We got this from “A frustrated (American) Tolkien Fan in Japan,” who’s really looked into the LACK of a ‘LOTR craze’ in Japan. Seeing how things stand at present, it’s possible that this country will go absolutely wild when they see LOTR after having had [apparently] no access to a good translation in print, which is what I’m learning. I’m very curious to see what that could lead to. Here is what our correspondent wrote:<\/p>\n
“Regarding the “relative lack of popularity and awareness of LOTR” in Japan, after recovering from my shock of having to wait 3 extra months, I queried several of my co-workers here in Tokyo. <\/p>\n
Most are male, Japanese, techie\/engineering types, mid 20’s to late 30’s. Most have heard of the name (the old name is “Yubiwa-Monogatari”, The Tale of the Ring; the movie site is pushing a phoenetic version of “Lord of the Ring”, which sounds much cooler), but none of them have read it and none of them knew anything about a movie being made. Role-playing games are huge over here, and translations of Harry Potter crap are all over the place. I have no idea what’s up with Tolkien’s works.<\/p>\n
A quick check of Amazon.co.jp lists several printings of LoTR (1972, 1977, 1992), various Hobbits, a Silmarillion (1981), and a couple other works by Tolkien. Just about all of them were translated by one or both of the same two people.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, there is bad market penetration in Japan for LoTR”.<\/p>\n
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