Or because they share basic cultural assumptions: how parents ought to treat their children, how children out to treat their parents, how teenagers ought to decide what to do as adults, how strangers ought to behave towards other strangers, etc. Japan and the USA have definite cultural differences, the most basic of which, massively simplified, is individualism versus collectivism as a society. This makes fiction written by Japanese authors and set in Japan seem alien to readers from the USA; in an appealing, artsy, interesting way maybe, but still alien.
I can easily see such a mechanism operating with the cultural differences between males and females who both live the USA (or in Japan) could have a similar effect, making male-oriented fiction feel a bit odd and alien to girls who read a lot of chick lit because it’s what their mothers and sisters and friends recommend all the time. I can see this transferring over, more subtly, to differences in styles of non-fiction writing and blogging. I don’t know if it actually does, but it might.
On this hypothesis, male writers end up with mostly male readers for much the same reason that Japanese writers end up with mostly Japanese readers.
Because they can speak japanese?
Or because they share basic cultural assumptions: how parents ought to treat their children, how children out to treat their parents, how teenagers ought to decide what to do as adults, how strangers ought to behave towards other strangers, etc. Japan and the USA have definite cultural differences, the most basic of which, massively simplified, is individualism versus collectivism as a society. This makes fiction written by Japanese authors and set in Japan seem alien to readers from the USA; in an appealing, artsy, interesting way maybe, but still alien.
I can easily see such a mechanism operating with the cultural differences between males and females who both live the USA (or in Japan) could have a similar effect, making male-oriented fiction feel a bit odd and alien to girls who read a lot of chick lit because it’s what their mothers and sisters and friends recommend all the time. I can see this transferring over, more subtly, to differences in styles of non-fiction writing and blogging. I don’t know if it actually does, but it might.
It does (#justonedatapoint)