It's interesting to me that the Japanese words in the table, "bushido", "katana", and "yakuza" are more known to (this dataset of) men than women. The fashion-related words (taffeta, chignon, espadrille, etc) being known more to women makes sense to me, but I'm not sure why the three Japanese words are more known to men.
My guess is that their martial link is why more men know of them, rather than the fact that the words are Japanese. I would suspect that the same would hold true for martial words of non-Japanese origin as well.
A code of honor, a sword, and a mob. These are stereotypically masculine topics, and also words that appear in video games and movies, sometimes as the title itself.
The biggest weebs I knew in college were women. Sailor Moon is woefully underestimated in terms of how much it contributed to redressing the nerd gender balance. I won't say that it's completely redressed, but female anime fans and japanophiles are considerably more prevalent now than in decades past.
Now, the bits of culture that concern swords and warrior codes of honor? Yeah, those are boy things, mainly.
yeah that reminds me its something I’ve noticed too.
although I encountered something similar, in my schools they were a very distinct subculture defined by their affinity to Japanese culture, whereas what I see now amongst younger people is that many more attractive popular well adjusted women (people in general) are ok with or into anime, that style, and non-US cinema at all. I like this outcome.
I was just thinking there ought to be an AI chat agent that can recommend music based on themes and mood, perhaps with a periodic, paradoxically-opposite sense of humor.
I doubt that particular word (katana) would be quite so permanently stuck in my head if not for watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a lot as a kid. That was a show that was for-sure aimed at boys.
The other places I could imagine having encountered it enough for it to have stuck are action video games and Japanese or Japanese-influenced action cinema & anime. I have some very confident guesses at how male and female interest rates in those would break down.
Sure, any particular person may buck their cohort trend, but that doesn't mean the trend's not there. Just as I'm sure there are some guys really into sewing or fashion who'd look at the original list and think, of the mostly-women part, "of course I know these, who doesn't?"
