this smacks of insulatory systems of a thousand years past.

I hope someday there would be someone to fix that.

It's not so funny to brush off shoulders with the made-in-Japan stuff solely on American or German soil. Without American and German fans, so far, even the most famous celebrity of Japanese descent would have never ever been heard of outside his or her own country. Really.

If not for Tom Cruise, no single creature outside Honshu would ever suspect there is one beautiful actress named Koyuki.That is the reason why Tom Cruise exists at all; to him the entire Japanese Actors' Guild owes the whole world -- except Watanabe Ken and Sanada Hiroyuki.

And just in case you haven't noticed yet: Ito Hideaki doesn't even have his own web site.

If you possess a lot of time to usefully waste, maybe you'd consider cranking up homepages for him -- because I'm really busy with Oda Nobunaga. (Btw, Ito Hideaki stars in Kunitori Monogatari, 2005, as Oda Nobunaga, too! Click here for pictures.)

History of Japanese Comic Books & Animation Movies since Year 700 until Today The Indonesian Fans of Japanese Animation Movies & the Hilarious Sub-culture of 'Cosplayers' Best Japanese movies distributed in Indonesia Other Japanese actors known in Indonesia Between Japan and Java Japanese Poetry Japanese Literature, Authors & Books My Private Japanese Hero Real-life History of Indonesia Under the Japanese Occupation in the World War II Indonesian Movie About the Japanese Occupation of This Country

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