Cross-cultural communication （33）　

33） Thoughts on English-speaking celebrities
Celebrities who use their ability to speak English as a selling point started to appear from around 1970, and now they are no longer particularly rare. I myself have always been very interested in English, ever since my university entrance exams, so I have also been paying attention to the trends of these English-speaking celebrities. Please join me as I reflect on my 40 years of observing English-speaking celebrities.

The celebrity who has left the strongest impression on me from the 1970s is Agnes Chan from Hong Kong. As you all know, she made her debut in Japan as a typical idol singer and was very successful. As is the standard for idols at the time (is it still the same now?), her answers to interview questions were always the kind of comments you would expect from a slightly brainless girl. Her Japanese ability at the time may have been a factor, but my intuition told me that this was an act to fit in with the Japanese style of idol.

She later went on to study at Sophia University in Tokyo, and at that time I happened to hear her being interviewed in English on a radio program. She spoke in clear British English, objectively and matter-of-factly, about her success story to date and her ambitions for the future. In the interview, she also said that she was unhappy at the time of her debut, as she was forced to make some comments in Japanese that she was not happy with. So, even at such a young age, Agnes was able to use different images of herself in Japanese and English. This is something to be admired, but I wonder if there is anything that can be done about Agnes's Japanese, which still has a strange intonation. She has lived in Japan for longer than she has in Hong Kong...

In the 1980s, Y? Hayami, who grew up in Hawaii, was a famous English-speaking TV personality. She also debuted as an idol singer, and I think she was relatively mature in her responses from the time of her debut. She also often spoke in English on English-language TV programs, but I don't think there was much difference between her English and Japanese. However, in her case, it seems that her cultural roots are in Japan, and from a certain point in time she also started appearing on variety shows, and she enjoyed using Japanese, even using the Shimura Ken’s gag “Hayami Yu, Hokutenyu, sumo wrestler at the time” in a self-deprecating way. At one point, she was a regular on a program about English education for children, and she handled it very naturally.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, an English speaker who left a lasting impression was news anchor Tetsuya Chikushi. He was not a returnee, but he competed using English that he had learned through his own efforts and honed through his work. At a time when trade friction with the United States was becoming a problem, protest rallies against Japan were being held frequently in various parts of the United States. He tried to get an interview with one of the organizers. He did this on the stage of the protest rally, of course in English. In a situation where he was 100% outnumbered, he repeatedly asked sharp questions that exposed the inconsistencies in the American side's arguments. Although his English was not fluent, he conducted the interview with accurate grammar and without becoming emotional. I have never seen anything that can compare to that interview.

The talent I'm most interested in right now is Mari Sekine. She is the daughter of the comedian Tsutomu Sekine, but she studied at an international school in Tokyo from elementary school and graduated from university in America, so she is a full-fledged bilingual. She probably got into the entertainment industry through her father's connections, but she doesn't seem to be conceited about it, and I think she is steadily fulfilling her role as the daughter of a comedian who is fluent in English. Her real talent is shown in her interviews with Hollywood actors and actresses. Until now, the interviewers have been cute-faced and good at English, but their questions have been run-of-the-mill and they have never improvised. However, Sekine's interviews are quite unique. It seems that she herself has done a lot of research into the work before the interview, and she takes a particular part of the work and first gives her own impressions, before asking the actor what he thinks. She is also quite tactful when she gets unexpected answers. The interviewer for the Fuji TV interview with the Japan-loving Hugh Jackman is always Mari Sekine.

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