This follows up my post on itsudemo, where I explained why this should be read as “anytime” (as in, “at any time”) from a few points of view. You’ll see why below. It was inspired by a little slice of anime.

The girl in this anime (Persona 4, incidentally), a cute 9 year old named Nanako, received a notice/survey from her school. The school was holding an open classroom for parents to come see how their children are being educated, anytime between 1pm and 5pm on the indicated day. This was a big deal to Nanako, because she felt like her father was becoming an increasingly remote part of her life. It wasn’t so simple; her father was a police detective who couldn’t let go of Nanako’s mother’s having been killed by a hit and run driver who remained at large, a cold case with little prospect of resolution.

Of course, what wasn’t good was the father becoming ever more remote. There’s something of a family crisis and finally, her father, who was the one in the wrong here, signed the form as above.

So, Nanako reads the form…

Nanako: “I tsu de mo…. nani ka.” 

Being this cute is criminal. Your dad's gonna arrest you, Nanako.

So yes, she sounds as cute as she looks saying this. But, this brings up the crux of the matter: that’s not actually what the pen writing in black in the first image says. It actually says, “itsudemo kanou”, that is, 可能 (かのう), composed of “can” and “ability”. It’s usually read as “possible” or “feasible”.

In other words, her father was conveying that he could make it to the open classroom “anytime”. In other words, he wouldn’t allow work to drown out his relationship with his daughter any further.

Why didn’t Nanako read it that way? Ah, well that’s because the kanji was above her reading level. So she used nanika (何か、なにか) instead.

The kanji used in “nanika” (and there’s only one) is the kanji used for “what” types of questions. The “ka” is the “question” particle that every young Padawan learning Japanese has drilled into his/ her head from the earliest stages; the particle acts as a question mark in grammar.

The problem is, this isn’t grammar; it’s vocabulary. Here, I’ll show you a subtly different use.

In the above example, the “ka” in “nanika” represents uncertainty. In other words, it’s not a simple “What?” question; it’s expressing a thought more like, “What is this…?”. In other words, “nanika” expresses that the speaker doesn’t know what the “what” actually is.

Therefore, nanika = “something”, as in, “something or other”. 

 Let’s go back to Nanako.

Nanako: “I tsu de mo… something.” 

That’s what it means. Of course, it just happens to sound ten times cuter in Japanese with Nanako saying “nanika” instead… because it’s adorable that she can’t actually read it yet; it underlines how young she is.

Father: “It means, I can go anytime.” 

I’m paraphrasing; I don’t have the episode handy, but he explains what it means in language she can understand. This is followed by the happy Nanako celebrating and being glad she can be seen with her father in front of other students and their parents and not feel left out anymore.

That’s one case solved, at least. – J

So a friend of mine showed me this post about “I hate Japan some more.” The writer lives in Japan and teaches classes there. He has found a new reason to hate Japan, and I do not care for it or him. If you hate what you’re doing, who’s forcing you to do it? No one forces me to like Japan. I do it because I care, because I prefer to be motivated by positive emotions instead of negative ones, and because I am not a jerk.

Part of this guy’s rant is that he doesn’t see the point of getting kids to identify goals for later in life. “Let kids be kids.” No, let kids be students. Without goals it’s hard to motivate yourself to do something truly difficult, like learn Japanese right after leaving high school and sticking with it through thick and thin for years. As for America not being concerned about scores and grades… ever heard of No Child Left Behind?

As for Japan being restricted and constrained, yes, it is. Real life isn’t 100% like anime. Why would it be? Anime is fantasy. People wouldn’t fantasize about freedom of action if there weren’t constraints. Deal. We exist in the real world, and we should have what fun in it that we can while not forgetting that it is real. – J

Origin

In Japanese, 服 (fuku) simply means clothing. In the case of an individual set of clothes, we may safely read this as outfit.

Sailor Fuku = sailor outfit.

The “sailor outfit” came to Japan in the early 1920’s. Although a different school claims to have invented the sailor fuku first, the sounder claim rests with Fukuoka Jo Gakuin (a university for women, hence the “jo” part, 女 (woman)), where the principal, Elisabeth Lee, modeled the uniform after the sailor uniforms of the Royal Navy (the name of the navy of the United Kingdom).

In light of the fact that the gakuran, the stereotypical “male Japanese student uniform” used in Japan, is actually based on Prussian military uniforms of the time, uniforms reflecting a) the concept of military uniformity, b) the fact of being Western clothing, makes clear the cultural context.

A gakuran.

In fact, the Japanese for gakuran, 学ラン, is “gaku” for “study” plus “ran,” representing a pre-modern Japanese term for “the West.”

So, both the gakuran and the sailor fuku are intended to evoke Western modernity mixed with military uniformity.

Things have come a long way since then.

Wide Variations

Schools widely vary in their official uniforms, and not only do these uniforms have official seasonal variations for summer and winter conditions. In addition to this, schools without iron fisted discipline levels see schoolgirls modify their outfits by shortening the skirt (temporarily or permanently), wearing loose socks, wearing knee-length socks, and so forth. Boys may go as casual as they can in uniforms and not have everything fully buttoned and so forth.

Summer variation for sailor fuku.

School-assigned footwear is usually in the penny loafer style; that is, slip-on shoes. This is convenient in Japan where you would be taking your shoes off every time you enter a home.

In addition, and I realize this is stating the obvious, skirts are a lot shorter today compared to the 1920’s. WWII has come and gone and people want to enjoy their youth rather than feel like they’re serving in the military.

Cultural Power And Legacy

Sailor outfits are symbols of what was, to most adult Japanese people, a more innocent time, a time when the pressures of the modern world were confined to studying and when the rest wasn’t so bad.

Of course, the shorter the skirts get, the more this impression of innocence becomes associated with naughtiness and sexuality. This spin on things may be punted into the stratosphere by anime and visual novel games, but it is hardly an invention of fiction; it reflects a part of contemporary society.

Also, in modern times, 99%+ of Japanese public schools are co-ed. Therefore, boys are constantly seeing girls in sailor fuku, not only at a young age, but when there is, ah, shall we say, more to stare at.

Co-ed as the schools may be, groups teens of different genders rarely mix much (i.e. they aren’t seen going around town like that very often). There are various reasons for this, but keep in mind that public displays of affection are a much bigger no-no in Japanese society than in America. Such things are funneled into dating; this makes dating more intimate, but also keeps such intimacy from butting into the “buddy” system around which cliques form.

Thus, many boys have long memories of seeing girls in “innocent,” teasing sailor fuku but being only able to look, not to touch.

I think that this explains much about how adults look back at their school lives, about “what could have been,” and how these thoughts influence fiction in novels, anime, manga, games, and broader culture.