A (social) step-by-step phenomenon of the hate expression ‘honmono’.
The purpose of this paper is to study how the term “Honmono,” used as a form of hate speech, gained public attention following the release of Makoto Shinkai‘s film “Your Name” (2017) and has affected individuals and society. It also considers the film’s implications in 2023 in relation to Shinkai’s subsequent film “Suzume.” In this study, news articles and online community posts from 2017 were collected and analyzed. In addition, data from Naver Datalab, an online service, and a survey conducted during the popularity of “Suzume” (2023) were utilized. The analysis showed that there were limitations in the“three stages leading to hate speech anddiscrimination“model proposed in earlier research. Accordingly, this paper proposes a revised model better suited to the case of “Honmono.”