An Analysis of the Titles of Popular Children`s books in the U.S. and Japan

Previous research has shown that children’s books such as folktales and textbooks have different story schemas according to culture, which could serve to socialize children in line with culture-specific values and ways of thinking. This study focused on the titles of children’s books, especially on whether they included a character’s name or not. The title of a children’s book not only represents content but also should be understandable, unique, and appealing to children. We predicted that American stories would tend to refer to a character’s name in the title more often than their Japanese counterparts because American cultures are more likely to focus on individuality than Asian cultures. Overall, 169 American books and 182 Japanese books were selected as popular children’s books, based on recommendation lists like “best books of all time” by public libraries and major magazines in each culture. As expected, 38% of the Euro-American stories had a title containing a character’s name, whereas 28% of the Japanese stories did (p < .05). Furthermore, in the American stories those names tended to be common and realistic, as in Harold and the Purple Crayon and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, whereas Japanese stories favored imaginary, onomatopoetic names such as Guri and Gura and Mischievous Lala. In other words, American stories tended to depict characters as somebody next door, whereas Japanese stories often described them with an imaginary name, which might reflect cultural differences in representing individuality and otherness.