J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

Which of the three (view larger), the rabbit, the fish, or the butterfly is the odd one out?

There is no right answer. I am hoping that Anglophones will have a stronger tendency to feel that the butterfly is the odd one out, for one if many reasons such as: the fish and the rabbit are edible where as the butterfly is not, the fish and the rabbit were in black and white so the colourful butterfly is the odd one out, the fish and rabbit both have eyeballs, hearts, and tails; they are closer on the evolutionary tree.


The clue to the cultural difference is in the animation, or rather the movement. In Japanese there is only one word for both "jump" and "fly," tobu. So both the rabbit and the butterfly are from a Japanophone perspective, 'tobu-ing' (tonndeiru) across the screen, so Japanese may see a greater connection between the rabbit and the butterfly. As mentioned on a previous post, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is making a resurgence thanks to recent cross cultural research on the affect of language upon thought(Boroditsky, 2001; Imai & Masuda, in press). If the "tobu" factor that which links the rabbit and butterfly together, then one would predict that less similarity would be perceived in static photography rather than an animation like that above.


Additionally as is well documented (Yomota, 1006), the Japanese have a passion for cute things, and consider fish consummately un-cute (so much so that they are happy to eat them alive and wriggling). Since the butterfly and the rabbit are both fairly cute, that may be another reason why Japanese may see the fish as the odd one out. Please ask your Japanese friends.

Images
Fish image From from the 1881 book A Voyage in the Sunbeam, by Annie Allnut Brassey scanned by zorger.com public domain images.
Rabbit image is Rabbit Conejo (original) by Marcos Telias.
Butterfly image is in the public domain and isolated and provided as a Bug image with transparent backgrounds by gif-favicon.com.

Bibliography
Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought?: Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive psychology, 43(1), 1–22.
Imai, M., & Masuda, T. (in press). The Role of Language and Culture in Universality and Diversity of Human Concepts. Retrieved from http://www.ualberta.ca/~tmasuda/ImaMasudaAdvancesCulturePsychology2012FINAL.pdf
Yomota, I. 四方田犬彦. (2006). 「かわいい」論. 筑摩書房.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化