If you’ve ever watched Japanese TV, you might be surprised at the amount of subtitles that you get on almost any show.
The subtitles are not limited to the traditional closed caption subtitles for the hard of hearing, but are put on the show itself by the production team.
There are several reasons for this which are interesting to go through, so let’s get into it.
Generational Reasons
Comedy in Japan has a long tradition, but the entry onto the scene of comedians from the Kansai region brought up a few problems. The dialect of the area, 関西弁（かんさいべん）, is frankly quite hard to understand if you’re not used to it.
The majority of media, especially when this change started to happen, was always in 標準語（ひょうじゅんご）which is the Tokyo dialect or standard Japanese.
This lead to conflicts in households, as people not used to the fast-paced Kansai dialect missed many jokes and references, used to complain that they didn’t understand the TV anymore that their kids wanted to watch, leading to lots of repetition of jokes.
The use of subtitles started to get used in particular with one of the most famous comedy groups, Downtown, and has since exploded in popularity to be on almost every TV show.
Kanji is Hard
Another big reason why subtitles are so common, is that it’s a great opportunity for repeated Kanji exposure.
If you’re constantly seeing subtitles while at the same time hearing people speak how they’re pronounced, this allows you to subconsciously study Kanji, get practice with Kanji you don’t see so much, and also have difficult sciencey words written down for your viewing pleasure.
This is important for the native speakers as well!
Some kanji can be ridiculously complex, so having large font kanji helps you to see exactly how the Kanji is written.
Helps with Understanding
Of course, one of the big reasons why subtitles are great is that for those who are hard of hearing, its a great way to understand what is going on without having to rely on closed captions.
Another issue with Japanese is that there are many homophones or words that sound the same but have a different meaning. Obviously context means you can work out which one is being used, but it doesn’t hurt to clear up confusion every now and then. This can be particularly a problem in more formal settings, like the news broadcast, which has a much higher percentage of these types of words.
There is also a tendency to use lots of puns in Japanese comedy, and so subtitles can help make this clearer.
Societal Reasons
While perhaps not the most common reason, given the population density and societal norms, it is good to have subtitles in certain situations.
For example, many houses in Japan are very close together and with paper-thin walls, so blaring the TV at night is probably not the best move. Also can be good if you’re on the train or bus.
Other Random Reasons
A bit of ‘research’ on this topic gave some other reasons, for example that having lots of flashing words in colours can help draw attention or a way to do emphasis. You’ll also see a very manga-heavy style usage of emoji and other symbols to denote sadness, anger etc.
Another reason is that some TV shows started using them and rated well, so everyone just copied them.
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