Why do Chinese characters in anime say -arimasu/-aru ALL the time?

Linguistics professor explains the centuries-old background of the omnipresent anime and manga verbal tic.


If you’re studying Japanese, three of the first words you’ll learn are arimasu, imasu, and desu. While they all more or less translate into English as “be,” they’re used for different situations in Japanese.

Arimasu is for showing the existence or location of inanimate objects. For example, if you wanted to say “Mt. Fuji is in Japan,” you’d say “Fujisan ha Nihon ni arimasu.” Imasu, on the other hand, is for the existence/location of people and animals. So for “I am in Japan,” it’d be Watashi ha Nihon ni imasu.” And finally, desu is used with adjectives that describe the condition of things or people. “Mt. Fuji is beautiful” is “Fujisan ha kirei desu,” and, if you’re confident enough to make the same boast about your own fetching good looks, it’d be Watashi ha kirei desu.”

But in the world of anime and manga, if the scriptwriter or author is creating dialogue for a Chinese character who’s supposed to be less than fluent, there’s a better-than-even chance the character will completely bypass imasu and desu and just use arimasu, or it’s more casual version, aru, for everything. Instead of the grammatically correct “Watashi ha Chugokujin desu” (“I am Chinese”), you’ll often hear Chinese characters saying “Watashi ha Chugokujin arimasu.”

The weird thing, though, is that you’ll rarely, if ever, hear actual Chinese learners of Japanese putting arimasu at the end of everything like this. So where does this stock speaking style for anime and manga come from? According to Satoshi Kinsui, a linguistics professor at Osaka University, it comes from history.

Manga artist Hebizo and author Umino Nagiko asked Kinsui about the “Chinese people say arimasu” stereotype as part of the research for their new book, Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo 3 (“Japanese Language that Japanese People Don’t Know 3”). Kinsui says this overreaching use of arimasu has its roots in the mid-19th century, as Japan’s feudal Edo period was coming to an end and the modernization of the Meiji period was beginning.



With Japan finally opening up to international trade and relations after centuries of government-mandated isolation, there was a sudden influx of foreigners coming into the country. However, this was long before online dictionaries, budget-priced phrasebooks, or other easy ways to bridge low-to-moderate language barriers. So instead, a simplified, pidgin-like version of Japanese came about, in which arimasu, imasu, and desu all got lumped together as arimasu.