I wanted to try watching anime with Japanese subs to help with my listening ability, so I bought a VPN and decided to subscribe to Hulu JP, it’s got more of the movies I like on it. Only to find that none of them have subtitles. I remembered when I tried watching free episodes on niconico they also had no subs. Is this normal? Do Japanese people not care about subtitle availability? It makes me wonder who even writes the JP subs on Netflix.
Considering how often they plaster subs right across the whole screen on variety shows and the like, that’s pretty surprising.
They just be like “fuck deaf people”
Yes, this is my experience. I’ve used Hulu, U-NEXT and Netflix and only ever found Japanese subtitles for TV shows on Netflix.
It’s really surprising considering how often I see japanese subtitles even in japanese youtube videos
I’ve generally found subtitles on Amazon Japan and Netflix Japan. Although for whatever reason it’s rare to find Japanese subtitles outside of Japanese sites even when they offer Japanese audio.
I live in Japan, and have found this to be really common. A lot of shows on Amazon and Netflix just don’t have subs.
Yes. I’ve subscribed to multiple websites. They often don’t have subs.
Netflix and Prime offer Japanese subs as standard. Prime is better because they offer up the whole catalogue of dubs and subs so people can pick.
I don’t think it is unique to Japan, I always watch English movies with subtitles even though I’m a native English speaker but there are often time they don’t have subtitles.
Normal. Japan is years (decades) behind on accomodating people with disabilities (and gender equality). One would think at least closed captioning would be more common becauase of all the old people and number of TVs on in public places with the sound off.
Yes it’s normal. There isn’t any legal requirement for companies to provide subtitles for the deaf.
There are some misleading responses here.
Regular antenna television in Japan has pretty good subtitles. Live television subs are not perfect in content or timing but aren’t terrible either. And reruns of some older shows may not have subtitles.
If you are in the market for movies or dramas on physical disc (DVD or BluRay), the older ones tended not to have subtitles. I have nothing to add on streaming although I have see good Japanese subtitles for Japanese shows on Netflix in Europe and the US (e.g. Terrace House).
Captions in Japan aren’t a common thing. Japan does not have the same kind of disability laws that other countries do. This is especially true when it comes to people that are Deaf in Japan. Closed captioning is not required by law in Japan and thus, you’re less likely to see it.
EDIT:
There is a website, animelon, that does seem to have caption on all of their anime. You can even select certain words while watching and it will pull up a dictionary.
Yeah it’s normal, don’t know why people are surprised, the flashy subs have always been a youtube/traditional TV thing, not regular subtitles for tv shows
It’s probably because Japanese is a very hard language to learn and they know not many people take it up like they do English or Spanish. Perhaps they think:
Why bother with subs?
I avoid amazon prime for this purpose. If my husband watches a movie or tv series in Japanese dub, there will be no subtitles available (in English or Japanese). Netflix was much better for audio/subtitle options. I currently use Disney+. Not all series have Japanese dub/subtitles, but western content usually does.
I live in Japan and recommend you trying Disney+ they have lots of subtitles in Japanese.
So are you saying it’s common for people in Japan just watch shows with no subs?
NHK on demand (the main website, not as an add-on channel) has a good amount of subs for newer shows. Not sure how it compares with Netflix and Disney+.