japanese swords decline

**Pugtm** · 23rd May 2007, 11:49 AM

I was browsing around google and found a nifty internet trend site with google. So what else do i search but Japanese swords. Some reason it seems people have been loosing interest in them. Does anybody have any insight into this trend? Anime and manga are steady and very popular so it would seem that such a trend would go the opposite way...
heres the sight http://www.google.com/trends?q=japan...ate=all&sort=0
some other searches i did included japan, Japanese, kendo, anime, manga, kenjutsu, katana, and samurai. All had the same slight or major decline.
some insight?
Also just as a side note Chado(tee ceremony) seems to be a new trend discovered only last year.

**mingshi** · 23rd May 2007, 12:28 PM

Originally Posted by Pugtm

some other searches i did included japan, Japanese, kendo, anime, manga, kenjutsu, katana, and samurai. All had the same slight or major decline.

Did you do a search on USA too?

**Martino** · 23rd May 2007, 12:31 PM

Here is a more useful trend

kendo, fencing, ninja

**Oroshi** · 23rd May 2007, 12:41 PM

Also note the upward trend in cupcakes versus kendo. More and more people must be eating cupcakes! But why?!?

Seriously, the volume of searches for kendo is so low anyway I think any slight shift has very little meaning. Hence the cupcake comparison, to show some perspective.

**Ignatz** · 23rd May 2007, 12:44 PM

Here's one:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=stupi...enagers&ctab=0

Looks like, except for a spike in stupidity in the third quarter of '05, the two track perfectly.

**Kenshi** · 23rd May 2007, 01:30 PM

Girls Vs Boys and Women Vs Men.

**Kenshi** · 23rd May 2007, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by Martino

kendo, fencing, ninja

The same one in Japanese...

**Aden** · 23rd May 2007, 01:51 PM

Unfortunately the tool does not go back to the release of Kill Bill 1 and the Last Samurai... only Kill Bill 2, the apparent drop in searches could be related to our need for more samurai wannabe movies.

Or just as likely given the probable small absolute number of JSA searches, changes in the Google demographic, as its market share of search rises the breadth of searches will rise too (and searches on movies, cupcakes etc go up), the trends tool is stated to "compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time".... hmm more evidence of the nerdiness of the JSA community.

Aden

**samurai80** · 23rd May 2007, 03:12 PM

I wasn't interested in cupcakes, but now I am.

**Oroshi** · 23rd May 2007, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by samurai80

I wasn't interested in cupcakes, but now I am.

Careful - the statistics above show that an increase in interest in cupcakes (C) is linked to a decrease in interest in kendo (K). There is only so much interest (I) to go round.

Mathematically speaking, K = I / C

Cupcakes are not to be trusted.

**kurisu** · 23rd May 2007, 04:33 PM

Originally Posted by Pugtm

I was browsing around google and found a nifty internet trend site with google. So what else do i search but Japanese swords. Some reason it seems people have been loosing interest in them. Does anybody have any insight into this trend? Anime and manga are steady and very popular so it would seem that such a trend would go the opposite way...
heres the sight http://www.google.com/trends?q=japan...ate=all&sort=0
some other searches i did included japan, Japanese, kendo, anime, manga, kenjutsu, katana, and samurai. All had the same slight or major decline.
some insight?
Also just as a side note Chado(tee ceremony) seems to be a new trend discovered only last year.

Maybe if you call it by it's proper name, katana:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=japan...ate=all&sort=0