g&l (print) issn 1747–6321

g&l (online) issn 1747–633x

Article

Voices of the hero: dominant masculine

ideologies through the speech of Japanese
shōnen protagonists

Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

Abstract
This paper examines diachronic changes in the pronoun use and phonetic per-
formance of protagonists in shōnen anime, a genre of animated work that is
aimed predominately at adolescent boys. Utilising nearly forty years of shōnen
anime, this study constructs a diachronic analysis of first-person pronoun
usage, the primary pragmatic index of gender performance in Japanese, as well
as average pitch and pitch range, which are frequently cited as salient phonetic
markers of gender performance but are understudied in this area with regard to
language in media. By analysing the way that changes in masculinity structures
are reflected in performance of fictional protagonists, this paper demonstrates
the necessity for further research on language use, particularly by protagonists,
in fictional media, as well as on the way that dominant language ideologies are
reproduced and consumed in the popular culture market.

keywords: language in media; masculinity; role language; yakuwarigo;

anime; pop culture; japanese studies; animation; sociophonetics

Introduction
Despite its constant presence in modern culture, language use in fictional
media and its acoustic properties are understudied as subjects of linguistic
inquiry, largely due to the fact that early sociolinguistic research consid-
ered language produced outside of a ‘natural’ context to be inauthentic

Affiliation
Ohio State University, USA.
email: dahlberg-dodd.1@osu.edu

g&l vol 12.3 2018  346–371 https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.32536

©2018, equinox publishing
 Voices of the hero 347

(Stamou 2014). In the words of Agha (2007:161), however, language as it is

used in fictional media constitutes a kind of ‘metadiscursive’ genre, provid-
ing insight into not only the linguistic ideologies of the creators and their
ideas on those ideologies desired by an imagined target audience, but also
those that are ultimately preferred by the consumer, a phenomenon that
may be understood as audience design theory (e.g. Bell 2001).
Looking specifically at fictional media in Japan, the primary media that
have had an immense impact on popular culture are comics (manga) and
their animated counterparts (anime). As it appears on television, anime,
in addition to frequently airing television shows, can also be utilised to
sell anything as mundane as convenient store goods to electronics, and
characters rendered in an anime-inspired style have been used to sell
school uniforms (Toku 2007:19). The largest and most lucrative genre of
anime is shōnen. Though the name of top-selling shōnen magazine Weekly
Shōnen Jump (lit. Weekly Boys’ Jump) suggests a target audience that is pre-
dominately young and male, works within the shōnen genre are in actuality
consumed across variety of age groups and genders (Japan Magazine Pub-
lishers Association 2012).
According to Kinsui (2003:66–7), within a given work, a protagonist
typically has the least marked speech style unless there exists a narra-
tive reason that justifies otherwise, and shōnen works are no exception.
Using this logic, shōnen protagonists utilise a speech pattern that is most
expected relative to not only their age, education-level, social class, and
so forth, but also to the target audience at the time that that work was
released. This is a phenomenon that is also evident in animated children’s
works in the United States, as illustrated by Lippi-Green’s (1997) analysis
of cultural stereotypes in Disney films, though the linguistic behaviour of
protagonists in particular remains understudied.
What constitutes as the least marked style for male speakers in Japanese
fictional media has undergone notable change in the last hundred years. In
the early to mid-twentieth century, this change is evident in an image shift
in hegemonic masculinity, or the form of masculinity that is positioned as
most ideal, though not necessarily most widespread, within a given culture
or cultural context (Connell 2005:79). Following the Second World War
(hereafter ‘post-war’), the hegemonic form of masculinity shifted such
that the prototypical male protagonist changed from that of the educated,
upwardly mobile man to that of the more aggressive, economically power-
ful one as the Japanese economy quickly expanded during the post-war
period. This shift is realised linguistically in fiction as a noted change in
preference from the first-person pronoun boku, which in male speakers is
associated with the educated speaker noted above, to ore, which has more
aggressive, ‘hot-blooded’ connotations (Nakamura 2007:64–6).
348 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

In the early 1990s, the Japanese economy suddenly declined, causing the
previously hegemonic sarariiman (lit. ‘salaryman’) model of masculinity
brought on by the last several decades of success in the financial quarter
to fall in popularity as job security and hiring rates also fell (Dasgupta
2000:199). While there has been significant work done on recent mas-
culinities, particularly as it concerns the salaryman model as a gendered
construct (e.g. Dasgupta 2000, 2005, 2013; Hidaka 2010; Deacon 2013;
Smitsmans 2015), there has been little published work on language ide-
ologies in this area as they interact with media, particularly fiction. The
bulk of research on language and gender has been dominated by studies
of female, Standard speakers, and many of these studies have been based
on self-reflection rather than data-collecting, but in the last fifteen years,
more studies of men’s speech have emerged (e.g. Miyazaki 2004; SturtzS-
reetharan 2004; Saito 2012).
In analysing nearly 40 years of shōnen protagonists, we can see a change
in speech patterns that corresponds with this late-twentieth-century shift
in masculinity, resulting in a greater characterological and linguistic range
for the portrayal of teen and young adult male characters in media. To
put it more generally, language use in Japanese popular media reacted to,
rather than directly affected, the societal construction of masculinities, a
phenomenon that is similarly reflected in the language use of female char-
acters in manga in Unser-Schutz (2015).
Through a phonetic analysis of the average pitch (f0) and pitch range
of protagonists from forty years of shōnen anime, as well as a text-based
analysis of their first-person pronoun choices, this study aims to illustrate
not only the ways in which main character figures are designed for their
audiences, but also bring to the light the nature of the ideological con-
versation between a work’s author and its audience through those main
character figures. Additionally, by approaching the first-person pronouns,
one of the most salient markers of one’s gendered persona in Japanese, in
conjunction with the f0 behaviour of protagonists, I hope to contribute to
a more thorough understanding of masculine ideology and its phonetic
manifestations in contemporary Japanese media.

Fiction and masculinity in early- and mid-twentieth-century Japan

The rise of ‘salaryman masculinity’
Twentieth-century Japan was marked by tremendous social, political and
economic upheaval. With the rapid increase in Western influence during
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, combined with swift
economic changes under the influence of the Second World War, Japanese
 Voices of the hero 349

masculine ideologies were re-evaluated and resituated multiple times in

reaction to shifting domestic and global climates. A particular point of focus
for scholars has been what is known as ‘salaryman’ (sarariiman) masculinity,
a cultural, characterological figure defined as a ‘white-collar, male employee
of a private sector organization’ who benefits from ‘lifetime employment,
seniority-based salaries and promotions, and a paternalistic concern for
the employee on the part of the company in return for steady and diligent
loyalty’ (Deacon 2013:145). The salaryman is typically also thought of us
‘middle-aged … with a dependent wife and children to support’, indicating
that one is not necessarily a salaryman from the beginning so much as one
becomes one overtime (Dasgupta 2013:1). As noted by a number of scholars
(e.g., Dasgupta 2000, 2005, 2013; Deacon 2013; Smitsmans 2015), the sala-
ryman model of masculinity was ‘hegemonic’, which in terms of masculini-
ties, means that among a given hierarchy, that particular form is the most
ideal, though not necessarily most widespread (Connell 2005:79). In other
words, one does not simply perform salaryman masculinity so much as one
aspires to an unattainable ideal (Dasgupta 2013:8).
More important than the physical image of the salaryman, however,
is the attitude and behaviour associated with the salaryman. Though the
term initially emerged in the decades following the First World War, it was
not until the ‘Economic Miracle’ of rapid economic recovery and expan-
sion during the post-war period that the salaryman-style of masculinity
replaced the previously dominant soldier model (Dasgupta 2013:28–9). An
overlap with the soldier-style of masculinity can be seen in the existence of
terms in the economic with strong militaristic connotations such as kigyō
senshi (‘corporate warrior’), shijō senryaku (‘marketplace strategy’), messhi
hōkō (‘selfless devotion’), and so forth (Taga 2006:100). While this usage of
military-inspired terminology suggests that perhaps the post-war period’s
Self Defence Force could simultaneously serve as a model of masculinity, or
at least contribute to the model, in actuality it did not figure into it. Rather,
Dasgupta (2013:29) proposes that this usage of military-inspired terminol-
ogy within the corporate sector not only indicates that the salaryman had
replaced the pre-Second World War soldier as the dominant model of mas-
culinity, but it ‘underscores [the salaryman’s] important role in contribut-
ing to the post-war Japanese nation-state’s objective of economic (rather
than military) strength’ (italics in original).

Portrayal of masculinities in fiction through first-person pronouns

Nakamura Momoko in her (2007) work Sei to Nihongo (‘Gender’ and Japa-
nese) draws attention to a shift in hegemonic masculine ideology that is
observable in the literary realm. Using the original Japanese translation
350 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

of the novel of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1957) and the
Japanese translation of the English movie script by Sidney Howard (1994),
Nakamura (2007) illustrates how the linguistic ideologies as related to
hegemonic masculinity have changed during the twentieth century. Below
in Examples 1 and 2 are Japanese translations of the same sentence, spoken
by the main male character Rhett Butler to Scarlett O’Hara, the protago-
nist. The accompanying gloss is not a reflection of the original sentence
in Gone with the Wind, but rather than attempt to capture the tonal dif-
ference between the two in Japanese. The annotation was done using the
standard put forth by Shibatani (1990), while all bolding and underlining
are my own.

Example 1
(Mitchell 1957, as cited in Nakamura 2007)

Anata wa, boku ga kore made issho ni odotta josei

you TOP I SUB this until together dance-PERF woman
no naka de, ichiban utsukushii odorite desu.
of among in number one beautiful dancer COP-polite
‘Out of all the women I have danced with previously, you are the most
beautiful dancer.’

Example 2
(Howard 1994, as cited in Nakamura 2007)

Ima made ore no mune ni idakarete odotta onna ja,

now until I of chest to hold-PASS dance-PERF women in/TOP (contract.)
kimi ga ichiban kirei da.
you SUB number-one pretty COP-plain
‘Of all the chicks I’ve danced with against my chest, you’re the prettiest.’

Though used to represent the same moment in both translations of the

work, the two have drastically different connotations when looking from
the ideologies of boku and ore in 2016. In Example 1, Rhett uses the first-
person pronoun boku (bolded) and speaks with a polite, socially distal style
as seen by use of the polite copula desu (underlined) at the end of his utter-
ance. In contrast, in Example 2 Rhett uses the first-person pronoun ore
(bolded) and a more casual, direct style in the use of the contraction ja
(from dewa) and plain copula da. Additionally, Example 2 makes heavy
use of physical, sexually suggestive imagery in words such as mune (‘chest’)
and idaku (‘to hold [someone]; to embrace [someone]’), while Example
1 maintains more of a distance between Rhett and Scarlett by utilising
 Voices of the hero 351

only the innocuous odoru (‘to dance’). Finally, when speaking of women,
Example 1 utilises the word josei, which is neutral in terms of politeness,
while Example 2 uses onna, which when used on its own can carry more
sexualised, often derogatory connotations due to its usage as a euphemism
to refer to sex workers as evidenced in onna’s dictionary entry.
Of particular note to this study, however, are the first-person pro-
nouns boku and ore in Examples 1 and 2, respectively. According to Kinsui
(2003:92), in a given fictional setting, the protagonist1 typically has the least
marked speech style (i.e., most faithful to ‘Standard’) unless there exists
a narrative reason dictating otherwise. In the first half of the twentieth
century, male protagonists typically used the first-person pronoun boku,
which according to Kinsui, gives the impression of an educated, upwardly
mobile student (Kinsui 2003:124). This usage was particularly common
in shōnen works, where it remained until the 1950s, suggesting that the
expected protagonist of a shōnen work has an interest in education and
social mobility. In the mid-twentieth century, probably beginning with the
shōnen manga Kyojin no hoshi (1966) and Ashita no Joe (1968), it became
increasingly common for protagonists to use ore as not only audience
expectations for the preferred, idealised ‘hero’ changed, but more impor-
tantly, the hegemonic masculine ideal had begun to shift (Kinsui 2003:124).
During this period, there was an increase in desire for the ‘hot-blooded
hero’, an aggressive, no-nonsense character (Nakamura 2007:64–5). At the
same time, though characters that used boku characters did not necessar-
ily disappear altogether, at least not all at once, the personality attribute
‘hot-blooded’ was not available to its users. Boku and ore exist in relation
to what Eckert (2008:454) has dubbed the ‘indexical field’, a ‘constella-
tion of ideologically related meanings, any one of which can be activated
in the situated use of the variable’. In other words, boku and ore exist in
different, but overlapping, indexical fields. However, though boku and ore
could index some overlapping qualities, boku lacked the ability to index the
loose-cannon, ore emulated. To put it differently, simply being educated
and upwardly mobile was not sufficient to embody the kind of idealised
masculinity that had captured the cultural imagination of male viewers and
fiction-oriented content producers during the 1950s and 1960s.
While salaryman masculinity is by no means the only masculinity that
could conceivably utilise the first-person pronoun ore, the ideological
connection between ore and salaryman image can still be seen in media
aimed at salarymen. For example, though the average salaryman on the
job utilises either watashi (a first-person pronoun that can be utilised in
formal situations regardless of gender) or boku (Kinsui 2003:127–8; see
also Miyazaki 2004), the inner-thoughts of salarymen can often be seen
352 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

portrayed using ore. One example is from the yearly Sarariiman Senryū
competition hosted by life insurance company Dai-Ichi Life. The competi-
tion, which has run every year since 1987, is a way for salarymen to submit
comical haiku-style poems (known as senryū) about their daily lives. Not
only do the submissions available on the website use exclusively ore, but the
advertisements on the website portray caricatured salarymen also using
ore.2 This is due to the fact that while salarymen are beholden to speaking
according to certain politeness registers that may demand either watashi
or boku, ideologically there exists a connection between the personality
traits associated with ore and the societal image of the salaryman. In other
words, ore is in an ‘indirect indexical’ (see Ochs 1992) relationship with
the salaryman image, but its situated use in an advertisement (such as for
Sarariiman Senryū) is enough to call upon this image if used in conjunction
with any other features of what could be called the ‘salaryman indexical
field’, such as reference to the workplace, company hierarchical structures,
and so forth through certain lexical choices.
The mid-1990s was met with a less than ideal economic situation. Known
as the ‘Lost Decade’, the Japanese economy underwent a downturn driven
by a bursting of the speculation-driven ‘bubble’ of the early 1990s. This
resulted in slowed economic growth and economic downsizing, effectively
throwing a wrench in the idealised school-to-white-collar-employment
path (Dasgupta 2013; Deacon 2013). The economic downturn was particu-
larly evident among younger generations; in the 1980s, companies recruited
heavily from high schools and universities, and with less positions avail-
able for new employees due to company restructuring and lay-offs in the
90s, resulting in particularly high employment among younger generations
(Hidaka 2010:105–8). The breakdown in this pipeline, according to Deacon
(2013:159), ultimately caused those who had subscribed to the salaryman
model of masculinity to question ‘their very identities as fathers, as provid-
ers, and as men’ (italics in original). That being said, salaryman masculin-
ity did not cease to be the hegemonic model. Regardless of any losses in
legitimacy and authority caused by the bubble burst (Roberson and Suzuki
2003:9), as stated in both Dasgupta (2013) and Smitsmans (2015), the sala-
ryman model still ultimately remains the ideal despite emergence of ‘sub-
cultural masculinities‘ such as ‘herbivore men’ (sōshokukei danshi), the
antithesis the salaryman’s ‘carnivore man’ (nikushokukei danshi), into the
mainstream (Smitsmans 2015:19). This is consistent with Connell (2005)’s
description of hegemonic masculinity as not necessarily the most wide-
spread in terms of practice, but as a unity of the most ‘favourable’ traits
(Connell 2005:79; Smitsmans 2015:9).
 Voices of the hero 353

Language, gender and media

As pointed out by Stamou (2014), the volume of research on language as
it appears in media, particularly fictional media, has rapidly expanded as a
source of linguistic inquiry since the start of the twenty-first century. In a
literature review of media-oriented linguistic research since 1980, Stamou
(2014:123) found that 24 of the 60 articles reviewed had been published
between 2008 and 2012. Prior to that, research in this area was restricted
largely to scholarly work on fictionalised language was largely lacking due to
an early tendency in sociolinguistics to see language as it appears in media as
‘inauthentic’ (Stamou 2014:118–19, 123). Fictional sources, especially those
that fall under the category of ‘popular media’, have been especially over-
looked (Djenar 2015). Because of the relatively new nature of research on
language in media, a variety of approaches have been taken to analysing lin-
guistic phenomena as they appear in media sources, but generally the studies
may be divided into two theoretical frameworks: the ‘fiction as mirror’
approach and the ‘fiction as construction’ approach (Stamou 2014:131–3).
Where the ‘fiction as mirror’ framework assumes that language as it appears
in fiction adheres to the same standards and expectations as that in dis-
course to language as it appears in media, or perhaps questions its degree of
similarity (e.g. Ueno 2006; Hiramoto 2010; Unser-Schutz 2015), the ‘fiction
as construction’ approach (e.g. Teshigawara 2007; Androutsopoulos 2012)
considers the question of the speech’s fidelity with that of non-fictionalised
speech to be largely irrelevant to their research question.
In research on language in Japanese media, this ‘fiction as mirror’
approach has been the most common approach, largely because the idea
that it is popular media that brings about non-normative speech patterns
among young speakers, not vice-versa, that has been a popular misconcep-
tion in the Japanese-speaking community (Unser-Schutz 2015). Therefore,
dealing with the ‘fiction as mirror’ framework and questioning its validity
has been a necessity in this area. In this study, however, because the focus
is not a ‘fidelity check’, as Androutsopolous (2012) puts it, but a diachronic
look at the linguistic construction of male protagonists in a young male-
targeted genre as it relates to a larger ideological trend, the ‘fiction as con-
struction’ approach is the framework of choice.
Speaking more generally with regard to research on language in Japa-
nese media, there have been a number of studies in recent years coincid-
ing with the quick expansion of the field of yakuwarigo (‘role language’), a
term that was coined in Kinsui (2003), including several studies that utilise
manga or anime as the primary source of inquiry (e.g. Ueno 2006; Tesh-
igawara 2007; Nishida 2011; Togashi 2011). That being said, studies that
bridge the gap between language in fictional media and gender ideology
354 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

are still scarce (but see Hiramoto 2010, 2013; Unser-Schutz 2015; Maynard
2016), probably due to the same perception mentioned earlier that fiction-
alised language is unworthy of linguistic study (Djenar 2015). Manga, in
particular, and by extension anime, hold positions as particularly low-brow
media that do not require ‘real’ reading, a stance that may have contrib-
uted to its relatively low amount of serious scholarly consideration com-
pared to other fictional genres in the Japanese diaspora (Ito 2000). But, as
pointed out by Agha (2007:151), language as it appears in fiction is at its
core ‘metadiscursive’, giving linguists insights into the processes of, as is
relevant for this paper, the ideological processes involved in the creation of
the characterological figure of the protagonist, particular with an audience
of adolescent boys in mind. This study intends to (i) help address the gap in
literature concerning language and gender in fictional media, while simul-
taneously (ii) moving towards an understanding of the linguistic qualities
that make one a ‘hero’ (or in some cases, an ‘anti-hero’) in an adolescent
male-targeted fictional work.

Weekly Shōnen Jump

For this study, the data under discussion are all anime adaptations of manga
that have run in the manga magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump. Frequently abbre-
viated to Shōnen Jump (or just Jump), it first began publishing in 1968 as a
bimonthly magazine, moving to a weekly format nearly immediately in 1969.
According to Nishimura (1997:31–3), the magazine’s themes are ‘friendship’
(yūjō), ‘effort’ (doryoku), and ‘victory’ (shōri), and the editors make it a policy
such that every work they run includes at least one of these qualities.
In 2012, then-editor Ibaraki Masahiko was quoted as saying that despite
the number of female readers, Shōnen Jump is designed and written with
elementary and junior high school-aged boys in mind (Yomiuri Shimbun
Morning Edition 2003). This is a trend that is reflected in Shōnen Jump’s
readership data as of 2012 in demographic information obtained from the
Japan Magazine Publishers Association. The company reported a reader-
ship that was 79.8 per cent male and 20.2 per cent female, with 63 per cent
of readers falling between the ages of 10 and 15. Those below 9 and those
older than 16 made up 5.1 per cent and 39.1 per cent of the readership,
respectively (Japan Magazine Publishers Association 2012). Additionally,
in the third quarter of 2016 (July to September), Shōnen Jump printed more
copies than any other manga magazine, regardless of demographic (Japan
Magazine Publishers Association 2016). This magazine’s readership data,
combined with its popularity, target audience, as well as its longevity in
popular culture, make it a prime candidate for analysing diachronic repre-
sentation trends of masculinity in fictional media.
 Voices of the hero 355

Anime began to be adapted from Shōnen Jump shortly after the maga-
zine’s inception, with the first anime (Otoko ippiki gaki daishō) airing
in 1969. Shueisha, the publishing company that owns Shōnen Jump, has
little to do with its animated adaptations at a production level, however.
Works that are adapted from manga that run Shōnen Jump are managed by
numerous different companies, but because these works are likely to retain
the same target audience due to their roots in Shōnen Jump and the fact
that few major changes are made in their animated adaptations, it is most
appropriate to think of these as Shōnen Jump anime rather than necessarily
as distinct products of their various animation companies.

Variables
The variables under investigation in this study are (i) first-person pronouns,
(ii) average f0, and (iii) average range of f0. In Japanese, first-person pro-
nouns, along with sentence-final particles, are typically cited as particularly
salient with regard to gender indexing in a given utterance (SturtzSreeth-
aran 2004; Unser-Schutz 2015). Sentence-final particles, however, regularly
change from utterance to utterance (especially in non-fictional discourse),
depending on the speaker, as well as context, thus an investigation of their
role in masculinity would be better suited by either a corpus-based study,
discourse analysis study, or some combination of the two, putting this
particular facet of identity construction outside the scope of this study
(see Unser-Schutz 2015; SturtzSreetharan 2004; Ueno 2006). First-person
pronouns, however, are much slower to change diachronically, due to
the fact that personal pronouns are generally considered to be the most
salient index of gender (or gender-based performance) in Japanese (Abe
2004; Unser-Schutz 2015). Additionally, even more so than sentence-final
particles, first-person pronouns carry salient gender indexing informa-
tion, due in large part to the traditional prescriptive approach to pronoun
usage. According to Ide (1997) Standard Japanese pronouns vary primarily
among two axes: gender and formality register, which can be evidenced in
Table 1 below.

Table 1: Gender- and formality-marked pronouns in Standard Japanese (Ide 1997:73).

Men’s speech Women’s speech

Formal watakushi watakushi
atakushi
Plain boku watashi
atashi
(Other-)Deprecatory ore –
356 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

Pronoun usage, however, can differ greatly. Miyazaki (2004) conducted

ethnographic work on first-person pronouns in a Tokyo-area junior high
school around the turn of the century, and she found that rather than the
conceptions illustrated in Table 1, usage patterns in casual situations were
more in line with Table 2.

Table 2: A representation of self-referential pronoun usage according to dominant

gender ideologies versus the usages of junior high school students in Tokyo (Miyazaki
2004:261).

Masculine Feminine
Gendered ideologies ore/boku watashi/atashi
Students’ patterns ore boku uchi atashi

Rather than necessarily limited based on gender, in casual situations

students conceptualised pronoun usage based on a scale of masculine to
feminine. Focusing only on male speakers for the purpose of this study,
the overwhelming majority of male speakers surveyed in Miyazaki (2004)
used ore as their pronoun of choice rather than boku, which is contrary to
Ide (1997)’s information in Table 1. Despite the fact that ore is labelled as
‘other-deprecatory’, when asked about this, boys who used ore just consid-
ered ore to be the pronoun that boys use (Miyazaki 2004:264). In general,
male students considered other male students who used ore to be ‘cool’ or
‘strong’, but some female students felt that ore-using boys were ‘arrogant’
(Miyazaki 2004:264–5). Boku, however, was considered to be ‘weak’, and
the boy who used boku nearly exclusively in this study was regularly bullied
by his male peers (Miyazaki 2004:265). Because of these discrepancies
between prescriptive usage and descriptive usage, it seems only logical to
choose boku and ore as the focus of first-person pronoun analysis through
which to analyse diachronic trends in masculine ideologies.
In Japanese sociophonetics, there have been a number of studies ana-
lysing perception of average f0 and range of f0, though the overwhelming
majority of them deal with spontaneous speech rather than speech at a
metadiscursive level as this study does. Yuasa (2008) describes these studies
in detail in her chapter on the history of Japanese pitch analysis, and she
finds that throughout 100 years of Japanese sociophonetic (or simply pho-
netic) research history, each study that includes the voices of male speak-
ers illustrates that the average pitch for an adult Japanese male speaker is
approximately 120 Hz with a range that varies somewhere between 90 Hz
and 160 Hz (50).
To date, however, there has been very little work done on the voice signal
as it is presented in fictional media. As is relevant to this study, Teshiga-
 Voices of the hero 357

wara (2003, 2007) is a notable exception in her study of the voice quality of
protagonists versus antagonists across a number of different anime. While
her study focused more on voice quality than f0, she did note that the
average f0 of the fictional characters in her study was considerably higher
than averages reported by studies on non-fictional speakers. In her study,
adult male heroes had an average f0 of 191.8 Hz, while male child heroes
had an average of 342.5 Hz (Teshigawara 2003:50). Instead of range of f0,
Teshigawara (2003) reported on standard deviation of average f0, which
was 47.7 Hz and 84.5 Hz, respectively.
In light of the observations by Nakamura (2007) and Kinsui (2003)
regarding the boku to ore shift across the early and mid-twentieth century
period with the shift in hegemonic masculinity, this study aims to explore
whether or not a similar shift in first-person pronoun usage can be seen in
the late 1990s with the economic downturn. Additionally, because recent
media gives us access to a vocal performance of these masculinities rather
than only textual evidence of their usage, the average f0 and f0 range are
also under consideration due to their perception as salient indicators of
gender performance.

Methods
A total of 78 different anime series have been adapted from Shōnen Jump
manga between 1968, the year of Shōnen Jump’s first issue, to 2015, when
these data were collected. The protagonist of each work was determined
based on the work’s reported protagonist (designated by the word ‘shujinkō’).
However, because this data set combines an analysis of pronoun usage as
well as an acoustic analysis of the protagonists’ speech, the works analysed
had to be limited based on a number of factors. The principles for exclusion
are listed below with the number of works that were excluded for that reason.

•• Works produced before 1980 were excluded due to poor audio

quality (n = 5).
•• Works that were difficult to find were excluded due to lack of data
(n = 13).
•• Works with female protagonists were excluded due to the focus on
male speakers (n = 4).
•• Because acoustic measurements are more consistent when taken
from a speaker using a calm voice rather than a speaker displaying
an extra emotion (e.g. screaming, crying, voice breaking, etc.; Hirose
et al. 2005), works with protagonists that did not utilise a calm voice
were excluded (n = 1).
•• Works without a singular, designated protagonist (n = 1).
358 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

In addition to the above exclusions, only a single season of continuous

works were considered such that a protagonist from a show with multiple
seasons does not way more heavily in the data than a protagonist from a
show with fewer seasons. In the case of works that had been remade, the
original version was the one considered for data purposes.3 This results
in a total of 54 different works under consideration with no repeated pro-
tagonists. The number of works surveyed by decade can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3: Number of works included in analysis by decade.

Decade Number of works

1980s 9
1990s 14
2000s 18
2010s 13

First-person pronouns
For first-person pronouns, the pronoun used by the character was recorded.
Any deviation was noted, though within this data set, characters used only
a single pronoun and did not deviate. This is contrary to data taken from
speakers outside of fiction, where a Standard Japanese speaker may change
five times during a conversation (Miyazaki 2004), but more likely changes
pronoun usage according to context of formality.

Average f0 and f0 range

Each show involved in the analysis was obtained in mpeg4 movie format.
The audio was then isolated from the file and converted to wav format,
which was then input into the acoustic analysis software Praat (Boersma
and Weenink 2016). The original quality of the audio varied consider-
ably depending on the age of the show, which is why the acoustic data are
limited to shows produced in 1980 or later.
The unit of phonetic measurement involved in this analysis is the ‘into-
nation phrase’, which is defined in Yuasa (2008:66) as ‘an acoustically mea-
sured prosodic unit occurring under a single unified intonation phrase
with only one primary f0 peak’. In each work, the first twenty intonation
phrases were sampled excluding those that (i) contained significant overlap
with other phrases, (ii) contained significant background noise, including
both environmental noise and laughter, etc., and (iii) non-modal voices.
Additionally, while filler utterances (e.g. ano, eto, etc.) were excluded,
speech when the protagonist appeared to be speaking to himself was
 Voices of the hero 359

included, contrary to traditional data collection measurements involving

non-fiction (e.g. Camp 2009). This is because while in reality, self-directed
utterances may be genuinely self-directed, in fiction, apparent self-directed
utterances are still said for the purpose of the viewer, therefore not truly
self-directed.
Pitch data were obtained from each of the intonation phrases with assis-
tance of the pitch tracker function on Praat. The data were extracted by
hand to prevent pitch-doubling or pitch-halving caused by an error in the
automatic tracker, and the pitch window was adjusted to accommodate for
differences between utterances and between characters. The average f0 was
obtained over the phrase, and the range was calculated by subtracting the
minimum f0 for an utterance from the maximum f0.

Results
First-person pronouns
Across the thirty-five total years of analysis, ore was by far the most preva-
lent first-person pronoun used by protagonists, and it was used across age
groups. The second most common, boku, was used almost predominately
by teens, which is in opposition to the ideological association of boku
in casual speech with children (Nakamura 2007). Other pronouns that
appeared were ora (n = 1) and oira (n = 1), both of which are associated
with a ‘country’ archetype, sessha (n = 1), which is an out-of-use pronoun
used by warrior characters, watashi (n = 2), and washi (n = 1), which is
associated with old men.

Table 4: Number of first-person pronouns used by protagonists by age group.

Child Teen Adult Total

(< 12 years) (13–19 years) (> 20 years)
boku 1 11 1 13
ore 8 20 7 35
Other 1 22 3 36
Total 10 23 11 54

Diachronically, boku was not used by any protagonists prior to 1996,

which can be seen in Figure 1. below. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the
overwhelming majority of first-person pronouns used were ore, regard-
less of age of the protagonist. Thereafter, boku reappears, and protagonists
using boku steadily remain approximately 30 per cent of the represented
protagonists in a given decade up to the present day.
360 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

Figure 1: Percentage of first-person pronoun usage by five-year period.

f0 measurements
A total of 1060 intonation phrases were analysed for average f0, minimum
f0, maximum f0, and f0 range. The average length of the intonation phrases
in this data set is 1.35 seconds.
Because this is an analysis of f0 qualities, it is worth noting before enter-
ing the analysis that the protagonists themselves were voiced by both male
and female voice actors. This particular point is also brought up Teshiga-
wara (2003)’s analysis of the voice qualities and f0 of both male and female
heroes and villains in anime, and as with Teshigawara (2003), the gender of
the voice actor did not factor in to the final analysis. This is because though
male and female speakers tend to utilize different average f0 and average
pitch ranges (e.g. Yuasa 2008; Teshigawara 2003) the actors performing
these characters are not speaking in a day-to-day manner. Rather, they are
performing the role of a male character of a specified age. As pointed out by
Unser-Schutz (2010:406) with regard to manga, ‘a certain level of realism’ is
necessary for the audience to enjoy it. In other words, a vocal performance
that creates a disconnect between the purported age and gender of the
protagonist and the audience’s expectations of that vocal performance can
disrupt immersion into the work on the part of the audience.
Each of these voice actors (n = 47) are performing male protagonists that
are suited to animated works that have been adapted from Shōnen Jump
 Voices of the hero 361

manga. As such, it is most appropriate to view performances of ore-using

protagonists and boku-using protagonists as a whole rather than divide
them along a line (gender of voice actor) that is, ideally, not perceptible to
the audience.
Difference between the f0 of boku performances and ore performances
was determined through linear regression analysis. Four dependent vari-
ables (average f0, minimum f0, maximum f0, and f0 range) were subjected
to a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with first-person pronoun as
the independent variable. Any protagonists that did not use either boku or
ore (n = 6) were not included in this task. Because of the diachronic nature
of this investigation, the analyses were run at the level of decade in which
the work first aired, though the figures below are grouped by five-year seg-
ments. Additionally, all phonetic data in the figures below are represented
in log Hz in order for the visual representations of data to more closely
conform to our auditory perception of pitch information, which is loga-
rithmic in nature (Henton 1989).
The data were found to be significant (p < 0.05) for average f0, maximum
f0, and f0 range for all three decades in which both boku and ore were present.
Minimum f0 was significant for 1990 and 2000, but was no longer significant
in 2010. Furthermore, as the decades progressed, the p-value for every mea-
surement increased, suggesting that the level of difference between boku and
ore for each measure of f0 decreased over time. This can be seen in Table
6 below in the results of the one-way ANOVA for all f0 measurements by
decade. The acoustic data in Table 6 are also illustrated in Figure 2 in violin
plots with embedded box-and-whisker plots assorted by decade.

Table 6: f0 measurements in log-Hz and Hz for boku- and ore-using protagonists by

decade.

1980 1990 2000 2010

ore
mean f0 2.2995 2.4039 2.2808 2.2996
(218 Hz) (261 Hz) (203 Hz) (206 Hz)
max f0 2.4158 2.5314 2.3988 2.4253
(287 Hz) (352 Hz) (269 Hz) (275 Hz)
min f0 2.1170 2.2269 2.1088 2.1102
(144 Hz) (174 Hz) (137 Hz) (135 Hz)
range 2.0758 2.2104 2.0505 2.1070
(143 Hz) (178 Hz) (133 Hz) (140 Hz)
boku
mean f0 – 2.3011 2.3605 2.2660
(206 Hz) (241 Hz) (192 Hz)
362 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

1980 1990 2000 2010

max f0 – 2.4161 2.4725 2.3757
(269 Hz) (314 Hz) (249 Hz)
min f0 – 2.1358 2.1955 2.083097
(142 Hz) (166 Hz) (126 Hz)
range – 2.0463 2.1212 2.0353
(127 Hz) (147 Hz) (123 Hz)

Table 7: Results of one-way ANOVA for f0 measurements by decade.

F p
1990
mean f0 37.164 5.585 × 10–09
max f0 42.298 6.256 × 10–10
min f0 26.665 5.872 × 10–07
range 26.295 6.953 × 10–07
2000
mean f0 19.719 1.216 × 10–05
max f0 14.363 1.784 × 10–04
min f0 22.328 3.377 × 10–06
range 5.5594 0.01895
2010
mean f0 4.3568 0.03793
max f0 9.0548 2.902 × 10–03
min f0 2.3377 0.1276 (n.s.)
range 6.2286 0.01325

Discussion
Based on the statistically significant difference between average f0, minimum
f0, maximum f0, and f0 range, we can see that f0 indeed plays a role in the
framing of an ore-using protagonist versus a boku-using protagonist. That
being said, exactly what ‘role’ this is seems to change depending on the
decade, as boku’s f0 measurements in relation to ore’s vary, and the difference
between them decreases, yet retains its significance, in the most recent data.
First, however, it is illustrated that during the 1980s, there was not a par-
ticular range or pitch that was necessarily associated with exclusively ore,
as indicated in Figures 2 and 3. As seen in Figure 1, ore was overwhelmingly
the most frequent pronoun, and it was utilised by protagonists with both
 Voices of the hero 363

Figure 2: Combination violin and box-and-whisker plot of average f0 for each pro-
noun by decade.

Figure 3: Combination violin and box-and-whisker plot of f0 range for each pronoun
by decade
364 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

high voices and low voices, as well as large ranges and small ranges, sug-
gesting that the first-person pronoun was not an immediately salient part of
the linguistic (and physically) ‘bricolage’, or stylistic practice, that made up
the shōnen hero (Hebdige 1984; Eckert 2008). Rather, ore worked together
with numerous factors, such as that particular character’s f0 range, average
f0, as well as sentence-final particles, to structure the linguistic semiotic
presentation of that particular shōnen protagonist. To reiterate the earlier
quote from Kinsui (2003:66–7), the protagonist of a given work uses the
least-marked speech style in its fictional environment unless a narrative
reason justifies otherwise, but what constitutes as ‘least-marked’ varies
with not only the demographic of the portrayed protagonist, but also the
writers of that work as well as the intended audience. For the writers and
audience of the 1980s, the ‘hot-blooded hero’, in whatever manifestation it
appeared, was the least-marked protagonist in works created by a nearly
exclusively male staff for a young male audience.
With the reintroduction of boku in the 1990s, we can see that expectations
for protagonists in shōnen works changed as the power of masculinity struc-
tures that were dominant during the 1980s began to weaken. This suggests
that not all of the qualities that were desired in protagonists as of the mid–
1990s were able to be portrayed with only ore as an available first-person
pronoun. Boku, however, which was still in regular use in natural speech
but not used in Weekly Shōnen Jump for either protagonists or side charac-
ters within this data set, seemed to serve as a viable masculine alternative.
Though boku had been the pronoun of choice for male protagonists shōnen
and otherwise in the early twentieth century, it was in the 1960s that audi-
ences and creators moved away from the upwardly mobile, educated image
of boku to the ‘hot-blooded hero’ image of ore (Kinsui 2003:124). But, with
the reintroduction of this pronoun, not only can we see a movement away
from exclusively hot-blooded heroes, but we can understand boku as a kind of
Bakhtinian ‘chronotope’, invoking in its usage the qualities and traits of early
twentieth century protagonists that existed prior to the economic downturn
(see Bakhtin 1981; Blommaert 2015). This chronotopic quality can be seen
in the vast difference in acoustic qualities between ore-users and boku-users
when boku was first reincorporated as illustrated in Table 6 above (p < 0.000
for all acoustic measurements). Over time, however, as boku continued to
be utilised in a consistent 30 per cent of appearing shōnen protagonists, the
acoustic differences between ore-users and boku-users declined, suggesting
that through its continual use, boku gradually began to lose its chronotopic
qualities as it became acoustically renaturalised into the shōnen genre. Thus,
as its acoustic performance merges with that of protagonists using ore, both
boku protagonists and ore protagonists are allowed to coexist as unmarked
fictional male voices.
 Voices of the hero 365

First-person pronouns, as mentioned earlier, are particularly salient

with regard to gender indexing, and for male speakers of Standard Japa-
nese, boku and ore present a contention that does not exist in the same
way for non-male speakers. They were not, however, the only pronouns
used by protagonists in this analysis. Others that appeared, such as ora
and washi, are actually part of a system of fictionalised voices known
as yakuwarigo, or ‘role language’ (Kinsui 2003; Teshigawara and Kinsui
2011). In other words, yakuwarigo varieties can be understood as enreg-
istered voices, or characterological figures ideologically associated to
a particular register of speech (Agha 2005:45). In the case of Japanese,
these figures are called forth through the situated use of particular pro-
nouns and sentence-final particles. Ora, for example, is associated with a
variety known as nise hōgen, a kind of fake dialect ascribed to a character
to suggest that they are of rural origin (Kinsui 2014:59–62). Washi, on the
other hand, has long fallen out of use in natural speech, and is associated
with an elderly male style known as hakase kotoba (Kinsui 2014:202–4).
Because of their limited usage in reality, as well as their specific role in
fiction, the characterological figure associated with ora or washi is sug-
gested by even a single use of the pronoun, even without accompanying
sentence-final particles.
This degree of ideological association does not exist for boku and ore,
however. Because of their regular use in natural speech by speakers navi-
gating an ever-shifting field of gender ideologies, observing boku and ore
as they are used in fictional spaces, particularly through the ‘hero’ or the
character with whom the audience is supposed to identify, we are allowed
insight into the metalinguistic conversation that occurs between the
writers and consumers of fictional media. This is a process we can think
of as audience design theory (e.g. Bell 2001), by which the linguistic con-
struction of such a character ‘indexes an imagined target audience on the
assumption that this audience will find this particular style acceptable and
attractive within certain genre constraints’ (Androutsopolous 2012:304).
In other words, we are able to observe both the ideal masculine role model
as it is interpreted by both the adult producers of shōnen works and the pre-
scribed shōnen role model for the imagined adolescent preteen male audi-
ence by examining the speech behaviour of shōnen protagonists. Language
as it appears in fictional media, as pointed out by Unser-Schutz (2010:406),
is a constant tug-of-war between changing ideologies and believability on
the part of the audience; by examining the aural and linguistic semiotics
that go into character construction, we gain a greater understanding of
a speakers’ metalinguistic awareness in their social and media-oriented
landscapes.
366 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

Conclusion
Through this diachronic analysis of f0 and first-person pronoun usage in
Weekly Shōnen Jump, we are able to see a relationship between mainstream
masculine ideologies and the linguistic construction of male protagonists
in a male-targeted media genre. During the 1980s, ore was the first-person
pronoun of choice for protagonists in the shōnen genre, but in the 1990s
the previously hegemonic variety of masculinity began to weaken. This
resulted in a loss of dominance for the ore-using ‘hot-blooded hero’, a shift
that is evidenced by the reintroduction of the first-person pronoun boku,
which had fallen out of use in shōnen works in the 1960s and denotes an
upwardly mobile, educated protagonist (Kinsui 2003:124).
At its reintroduction, boku protagonists inhabited an overlapping, but
different acoustic space than ones using ore, with highly significant differ-
ences in terms of average f0, maximum f0, minimum f0, and f0 range. This
difference suggests that though boku occupied 30 per cent of the protago-
nists that appeared following 1996, through its use during an unsteady time
for hegemonic masculinity structures, it functioned as a kind of Bakhtin-
ian chronotope, harkening back to a period before the destabilisation of
current hegemonic masculinity through economic turmoil (Bakhtin 1981;
Blommaert 2015). However, the decrease over time in acoustic difference
between protagonists using boku versus those using ore suggests that it is
renaturalising as a viable masculine alternative to the ‘hot-blooded hero’
style.
As it stands, language use in media, particularly its phonetic proper-
ties, remains understudied in the area of sociocultural linguistics, though
as of the twenty-first century, this has begun to change (Stamou 2014).
Its necessity, however, is demonstrated in the fact that media, particularly
fictional media, has become an increasingly prominent figure in our social
environments. Further study of linguistic and metalinguistic practices with
regard to the construction of characterological figures can only enrich our
understanding of the way that speakers interact with variously meaningful
ideologies, as well as the way we choose to construct and consume our
linguistic landscapes.

About the author

Hannah E. Dodd is a doctoral candidate in Japanese linguistics in the Department of
East Asian Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University. Her research is on
the use and perception of yakuwarigo (‘role language’) in popular media, especially with
regard to language ideologies concerning gender and sexuality.
 Voices of the hero 367

Appendix: complete list of works analysed in order of release

sorted by decade
1980 Space Cobra (1982). Produced by TMS Entertainment.
Captain Tsubasa (1983). Produced by Tsuchida Production.
Hokuto no Ken [Fist of the North Star] (1984). Produced by Toei Animation
Dragon Ball (1986). Produced by Toei Animation.
Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin (1986). Produced by Toei Animation.
Saint Seiya (1986). Produced by Toei Animation.
City Hunter (1987). Produced by Sunrise Studios
Kimagure Orange Road (1987). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Sakigake!! Otokojuku (1988). Produced by Toei Animation.
1990 Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibooken (1991). Produced by Toei Animation.
Yuu Yuu Hakusho [Yu Yu Hakusho] (1992). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Slam Dunk (1993). Produced by Toei Animation.
Janguru no ooja Taa-chan [Jungle King Tar-chan] (1993). Produced by Group TAC.
D・N・A² (1994). Produced by Madhouse and Studio Deen.
Ninku (1995). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Rurooni Kenshin [Rurouni Kenshin] (1996). Produced by Studio Gallop and Studio Deen.
Jigoku sensei Nuubee [Hell Teacher Nuubee] (1996). Produced by Toei Animation.
Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoi yo! Masaru-san (1998). Produced by Magic Bus.
Hoshin engi [Soul Hunter] (1999). Produced by Studio Deen.
Karakurizooshi Ayatsuri Sakon (1999). Produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha.
Hunter × Hunter (1999). Produced by Nippon Animation.
One Piece (1999). Produced by Toei Animation.
2000 Yuugioh dyueru monsutaazu [Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters] (2000). Produced by Studio Gallop.
Shaman King (2001). Produced by Xebec.
Tenisu no oojisama [The Prince of Tennis] (2001). Produced by Trans Arts.
Hikaru no Go (2001). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Naruto (2002). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Whistle! (2002). Produced by Studio Comet.
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (2002). Produced by Toei Animation.
Ring ni Kakero (2004). Produced by Toei Animation.
Bleach (2004). Produced by Studio Pierrot.
Ichigo 100% [Strawberry 100%] (2005). Produced by Madhouse.
Eyeshield 21 (2005). Produced by Studio Gallop.
Black Cat (2005). Produced by Gonzo.
Gintama (2006). Produced by Sunrise Studios.
D.Gray-man (2006). Produced by TMS Entertainment.
Busoo Renkin [Buso Renkin] (2006). Produced by Xebec.
Death Note (2006). Produced by Madhouse.
Kateikyoosi Hitman Reborn! [Reborn!] (2006). Produced by Artland.
To Love-Ru – Toraburu- [To Love-ru] (2008). Produced by Xebec.
2010 Nurarihyon no mago [Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan] (2010). Produced by Studio Deen.
Bakuman. (2010). Produced by J. C. Staff.
Level E (2011). Produced by Pierrot and David Production.
Beelzebub (2011). Produced by Pierrot+.
Toriko (2011). Produced by Ufotable.
Sket Dance (2011). Produced by Tatsunoko Production.
Kuroko no Baske [Kuroko’s Basketball] (2012). Produced by Production I.G.
Haikyuu!! [Haikyu!!] (2014). Produced by Production I.G.
Nisekoi [Nisekoi: False Love] (2014). Produced by Shaft.
World Trigger (2014). Produced by Toei Animation.
Ansatu Kyoositu [Assassination Classroom] (2015). Produced by Lerche.
Syokugeki no Sooma [Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma] (2015). Produced by J. C. Staff.
Batoru surpirittu rekka tamasii [Battle Spirits: Burning Soul] (2015). Produced by BN Pictures.
368 Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

Notes
1 Although Rhett Butler was not the protagonist of Gone with the Wind, as pointed
out by Nakamura (2013), dominant gender ideologies are actually more salient in
translated works than works originally created in Japanese.
2 The website for the Minna no Sarariiman Senryū project is available at http://event.
dai-ichi-life.co.jp/company/senryu (accessed 20 November 2016).
3 One exception was made to this in the case of a show which had a poorly reviewed
original run, and it was remade within two years with a different voice actor with a
run of several hundred episodes. In this case, the remake was considered.

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