"Smart fan" communities internationally

[tim]

Don't know why but I was thinking about this today. Is anyone aware of substantial online communities of 'smart wrestling fans' somewhat akin to the greater DVDVR region we're in? Are there similar groups of Japanese fans who traded lots of tapes back in the day and talk about finding cool new matches from the US or Mexico? Is there a sizable German message board where people are putting together comps with the aim of critically viewing a bunch of obscure wrestling from Japan, Mexico, etc etc? Is the english-speaking online community unique in the scope of our deepest level of wrestling fandom?

[smitlick]

Theres definitely people that trade and sell tapes here in Australia and we have a forum or two for wrestling but nothing crazy like DVDVR or anything.

[Jingus]

What was the name of that European group of fans that loved American territorial wrestling? "Real in Memphis", or something like that?

[ohtani's jacket]

They were British fans. Don't think that really counts.

[Bix]

UKFF probably counts.

[gordi]

Background, for the people here who don't know me from other boards: I've been living in Japan for over three years now. I live in Nara City, near both Osaka and Kyoto. I go to Osaka Pro shows about three times a month, and other promotion's shows a handful of times a year. My Japanese is still pretty basic, but I have made a lot of casual Japanese friends through my hobbies (pro wrestling, sake tasting, weightlifting, music...) And my work (teaching private English lessons in cafes) and I love going out to inexpensive bars and talking to strangers. I always bring up pro wrestling right away when I meet someone new, because I have also always wondered about what the pro wrestling maniac scene is like over here.

 

Here's what I think I've found out so far. It's based entirely on my own experience and conversations and friendships. Others who live in Japan might have a different perspective:

 

The vast majority of the wrestling fans I've met over here are fans of one promotion in particular rather than fans of pro wrestling in general.

 

Two examples, to make it absolutely clear: I was with my close friend Kae and several other Osaka Pro fans when I met Akiyama in Osaka. Kae saw him first. She told me, "He is wearing a pro wrestling NOAH t-shirt!" but neither she nor any of the others recognized him. Everyone waited patiently while I got a picture and had a little chat. I was all excited "That was Jun Akiyama! Pro Wrestling NOAH champion!" It meant little to them, but they were happy for me, since I was so excited and everything.

 

Another time, we got free promotional cans of Chu-Hai (a fruity carbonated alcoholic drink) with pictures of Chono on them. I had to explain to Kae who Chono is. Kae goes to Osaka Pro every week, but neither Chono nor Akiyama rang a bell for her. That's not the least bit uncommon.

 

You do, at least occasionally, meet pro wrestling super-nerds who travel the country attending shows and collecting stuff and getting pictures with wrestlers. They are usually awesome to talk to, and also usually quite excited to meet a foreign fan of Japanese pro wrestling. In my experience, though, they are few and far between.

 

The lion's share of pro wrestling fans over here are entirely "I love this promotion or this pro wrestler so much!" in their attitudes and not at all "Hey everyone! Come read how clever and original my personal opinions about pro wrestling are!"

 

This is pretty clearly cultural. It's extremely important to be seen as displaying humility when expressing oneself in Japan. Japanese culture tends very strongly toward a polite uniformity of (expressed) opinion rather than an individual expression. As such, discussion boards like this one where the posters enjoy expressing and arguing about widely diverging opinions are pretty unlikely to exist in Japan. What's far far far more likely is a kind of shared appreciation scenario where someone posts a picture and everyone admires it.

 

I often discuss stuff like this with my higher-level private students and the idea that westerners find arguing to be fun and social is as difficult to grasp for them as I imagine the appeal of continuous gushing fan appreciation is to many of us. I'm just beginning to wrap my head around it after three years...

 

Underground tape trading is likely to be seen as a pretty shady deal over here.

 

Bootlegging/pirating isn't seen the same way here that it is in the west. People will spend real money to get official DVDs and DVD collections. Very few Japanese people will resort to pirating, compared to how ubiquitous it is in the west. I'm sure tape trading exists over here in some form. Dan Ginnetty surely knows way more about it than I do. That being said, there's no way, in my understanding, that it could possibly be as wide-spread in Japan as it is in the west.

 

That's my opinion. It's hardly the last word... but to me it's pretty clear that the smark community in Japan would have to be way different from the smark community in as we know it.

[ButchReedMark]

UKFF probably counts.

Probably not. The UKFF is an odd forum. I do love it so, though.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's extremely important to be seen as displaying humility when expressing oneself in Japan. Japanese culture tends very strongly toward a polite uniformity of (expressed) opinion rather than an individual expression. As such, discussion boards like this one where the posters enjoy expressing and arguing about widely diverging opinions are pretty unlikely to exist in Japan. What's far far far more likely is a kind of shared appreciation scenario where someone posts a picture and everyone admires it.

Reminds me of the time I came across an 80s Joshi bulletin board where they were posting pictures of crotch shots for everyone to admire. I've seen and read the equivalent of Japanese sleaze threads. It's the internet; all sorts of carry on goes on.

[Log]

Gordi, do fans of Osaka Pro (or wrestlers, for that matter) pay much attention to WWE? Is it seen as the pinnacle of the business there? Is it presented differently (Yoshi Tatsu: Master of Grappling!)?

[cm funk]

Every wrestling forum I've posted at has had a sizable population of fans from the UK and Australia, so I have always assumed they have the "smartest" fans after the US and Canada. You see a few posters from other European countries (I know EL-P is from France and believe either here or DVDVR there is a german poster or two), but you see lots of people from the UK and Australia.

 

I also know that Japan and Mexico have good sized smart communities, but due to the language barriers we don't really cross paths with them on our message boards

[gordi]

Gordi, do fans of Osaka Pro (or wrestlers, for that matter) pay much attention to WWE? Is it seen as the pinnacle of the business there? Is it presented differently (Yoshi Tatsu: Master of Grappling!)?

 

That's an excellent question!

 

The young guy front and center in that pic is my little bro Yuji. He is the one and only Osaka Pro fan I know well who is also any kind of WWE fan. He likes John Cena, but his favourite wrestler is Don Fuji. He's definitely an exception among Osaka Pro fans in the way he also follows other promotions.

 

From what I've seen and heard, Japanese people who follow WWE at all are way more likely to be into "American Culture" as a thing rather than "Pro Wrestling" as a thing.

 

Among the wrestlers, I've had the chance to talk pro wrestling with most of the Osaka Pro roster at one time or another and usually they got into wrestling because of being fans of guys like Choshu or Tiger Mask. Only two of them seem to be WWE fans, though I'm probably overlooking someone.

 

Tadasuke

 

As far as I know, Tadasuke is the only O-Pro guy who openly dreams of working for WWE one day. Hideyoshi is also obviously a big WWE fan. I've never talked to him about it, but it's pretty clear just from watching the way he wrestles that he's watched a TON of HHH matches.

 

Hideyoshi

 

Other than that... I honestly think that - among the Osaka Pro fan base and the Osaka Pro roster - the lion's share of them give way more of a crap about the Chikara Pro and PWG guys who've come to Osaka than they do about anyone on the WWE roster, or the NJPW roster for that matter. It's just a different world in terms of how wrestling fandom seems to work over here.

 

In terms of "...the pinnacle of the business" I just don't think that even hardcore Japanese pro wrestling fans generally think of it that way. For most Osaka Pro fans, Osaka Pro is what they care about. That's the only pro wrestling that matters to them. I've met quite a few Japanese guys in their 40s or 50s who are really nostalgic for specific eras: late 80s/early 90s AJPW or Early 80s/Tiger Mask-era NJPW, for example. For them, that's the be-all and end-all of pro wrestling.

 

I've never ever met a single Japanese pro wrestling fan who discusses pro wrestling in terms of "the business" or who seems to give the tiniest hint of a damn about who is drawing or which company is the biggest. They are fans. They don't try to position themselves as experts. As far as I can tell, the Japanese equivalent of "knowledgeable insiders" are, perhaps, the fans who go out to eat and drink with the wrestlers (like my good friend Kenji), rather than people who have access to behind the scenes numbers and info and so on...

 

Japanese wrestling fans who discuss pro wrestling as a business presumably do exist, but I've never met them... and talking about pro wrestling with Japanese people is something I've been doing obsessively for three years. .

 

I suppose if any thought whatsoever is given to which promotion represents "the pinnacle of the business" it would probably be NJPW for most Japanese fans anyway...

 

It's extremely important to be seen as displaying humility when expressing oneself in Japan. Japanese culture tends very strongly toward a polite uniformity of (expressed) opinion rather than an individual expression. As such, discussion boards like this one where the posters enjoy expressing and arguing about widely diverging opinions are pretty unlikely to exist in Japan. What's far far far more likely is a kind of shared appreciation scenario where someone posts a picture and everyone admires it.

Reminds me of the time I came across an 80s Joshi bulletin board where they were posting pictures of crotch shots for everyone to admire. I've seen and read the equivalent of Japanese sleaze threads. It's the internet; all sorts of carry on goes on.

 

I'd have to assume, though, that the overall mode of discussion would be almost entirely different on a Japanese board. I can imagine a Japanese board where people post crotch shots and admiring comments... but I can't imagine that anyone is snidely dismissing anyone else's choice of crotch shot or making "I can't believe this thread has gone 25 pages without anyone posting THIS shot!" type of comments.

 

 

YINLING! Queen of Crotch Shots! (In Japan, everyone would either politely agree or just not reply. Here, I'd only expect someone to reply if they violently disagreed and had the Apple Miyuki or Manami Toyota crotch shots to back it up).

 

I also simply cannot imagine that Japanese smark boards feature intense nuanced arguements about which crotch shots (or matches or wrestlers or promotions) are the best and which criteria to use when ranking them or whatever...

 

As I've said, I'd have to imagine that what you'd get in a Japanese smark community would be way more shared appreciation and way less competing to see who can demonstrate the deepest degree of esoteric knowledge or most refined tastes and virtually no arguing about which or whom is the best.

 

It's been my experience here with everything from pro wrestling to sake tasting to music appreciation to visiting temples that - among Japanese people - hipster oneupmanship culture doesn't seem to even exist here in anything like the form it takes in the west, nor does arguing about stuff as a form of enjoyment and appreciation. It seems to be mainly about getting into it, about working up some excitement and happiness over a shared enthusiasm... whatever that enthusiasm might happen to be.

 

I have to assume Japanese smark community discussion boards would have to be like that, as well.

 

EDIT: The one clear exception to the "Japanese people don't disagree with one another and argue about things for fun" rule of thumb is when it comes to food. Significant segments of the population love arguing about stuff like what rice-ball filling is best or what spices and/or sauce to put on a fried egg or which region of Japan produces the most delicious oranges... That's really the only exception I can think of, though.

[sek69]

Probably not the same since it's not internet based, but I always thought the fans who cheer the Rudos were kind of the Mexican equivalent to "smart fans" since they are cheering guys they want to instead of "yay face, boo heel".

[Log]

Thanks, Gordi.

 

I would love to see a thread devoted to 100 crotches better than Kurt Angle's and Shawn Michaels' crotches.

 

Maybe not, on second thought...

[FLIK]

Other than that... I honestly think that - among the Osaka Pro fan base and the Osaka Pro roster - the lion's share of them give way more of a crap about the Chikara Pro and PWG guys who've come to Osaka than they do about anyone on the WWE roster, or the NJPW roster for that matter. It's just a different world in terms of how wrestling fandom seems to work over here.

Makes me wonder how popular a site like Manhatten Drop is in Japan http://www.m-drop.com/ that's basicaly a North East indy fan site in Japanese or a site like Black Eye http://beye2.com/ that seems to be dedicated to posting news & show reports from all the Japanese companies along with a bit of WWE stuff.

 

Underground tape trading is likely to be seen as a pretty shady deal over here.

 

Bootlegging/pirating isn't seen the same way here that it is in the west. People will spend real money to get official DVDs and DVD collections. Very few Japanese people will resort to pirating, compared to how ubiquitous it is in the west. I'm sure tape trading exists over here in some form.

I've known of a few Japanese forums dedicated to posting rips of every wrestling & mma show you can imagine (imagine a ramped up version of the matches forum on DVDVR) so it's def out thear but i'm not sure how big the regular user base is.

[NintendoLogic]

I've known of a few Japanese forums dedicated to posting rips of every wrestling & mma show you can imagine (imagine a ramped up version of the matches forum on DVDVR) so it's def out thear but i'm not sure how big the regular user base is.

One limiting factor is that, if I'm not mistaken, not that many people have personal computers in Japan. They mainly access the Internet through their cell phones, which is less conducive to that sort of thing.

[GSR]

What was the name of that European group of fans that loved American territorial wrestling? "Real in Memphis", or something like that?

It's still limping along, but hasn't really been active in several years now.

[ohtani's jacket]

I've known of a few Japanese forums dedicated to posting rips of every wrestling & mma show you can imagine (imagine a ramped up version of the matches forum on DVDVR) so it's def out thear but i'm not sure how big the regular user base is.

One limiting factor is that, if I'm not mistaken, not that many people have personal computers in Japan. They mainly access the Internet through their cell phones, which is less conducive to that sort of thing.

 

Most people have a laptop.

[gordi]

Probably not the same since it's not internet based, but I always thought the fans who cheer the Rudos were kind of the Mexican equivalent to "smart fans" since they are cheering guys they want to instead of "yay face, boo heel".

Osaka Pro now has a significant number of hardcore fans - almost 20 per cent of the people who come regularly to Minami Move On Arena - who wear JOKER t shirts and carry JOKER towels and exclusively cheer for the members of the heel faction JOKER. Even though JOKER's leader Kuuga (the former Asian Cooger) is a pretty good friend and I really should be one of the Rudo-cheering crowd by now, I prefer to show my appreciation for JOKER by booooooo-ing loudly throughout their matches.

 

Underground tape trading is likely to be seen as a pretty shady deal over here.

 

Bootlegging/pirating isn't seen the same way here that it is in the west. People will spend real money to get official DVDs and DVD collections. Very few Japanese people will resort to pirating, compared to how ubiquitous it is in the west. I'm sure tape trading exists over here in some form.

I've known of a few Japanese forums dedicated to posting rips of every wrestling & mma show you can imagine (imagine a ramped up version of the matches forum on DVDVR) so it's def out thear but i'm not sure how big the regular user base is.

 

That's actually shocking to me! When I bring up the subject of downloading and pirating with my Japanese students and friends, the reaction is (to me) hilariously over-the-top in its negativity. It's like I brought up producing amateur snuff films or selling counterfeit penicillin to children's hospitals. In particular, one Chinese-born woman who works for a major corporation that I do business classes for was outraged at my question. Apparently, grey-area downloading is something that Japanese people think that only Chinese people do, and so she was absolutely adamant that she isn't like that!

 

I only have one student who openly admits to pirating stuff. He's a guy in his early 40s with a very respectable job who also happens to be a huge anime nerd. He will happily download an anime file... if and only if there's no way he can buy a DVD.

 

Since the overall attitude about pirating seems to be pretty ubiquitous, I'd just assumed that the kind of casual file-sharing that some of us engage in from time to time would not be a part of the scene in Japan.

 

I'm intrigued to hear that I was wrong about that!

 

I wonder if, in general, the people doing the downloading aren't the people who go to shows and that's why I've never met them... or if it's seen as such a shameful thing that even my good drinking buddies wouldn't own up to it if I asked them...

[ohtani's jacket]

I started teaching an EMI record executive recently and we began talking about the issue of downloading in Japan since the new downloading laws come into effect from October. Japan's CD sales are still relatively high compared to say America or the UK, but downloading exists. According to the music industry, there were 440 million legal downloads of music in 2010 and ten times the number of illegal downloads. Perhaps your students or the people you socialise with aren't so young.

[rzombie1988]

There's atleast one big japanese internet message board that I go on sometimes. But even with translators, it's really hard to get anything worthwhile out of it.

 

Some have already been found, but I know there has to be more japanese traders out there. The day they are found is going to be heaven. We've already seen pieces of it with some of DGinetty's hookups and it's only going to get better. With japan's otaku culture, there's gotta be people out there with insane collections. Only bad thing is that alot of japanese people prefer using their phones instead of computers(if they have one) so it's going to be a bit limited. With iphones becoming alot more common in Japan, I don't think that's going to improve.

 

There's some mexican smart fan boards like boxylucha and others. Again though, even with translators, it's tough to get an idea of what's being said. I mainly just use it for the cool retro lucha pics.

 

I always say that japanese fans support one promotion or a handful of wrestlers only and it's really the case. There's few people who go to many different shows. I know 2 or 3 people who do, but they often get free tickets to these other companies shows. The reason japanese people are this way is because it's really expensive to go to wrestling and no one seems to have the time to go anyway. The japanese lifestyle really takes most of your free time away with working on saturdays, working too much overtime and relying on time consuming trains and walking to get you everywhere. It's so easy to run out of time in Japan.

 

Alot of japanese fans asked me about WWE when I went there. Only bad thing is that I cannot understand Japanese well, so to make up for it, I control conversations with my limited japanese and didn't get to hear much about their thoughts.

[khawk20]

I've talked with Dan about the frustrations he has had otrying to get a lot of the Japanese vintage footage collectors to trade with him...and there is some really neat older stuff in some of those collections. Part of the problem is likely related to the previous discussions about bootlegging... those guys would be an older crowd, and would be extremely wary of trading the stuff they do have, especially to people outside of whatever trading communities that had to have been built over the decades.

 

If older folks are that adamant about how evil bootlegging things is, I can see why they would not want to take a chance on being revealed as a bootlegger. It's got to be part of the problem, I think.

[rzombie1988]

It's a pain in the butt to do anything with Japanese people and Japan. No offense to them but it takes a ton of effort and it ends up not being worth it. All of the complicated policies, rules and personalities make things hard. I got tired of dealing with it. I tried to set up just normal things like hanging out and it was equivalent to a court case.

[Ditch]

There are Japanese tape traders with anxiety over the prospect of 25 year old house show handhelds being circulated online.

 

The mind boggles.

[Bix]

There are Japanese tape traders with anxiety over the prospect of 25 year old house show handhelds being circulated online.

 

The mind boggles.

The stuff Max picked up? Why? Because they think that AJPW & NJPW will have the Yakuza hunt them down and kill them?

[gordi]

I started teaching an EMI record executive recently and we began talking about the issue of downloading in Japan since the new downloading laws come into effect from October. Japan's CD sales are still relatively high compared to say America or the UK, but downloading exists. According to the music industry, there were 440 million legal downloads of music in 2010 and ten times the number of illegal downloads. Perhaps your students or the people you socialise with aren't so young.

It's also at least conceivable that the music industry might be wildly exaggerating the amount and degree of profit that they are losing through downloading and pirating...

 

Interestingly, one of my six new students was really open with me about choosing to watch streaming videos online instead of buying DVD sets. She's in her early 20s, and just like the one other student who copped to occasionally downloading files, she's a huge anime nerd. It was during our fourth lesson that she admitted to watching a lot of anime streams. I often get to see some hidden side of my new students' personalities around the fourth or fifth lesson, once some trust has been established. She also gave me the name of a French streaming site, which I have subsequently forgotten...

 

I always say that japanese fans support one promotion or a handful of wrestlers only and it's really the case. There's few people who go to many different shows. I know 2 or 3 people who do, but they often get free tickets to these other companies shows. The reason japanese people are this way is because it's really expensive to go to wrestling and no one seems to have the time to go anyway. The japanese lifestyle really takes most of your free time away with working on saturdays, working too much overtime and relying on time consuming trains and walking to get you everywhere. It's so easy to run out of time in Japan.

I totally agree with this. It matches up exactly with my experience over here.

 

It's a pain in the butt to do anything with Japanese people and Japan. No offense to them but it takes a ton of effort and it ends up not being worth it. All of the complicated policies, rules and personalities make things hard. I got tired of dealing with it. I tried to set up just normal things like hanging out and it was equivalent to a court case.

On the other hand, this has not been my experience here at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. In my case, I've often been surprised, pleased, and even moved by the effort that my Japanese drinking friends, training friends, music friends, and wrestling friends will make to ensure that I am included in outings and activities. Most of my various-hobby-buddies don't speak English, but they'll always make the effort to send me a cell phone email in hiragana and katakana or to patiently and repeatedly explain what's happening in simple Japanese... Maybe it's just part of the difference between Kansai and Tokyo culture? Maybe I've just been unusually fortunate with people (which has been true for me pretty much my entire adult life)?