Superhero

I went to a Japanese festival two days ago. In the festival, I joined a seminar of Taiko, Japanese drum. It was so much fun, but so much tough. When finishing the seminar  for two hours, I was very tired. The reason was that playing Taiko was like sports, I mean it uses whole bunch of body. Through the seminar, it reminded me of Group harmony, which is often pointed out as a characteristic of Japanese culture. All participants, I think there were 14 that includes some children, beat drums together along a pattern. For that, we sang a song and danced, which is Ainu's, native Japanese. I thought the reason for doing so was to enhance harmony as a group. Some people would come up with a question why Japanese people like group harmony. I have an interesting example of group harmony. And in the following, I will introduce the example and also show a difference between single and group in the business world.

Firstly, I just want to say this example is not my original. I found it a textbook of sociology. Anyway, my example is a difference between Japanese and American Superheroes. For instance, Japanese hero is Pokemon, Ultraman, Dragon Ball and so on. A point in common among there story is that a hero works as a team, taking risks to save one another from danger. On other hand, American superhero generally works alone such as Superman, Spider-Man, Hulk et cetera. In addition, I have an evidence that Japanese people prefer Japanese heroes. According to Japanese Wikipedia, , a series of films about Pokemon that is one of Japanese animation was gross and audiences in Japan more than a series of Spider-Man. However, it is not correct in terms of gross, according to Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Inc. (n.e.). These evidences are not perfectly supporting the idea. And I know my evidences have a piece of bias. Pokemon takes it for granted that Japanese people prefer Pokemon to Spider-Man because Pokemon is from Japan. But, Harry Potter was more likely to be success than Pokemon and Spider-Man all over the world and also in Japan, even though Harry Potter's author is from Britain. In my opinion, the reason why Harry Potter was accepted in Japan was the story is similar to the stories of Japanese animation, from a point of view that a hero works as a team but not alone, such as Toaru Majutsu no Index. Thus, though the idea that people prefer group harmony in Japan may be still only a hypothesis, these example seems to me to show Japanese people like group harmony and working as a team.

Finally, I will introduce a real superhero. It is creators who create comic books. I read a serious journal, "Superman or The Fantastic Four? Knowledge Combination and Experience in Innovation teams" by Taylor and Greve (2006). This is not only interesting title, but this contents are also interesting. In a comic book industry, genre experience, which stands for diversity of backgrounds as the number of genres in which creators had worked over the year, hold by a single individual promotes innovation, while genre experience in a team does not. Some people still discuss which working by single or teams is better. It seems to depend on the situations and what kind of background people have, according to the thesis.

Which superhero is your favorite? Superman? Or Japanese hero?