When Japanese people hear “India,” many different images may come to mind.
Curry, naan, the Taj Mahal, Gandhi, yoga, Hinduism.
Look in a different direction and other images appear: IT, mathematics, a huge population, and rapid economic growth.
India is extremely well known, yet if you ask, “What kind of country is India?” it can be surprisingly difficult to give a simple answer.
That may be because several very different images of India exist at the same time in the Japanese imagination.
The most familiar connection is probably curry.
In Japan, the term “Indian curry” is completely ordinary, and Indian-Nepalese curry restaurants are common in many towns. The combination of a large piece of naan with curry has also become very familiar.
But Japanese curry and Indian curry are not the same thing.
Japanese curry rice came to Japan through Britain and developed into its own distinct Japanese dish.
Even so, “curry” and “India” remain very strongly connected in the Japanese imagination.
There is also the India Japanese people encounter through history and religion.
At school, students learn about the Indus Valley Civilization and Gandhi, and they also learn that Buddhism originated in India.
Modern India may look very different from the temples and Buddhist statues people see in Japan, but tracing the history of Buddhism reveals a deep connection between the two countries.
Then there is another image of modern India.
IT, engineers, mathematics, startups.
India’s long history exists alongside the image of a modern country growing at remarkable speed.
Both images exist at the same time.
There is also a slightly unusual phrase people sometimes hear in Japan when talking about travel to India:
“If you go to India, it will change the way you see life.”
Whether that actually happens depends entirely on the person, of course, but India has long been spoken about in Japan in that way.
The crowds, the intensity of the streets, traffic, religion, and rhythms of daily life that differ from Japan all contribute to the image of India as a place where simply being there might have a powerful effect on you.
And yet, despite all these familiar images, there are also enormous gaps in what Japanese people know about India.
Cricket is perhaps the clearest example.
In India, cricket has extraordinary popularity.
And Virat Kohli is a global sporting superstar.
Yet in Japan, many people do not even know the rules of cricket, and plenty of Japanese people may never have heard Kohli’s name.
They know curry.
They know Gandhi.
They know the image of India as an IT powerhouse.
And yet they may know nothing about one of the most famous athletes in India.
That says a lot about how the Japanese image of India is built through a limited number of entry points.
India is not a country that Japan knows little about.
Quite the opposite. There are many things Japanese people know about it.
The interesting thing is that those images point in very different directions.
Curry and IT.
Yoga and megacities.
Gandhi and startups.
A country people say can “change your outlook on life,” yet one where even the name Virat Kohli may be unfamiliar in Japan.
For Japanese people, India is a country they know many things about, yet one that somehow refuses to fit into a single image.
References
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “India” and Japan–India relations
- Japanese education materials related to world history
- Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, materials on Japanese curry culture
- JETRO, materials on the Indian economy and IT industry
- JICA, India-related materials
- ICC, materials on Virat Kohli and cricket in India
