The voices of adult anime/‘manga’ fans in Australia: Motivations, consumption patterns and intentions to learn the Japanese language

This article extends previous quantitative work done regarding the attitudes that self-identified fans of Japanese popular culture or JPC have to learning the Japanese language. Following standard qualitative methods, four focus group interviews were conducted in which seven informants were asked a series of questions concerned with their initial contact with JPC, their views about JPC, their consumption habits, and interest in and experiences of learning the Japanese language. While a definitive conclusion is elusive, results point to rather complex associations between the self-identified fans of JPC, in particular anime and ‘manga’, and how they consume these two media and learning the Japanese language. We foreground the three modes of learning – formal, non-formal and informal – to locate possible sites where fans are able to learn Japanese and about Japan in a broader sense. We offer a preliminary conceptualization of a trajectory that a fan of JPC might take when considering to learn Japanese.