(the) Road to the Deep East

After her debut last year, Leah Dizon, a pin-up girl and singer from America, now seems to be becoming one of the icons of teens in Japanese. Not only unmarried guys who wants something to masturbate with, young girls are also admiring her beauty, or cuteness. Now in Parco, a famous fashion department store for the young, is appointing her as a model for the swimsuits in 2007. And it seems more and more, the chance to see her in TV shows is also increasing recently.

http://www.parco-swim.com/

There is a place can be called 'gaiji niche' in Japanese entertainment business. In this 'niche' Japanese TV audience wants some reachable exoticism (may sound odd to Western people) from the look of Western girls, and this Chinese-French-Filipino girl could succeeded to the throne.

However, as it happens to many people rose in the world, there appeared an envious counter attack to her. Naispo, one of the most quality papers in Japan as well as the Sun in the United Kingdom, revealed a very sensational scandal regarding to her. According to the article, Lear is actually a Japanese girl!!

Quoting the words from a editor from a pinup magazine, Naispo says:

“First, she was adversed as a girl from Las Vegas who hardly speaks Japanese, but later it turned out that she actually can speak Japanese very fluently. And she mentions some Japanese musicians' name as favorite musicians, X-Japan, Moriyama Naotaro, Utada Hikaru. It is last spring she came to Japan. Excluding Utada, it's mysterious that she knew such a (old) musicans. And her favorite food is Kimchi and yakiniku. It's also suspicious combination for a girl grown up in the United States.”

“Her profile, the story that the pictures she uploaded to the Web page in America attracted Japanese audience's attention and Leah promote to Japanese agency herself after that, seems to be fake and fabricated one. She had already planned to debut in Japan. It was a process of well-planned promotional activity.”

“Actually, she'd been in Japan before. Hence she knows about Japanese well, and can speak Japanese.”

“The agency is concealing the fact that she can speak Japanese to protect the 'myth' of Leah, and it needs the condition that she can speak Japanese.)
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Hence, Leah is not American, but Japanese, or at least, she can speak Japanese.

...Maybe the readers of this blog may laugh at his analysis in the first paragraph. Japanese culture is now being recognized deeply in many foreign countries for anime and manga's success, and there are lot of foreign Japanese lovers who know about Japanese music more than Japanese, just as some Japanese are geeking out in American or British pop.

And as for her musical taste, Naispo is concealing some facts to mislead the readers. Actually, she ALSO loves Red Hot Chili Peppers, DEFTONE, and Korn. What does Naispo's writer say to these bands? Red-chili's name certainly sounds a bit old to me, but does he say that they are not the taste of Americans?

It is true that she has a Japanese-American cousin, so she could have more chances Japanese-mania girls in the United States, but it's not so strange story. Japanese culture is now being recognized by foreign countries more than ever in the history, and admired more than Ukiyoe-boom in 17th century, as far as I guess.

But unfortunately, for the people of old generation, this situation can't be acceptable or believable, and this kind of groundless suspicion is made. And the people in the show business agenies are also the old deaf and blind who are missing those business chances in oversea. There is a proverb, “Seeing is believing”, but an agency can't think of selling a group oversea even after a lot of people admiring the group in Thailand.

Anyway, let's get back to Leah. I don't think she is Japanese, and she is good at Japanese only because she is learning it in the best condition. Amazingly, even when she barely speaks Japanese, she had been appearing the TV show as a hostess. She can't help being good at it!! It's very similar to the situation of foreign Sumo Wrestlers, who always surprises us by their too fluent Japanese.

Personally, I don't like Lear so much, but it's too sad there are some baka old and wicked men who are making groundless suspicions on Japanese culture loved in foreign countries. And I can easily imagine there would be some baka middle-aged office workers who believe in this article and boast this baka theory in a izakaya bar in Shinbashi. “Hey, do you know Leah-chan is actually Japanese!?”... As long as these bakas survive, it seems it will take a bit before the genuine opening of Japan to the world starts.