INVESTIGATION
No less than 250,000 visitors are expected from Thursday, and until Sunday at the Parc des Expositions Villepinte, north of Paris, for Japan Expo which, as its name suggests, is a fair dedicated to culture Japanese. This show, the largest of its kind in Europe, shows that France is particularly sensitive to the Japanese culture, which continues to gain ground in the Hexagon.
"When young people see Naruto eating his bowl of ramen, it fascinates them"
This Japanese fever in France, it is driven by the success of the manga. France is the second country that consumes the most of these Japanese comics in the world behind Japan itself. Nearly 17 million volumes were sold to us last year, according to the GFK research institute. A record.
As a result, today many young French people are growing up in Japanese culture. And that creates a kind of virtuous circle. "When they read Naruto, which they have very easy access, anywhere, even in media library, for free, and when they see him eat his bowl of ramen, it fascinates them," says Matthieu Pinon, author of Teleportation Japan. "So we're curious to see what ramen is, and ramen is the noodle dish that is the equivalent of ham-butter for the busy businessman in Japan. It can have a bowl of ramen so when they find themselves on a festival, they want to buy their bowl of noodles, they want something that comes from Japan, which is concrete.
87,000 French tourists to Japan in 1998, 300,000 in 2019
The manga is therefore a gateway to Japanese culture. To keep the previous example, the young person who will want to eat at a ramen restaurant, he will go with his parents. Who themselves will be interested for example in printmaking or calligraphy hanging on the wall of the restaurant. Until the day when the whole family goes on holiday in Japan. The figures show a certain craze for the Land of the Rising Sun. In 1998, 87,000 French tourists made a trip to Japan. In 2010, they were 150,000. And in 2018, they were over 300,000, a new record.
Thomas is the illustration of this journey, which starts from a piece of culture and ends in the Japanese archipelago. "First of all, I was interested in video games in general, not necessarily Japanese, and since it's related communities, I was also interested in manga, in anime." In discovering this, I became interested in Japan in general. , to the wider Japanese culture, "says the young man, who flew Friday for the first time to Japan. "I'm going to do a language course to deepen the language, because I started to learn this year, so I'm still a beginner.It's a rich culture.It makes you want to dig it, and the best way, it's is to go in real life. "
The French are getting into the manga
And the consequence of all this is that Japanese culture eventually infused in France. Many of our greatest chefs have returned from Japan with Yuzu, a kind of Japanese lemon, in their suitcases. Ditto for our designers. Comics, we are going on to the manga, and with some success! Example with the manga Radiant, the designer Tony Valente, which is published in Japan and is even entitled to an adaptation in cartoon. "It's a great consecration, especially since I did not expect to be sold in as many countries, more than a fortnight now, on all continents.It's all about it.I was thinking: we're going to break in the end, it's the best selling of many of the foreign publishers, "says the author.
And these Franco-Japanese exchanges could reach new records in the months or years to come. Millions of French people will indeed discover the Land of the rising sun on TV, with the World Cup and rugby in September, and the Olympic Games next summer.