1. Introduction
A film is made in a particular context such as culture and society. Especially, road movie is strongly influenced by the culture of the location because it depicts people who travel real world rather than pure fantasy. Therefore, comparison of road movies which are filmed in different countries will lead to deep understanding of different culture. This paper attempts to consider distinctions of American culture and Japanese culture by comparing American movie and Japanese movie, and to contribute to cross-cultural understanding. This report deals with Little miss sunshine as the former and Kazoku, the filmed directed by Youji Yamada in 1970, as latter.
2. Characteristic of Little miss sunshine
This film follows the family
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Background of the difference between Little miss sunshine and Kazoku
Why there is such a difference between Little miss sunshine and Kazoku? The difference of genre may be one of the reasons. It is true that these two films are not the same genre strictly. Little miss sunshine is comedy road movie. On the other hand, Kazoku is not comedy movie. In many cases, comedy needs to describe a process or action and to introduce character at first in order to amuse people.
Nevertheless, there is not only genre but deep-rooted reason in the background of it. The reason is related to the difference between American society and Japanese society. American society combines a lot of cultural groups, religions, and races. Each of those exists according to its original standard. Hence, tacit understanding is difficult among them, and clear expression is preferable. Therefore, American film tends to deploy direct and explanatory description in order to be accepted by a wide range of people.
In contrast, Japanese society consists of only one cultural group. Japanese people live according to the spirit of harmony and prefer conformity with the people around them. Therefore, Japanese film does not need direct and explanatory description, because Japanese people already share stereotype. Instead of it, Japanese film tends to employ roundabout expression in order to leave room for imagination of