The Peculiarities of Japanese Movie Watching (if you’re an American) (Part I of II)
(日本語版あり）
The United States is undoubtedly the king of the film market, but it turns out Japan is no slouch. Until being passed by India recently, Japan was the third largest film market in the world in terms of revenue. Considering that Japan trails only the United States (of Hollywood), China (of 1.3 billion people) and India (of Bollywood), it says quite a bit how much of a movie lover the Japanese people are.
I was born to movie loving parents and grew up in a movie loving culture, so naturally I’ve continued my movie loving ways even after returning to Japan.
Now that I’ve been here a couple years, I’ve noticed some odd peculiarities in the way Japanese watch film.
Take, for example, the time of day when Japanese go watch a movie. The theater is packed from lunch time into late afternoon on Saturdays and Sundays because it’s quite common for the Japanese to go during the day.
In the U.S., on the other hand, people almost always go to the movie theater at night. Film viewing during the day is so uncommon that theaters try to entice people to come watch while the sun is up by offering a discount called the matinée.
While I lived in the States, I was part of the crowd. Going back to high school, my routine was to meet up with friends, have dinner at a burger place, then head over to the near-by theater for a night cap.
In fact, the only movie I ever saw during the day was “Pearl Harbor” (2001), a movie I recall as much for its dreadfulness as for the strangeness I felt watching it before lunch. After that experience, I vowed never to come out of a movie theater to see sunlight ever again.
Habits are weird things, though. In late 2017 into early 2018, I lived in the United States for the first time in a couple years. Not surprisingly I frequented the movie theater every week, but what surprised even me was how often I was in the theater during the afternoon. I only recalled how unusual this is after sitting in an empty theater week after week.
