Pokemon and Japan

Pokemon comes from Japan. You know that already, especially if you're around my age. Shit, if you're around my age then Pokemon was probably the first thing you had ever heard of from Japan. Pokemon has become synonymous with Japanese popular culture, and many people are aware that something as unique as the Pokemon series could only have come out of Japan. But many people don't realize how deeply the Pokemon series reflects Japanese culture. After playing Pokemon for about 10 years and living in Japan for about 4 months, I've seen lots of similarities between the world of Pokemon and the country of Japan that would never have occurred to me otherwise. And that's what I'm gonna be talking about.

First of all, there's a really really obvious way in which Pokemon directly reflects Japan: each region of Pokemon is based on a region of Japan. Kanto, from Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, is not surprisingly based on the Kanto region of Japan, which is where Tokyo is. It's amazing how correctly the developers of Pokemon got the geography of the virtual Kanto to match the geography of the real Kanto. For example, try and guess which city in Pokemon is based on Tokyo. Come on, keep guessing. Are you ready? Well, if you said Saffron City then you're correct. There are really obvious ways in which the cities resemble each other: they're big, they're modern, they're hubs for travelers. But any game developer could create a city with all these features and have it not resemble Tokyo at all. What the developers of Pokemon did to really make Saffron City a virtual representation of Tokyo was that they gave it a greater metropolitan area. Tokyo is surrounded by Yokohama, Chiba, Kawasaki, and Saitama; Saffron City is surrounded by Vermilion City, Celadon City, Cerulean City, and Lavender Town. When I went to the top of the Tokyo TV Tower, all I could see for miles was city. This wasn't just Tokyo; it was all the cities that surrounded Tokyo as well. The Tokyo metropolitan area is so big that if it were considered one city (which it essentially is), it would be the biggest city in the world. With the limited technology that the first generation Pokemon games had, the developers did their best to make Saffron City mirror Tokyo in this way. In fact, I'm pretty sure Vermilion City (Kanto's port) is supposed to mirror Yokohama (Kanto's port). Plus, isn't it crazy that Vermilion City's gym leader is obviously supposed to be an American who came to Vermilion City since it's a port? I think so.

Johto, which is west of Kanto, and which was explored in Gold and Silver, is based on the Kansai region, which is west of Kanto, and which is where Osaka and Kyoto are. In Gold and Silver, Goldenrod City is supposed to be Osaka, and Ecruteak City is supposed to be Kyoto. As with Saffron City and Tokyo, it's crazy how deeply and accurately Ecruteak City mirrors Kyoto. Both are known as old, traditional cities with rich history, but the way in which Ecruteak City mirrors Kyoto goes way beyond that; many of the buildings in Ecruteak City are essentially real buildings that exist in Kyoto. The best example is the Tin Tower in Ecruteak City, where the main character of Gold and Silver finds the legendary golden bird Pokemon Ho-oh after climbing to the top. I'm almost certain that the Tin Tower is based on Kinkakujin, the golden temple in Kyoto. I mean, at the top of the golden temple is a statue of a golden bird.

Plus, in Kyoto there is also a silver temple. There isn't one in Ecruteak City, but there is another tower that burned down. And I mean, come on. Kyoto has a gold temple and a silver temple. The games that feature Kyoto, I mean Ecruteak City, are Pokemon Gold and Silver. Coincidence? I don't think so. Plus, Osaka and Kyoto have the same relative geographical locations as Goldenrod City and Ecruteak City. And I'm pretty sure Violet City, another, smaller old city, is supposed to be Nara, another, smaller old city which also has the same geographical position.

Hoenn, from Ruby and Sapphire, is supposed to be Kyushu, the island to the southwest of Japan's central island, Honshu. Basically, if you turned a map of Kyushu on its side, you'd have a map of Hoenn.

I don't really know much about Kyushu, so I can't really comment on how similar it is to Hoenn. But I do know that Kyushu's two biggest cities, Fukuoka and Nagasaki, correspond to Hoenn's two largest cities, Rustboro and Slateport, respectively. And Hoenn definitely has much more of a southern island vibe to it than any other main region in the series; most of its routes have water in them, most of the cities are coastal, and the climate is mostly warm. Plus, Kyushu is essentially a volcanic island, and so is Hoenn; at Hoenn's center is Mount Chimney, which I think is supposed to be Mount Aso. The areas around the volcano in the game obviously had a lot of thought put into their design. As they're far from the coast and have skies filled with ash, they have very low populations, and the people have to adapt to a harsh environment.

Sinnoh, the region from Diamond and Pearl, is Hokkaido. I mean, just look at a map of both.

You even have Jubilife City, Sinnoh's biggest city, in the exact same geographical position as Sapporo, Hokkaido's biggest city. Plus, Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan and has the coldest climate, as does Sinnoh, which is the only region in Pokemon that has snow in it. 

So that's just one way in which Pokemon actually mirrors Japan. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a Pokemon region yet based on Aichi, which is where I've been staying. But the developers have to get to it eventually. I mean, they've already used four regions of Japan as locations.

But there are other ways in which the Pokemon series really reflects Japanese culture. I'm currently almost done replaying Pokemon Sapphire, and I've noticed a few things in the game that are so similar to Japan. I didn't notice them when I played the game for the first time, but after being in Japan they're obvious to me. One instance where this occurred was in Rustboro City, one of the first locations visited in Hoenn. While you're there, you save a worker for the Devon Corporation, and as a way of saying thank you he takes you to meet the company president. When I first played the game I didn't think anything of this, but now I realize that this plot point is deeply rooted in Japanese society. In Japan, when you meet the president of a company, it's a BIG DEAL, way bigger than in America. For example, I've met my college president twice already, and almost every student at the school has. He comes to every event and tries to be very approachable. I've even seen people openly criticize him to his face, partly because no one is really afraid to. He doesn't have an air of mystery to him or anything. Shit, everyone at the school knows that he's openly gay, and him and his life partner serve breakfast to everyone on Halloween. To be fair, I go to a really small hippie college, and I know that this isn't representative of everywhere in America, but I also know other people at different colleges who've gone to their school president's house for dinner. Basically, the fact is that something like this is far from out of the ordinary in America, and at the very least most American students have seen their college president before. 

Now that that long tangent is over, I'll talk about how it's different in Japan. I have met my Japanese college president once, but it was an entirely different story. All of the foreign students were told a week in advance that we had to wear fancy clothes on a certain day to meet the college president. When we did, we went up to his office on the top floor of the central building, taking a secret elevator that only certain (not all) administrative people are allowed to use. All of the other elevators in the building don't go up that far. The school president's office was one of the nicest offices I've ever been in. If you sold all of the furniture and decorations that were in his office, it would probably be more money than my school has ever had in its history. Then we had to introduce ourselves in formal Japanese. Basically, meeting the college president in Japan was an honor and a privilege, as opposed to in America, where my college president has served me breakfast in women's clothing. Not that I don't have respect for my college president, but I'm not forced to have respect for him like I am in Japan. I doubt that more than 10% of the student body at my Japanese school has ever seen the college president in person. And certainly very few of them, if any, are ever allowed to go to his office. Even the staff members who took us there were clearly nervous.

So basically, the plot point of Sapphire where you meet the company president would have much more significance to a Japanese audience. In fact, the scene of the game where you meet the president was so similar to the experience I had. In the game, you go up a secret elevator that is only for company employees to the president's top floor office, which is more nicely decorated than anywhere else in the game.

There's another plot point early in Sapphire that reminded me of Japan as well. At one point, you go to an island city where everyone is following a random fashion trend. The way it works is that everyone on the island keeps quoting one phrase that consists of two randomly generated words. So every time you play the game the phrase will be two different words, and they'll rarely make sense. When I first played the game, my only thought was something along the lines of "Wow, they really could have programmed this part better." But now I realize that that's so close to how Japanese fashion is. I can't tell you how many times someone has come up to me and asked me what the two words on their shirt meant, only to be surprised when I told them it didn't mean anything. Basically, that part of the game couldn't have been programmed better, and I only realize that now.

There are a few other aspects of the games that are based on Japanese society, such as Team Rocket, an organized crime syndicate that runs a casino (the Yakuza, who run nearly every pachinko parlor), and Poke-marts, which are located everywhere, are open 24 hours, and sell everything you could possibly need (Japanese convenience stores). But the crazy thing is that the core gameplay element of the Pokemon series is actually also based on something real in Japan. During the summer, lots of Japanese kids like to capture these giant wild beetles with crazy horns and pincers and have them fight each other. Sound familiar? If not, I'll provide you with some visual aides. 

Doesn't help? Well maybe this one will.

So basically, if you go to Japan you can stage a real life battle between Pinsir and Heracross. I've even heard that this culture of fighting bugs was the initial inspiration for the entire Pokemon series. 

So there you have it. The world of Pokemon is essentially Japan. That's one reason why every location in the games is so detailed. They're based on real world locations. I hope you've learned something from this post, and that next time you play a Pokemon game (like the remakes of Gold and Silver for the DS, which I'm pumped about), you think about this a little. At the very least, you probably learned from this post what a complete nerd I am.