Today is Moe Day!
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Japan has a million and one Days every year, with today, the 10th of October being marked as Moe Day, Look After Your Eyes Day, Fishing Day, Tuna Day, Tin Can Day, Public Bath Day, and no doubt many, many more. To investigate the awareness of these and other celebrations, iShare looked at October Days.
Demographics
Between the 16th and 24th of September 2009 591 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 57.9% of the sample were male, 34.9% in their twenties, 30.3% in their thirties, and 34.9% in their forties.
Moe, or 萌え in Japanese, is basically the love of cute animation or video game characters, which for me has undertones of unhealthy obsession, and its broad acceptance within Japan is one aspect of the country that I do not like at all. As to why today is Moe Day, let’s look more closely at how the 10th of October and Moe are written in kanji:
As to why the other Days fall on today, I am at a loss to tell you why, except for Public Bath Day. 10th October is 10/10, or 1010, or one thousand and ten, which can be pronunced in Japanese as sen-tou, which is also the pronuciation for 銭湯, public bath. I’m quite proud of myself for working that one out. Finally, 10th of October used to be Health and Sports Day, but from 2000 they moved it to the second Monday in October.
Research results
Q1: How do you get to know about what days public holidays fall on? (Sample size=591)
All Male
N=342Female
N=249Usually have to check the calendar 68.2% 66.7% 70.3% Usually recall the dates 19.3% 20.2% 18.1% Usually get told by people 6.9% 7.0% 6.8% Have them all memorised 4.7% 5.3% 4.0% Other 0.8% 0.9% 0.8% Q2: Did you know that Health and Sports Day used to be the 10th of October, but from 2000 they moved it to the second Monday in October? (Sample size=591)
All Male
N=342Female
N=249Yes 79.5% 75.4% 85.1% No 20.5% 24.6% 14.9% Q3: Do you know about any of the following Days that fall on the 10th of October? (Sample size=591)
All Male
N=342Female
N=249Look After Your Eyes Day 25.0% 21.9% 29.3% Public Bath Day 5.8% 5.3% 6.4% Moe Day 81.4% 2.0% 0.4% Tuna Day 0.5% 0.3% 0.8% Fishing Day 0.2% 0.3% 0.0% Tin Can Day 0.2% 0.0% 0.4% Other 1.0% 0.3% 2.0% None at all 70.9% 74.0% 66.7% Q4: Do you understand the sensation of moe? (Sample size=591)
All Male
N=342Female
N=249Completely understand it 27.2% 21.6% 34.9% Understand it a bit 56.7% 60.8% 51.0% Don’t understand it at all 16.1% 17.5% 14.1%
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Great post! Thanks for the breakdown. I love seeing how some of these days come about. I’m getting better at the number puns but would never have figured out moe. Did you see the Japan Times story about “number coding?”
Everything is clear to me now!
All the sento associations websites have 1010 in them. The national public bathhouse organization’s webpage is http://www.1010.or.jp/zenkoku/ which is better than writing zenkokuyokujyokumiai.or.jp I’ll say. I never knew why they were always 1010, but now I do! I can’t believe that I didn’t know 10/10 was Sento Day before.
On a side note, the 26th of the month is typically family bath day where children and the elderly can get in for free.
“its broad acceptance within Japan is one aspect of the country that I do not like at all.”
Why? Explain please. Why you don’t like it AT ALL? Is it because for you “it has undertones of unhealthy obsession”? So, according to you, Japan should renounce its cultural values and follow the West instead, and be unhealthy obsessed with violence, gore and sex instead? Please, stop stereotyping and prejudicing. It’s repugnant.
Actually, your definition of moe is off; moe is used much more as an adjective, not a verb. Moe isn’t a love for something, its the description for something that contains attributes that are typically considered unique to the animation/video game world that are considered cute and are commonly used tropes for archetypes of characters.