I’ve often lamented about my sidebar of Japan-based blogs being so English-language centric, and expat heavy. Needless to say there are a lot of bloggers in Japan who are writing in Japanese, and I haven’t really found a way to incorporate them into the list, not the least because my limited Japanese would never allow me to keep such a list updated. Fortunately, Japan-Japan has started a “Bloggers in Japan Writing Exclusively in Japanese” list of links page, currently listing 175 blogs, along with some translation sites for those who can’t read Japanese. I’m sure this is just the tip of a bigger iceberg, so if you know of sites not represented on the list, please let them know.
Related to this, Ken Loo, who maintains blogs in both English and Japanese, recently wrote an interesting piece further exploring whether or not blogging is becoming popular in Japan. [Update (July 29, 2003): Ken has re-done his English blog and this article is no longer available.] Furthermore, Ken writes about how a whole community of web diarists or “text site” keepers that existed in Japan before weblog software applications like Movable Type became available here has resented the way that their community has been usurped, so to speak. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, though the whole thing strikes me as a bit childish (kind of a music fan bragging about how he saw so and so back in the day, in a small club, before anyone knew who they were, etc.). At any rate, JBA (Japan Blogging Association), which was sort of a list of mostly Movable Type blogs, has closed (there’s an ominous looking — but unreadable to me — message at the site), apparently a casualty of this so-called burogu soudou (“blog war”).
Hi
I’ve just started my blog recently, so I wouldn’t claim to know much about this, but, as far as I know, many Japanese bloggers now feel, just like you, it’s rather childish to argue which was first, or categorise web sites into blogs, text sites, web diary, etc. And indeed it’s often very hard to distinguish them.
I don’t think it’s any more childish than having someone take credit for something you didn’t do. If at my job someone said they solved a problem that in actuality I solved I would be highly upset that due credit was not given.
For Blogs, the tradition of maintaining a diary online is very much a part for the Japanese web culture. They’ve been doing it for years, it’s a standard on almost every personal japanese website and has been long before the word “Blog” ever appeared.
What they are upset about is that for some reason their whole history is being ignored. Except for putting the word “blog” at the top of their diaries they have been all been “blogging” for the last 5 or 6 years but now people that call themselves “bloggers” are taking all the credit for having invented keeping a diary online. I’m sure I would be frustrated too.
I thought I’d add that I used to describe the difference between a blog and a web diary as two fold
1) The blog is the front page of your website. Clearly I was wrong. This site in particular is an example of that.
2) Blogs are easier to update. That may or may not be true.
If you want to see some Japanese sites try
http://www.surpara.com/
Just under the search box click any one checkbox then click search or kensaku (検索) and up will come lists of hundreds of sites. All of those sites are about anime or manga for the most part and almost every one of them will have a diary page of some sort. Also 70% of them will have a BBS or keijiban (掲示板). Most of them will also have an update history page or koushin rireki (更新履歴)
The same with moblogging. Japanese BBSes have had mobile phone support for years. To them, why is Moblogging news? If you made a BBS owner post only it would be a blog. If you made it so only the owner can start new topics it would be a blog with comments. Some of my Japanese female friends in particular have been moBBSing for years now.
Another thing that Japanese sites often have that I have not see elsewhere is pictures BBSes. Here’s one
http://www7.oekakibbs.com/bbs/ysp/oekakibbs.cgi
All of those picutres were draw in the BBS form. Click the last button on the page (the one with a black box around it) and up pops a Java app to draw pictures with. I’m sure at some point a feature like that will get added to some blog system and it will all be news even though it’s been going on here for years.
I am a newcommer to a blog world without history of those diary or bbs and know little about them. But I thought there was (is) bbc cultres in English world. Why the blog comes out of there?
I also can’t ignore the 2-channel http://www.2ch.net/
when I think about Japanese bbc or commenting culture…
While I can understand the frustration of those Japanese net nikki keepers, the difference is subtle but significant. Most blogs have comments. Most blogs have blogrolls. Most blogs have permalinks. Many blogs (including Hatena’s Diary service) now have Trackback.
They can bellyache about who did what when, but a blog and a nikki are 2 different things, even if they often look the same and read the same.
Besides, many of the Japanese BBSes and nikki sites are anonymous. That’s a big difference.
Kurt,
I’d love to read the article, but ken loo’s site link appears to be wrong…
If you include japanese “web diary” and “text sites” into the category of blog,
it can be said “Blog” had already been common before blog or “Movable Type” first came into Japan.
Japan has a long history of web diary and text site from its beggining.((i)-1,2)
So when blog was first introduced into Japan, it’s just one of usual web sites. No one, who were enjoying web diaries or text sites, got interested in it. It’s just “Everyone was blogging, so no one got into blogging.”
But non-japanese didn’t know much about japanese internet, and it looked like as if there were no blogs in Japan.
extreme argument:-)
I post some references of what had happened and now what is going on in Japan.
(i) Some writings
(1)I can’t blog
http://www1.neweb.ne.jp/wa/yamdas/column/technique/blog.html
“A famous writing about blog. This was a good introduction of what blog is, and got critisism to Joi Ito, mesh and JBA”
(2)Japanese internet history never written in school history books
http://blogdex.tripod.co.jp/encyclopedia/
“Japanese internet history from 1992 to 2002”
(3)What is “Weblog”?
http://ellington.gel.sfc.keio.ac.jp/nsly/nslywiki/index.php?%5B%5Bweblog%A4%C8%A4%CF%A4%CA%A4%CB%A4%AB%A1%A9%A1%A9%5D%5D
“Many references about weblog and japanese actual state in 2002.
Some of them are cites of what had happened or been discussed in japanese blog wars.”
(4) Past, Present, and Future of Weblog in Japan
http://www.hotwired.co.jp/matrix/0305/004/
(ii) Blog toolkits, web diary systems, and ranking sites in Japan
(1) Weblog toolkits
http://artifact-jp.com/weblog/
“List of weblog toolkits or hosting services available in Japan.
(including web diary and 2ch-blog)”
(2) tDiary
http://www.tdiary.org/
“One of famous web diary system in Japan”
(3) Read Me! Japan
http://readmej.com/
“Ranking site of ‘text sites'(not web diary) in Japan”
(4) 2ch-blog
http://www.2log.net
“Anonymous blogs hosted by 2channel(http://2ch.net)”
(iii)Blog sites, text sites
(1) artifact
http://artifact-jp.com/
(2) Oresama Kingdom Blog(“A blog with evil tongue”)
http://219.113.143.242/blog/kirik/archives/000196.html
(3) Net hatsu Koe wo Ageyou
http://hp1.cyberstation.ne.jp/negi/DEMO/
(4) Akane 17sai
http://www.m-net.ne.jp/~doba/goto/top.htm
Gary-
In this time since I posted this, apparently Ken has decided to scrap his previous blog, and his archives. Perhaps the answer is at his Japanese site? (http://kenloo.com/)