''Kuso'' is a term used in

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...

for the

internet culture Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social media ...

that generally includes all types of

camp Camp may refer to: Outdoor accommodation and recreation * Campsite or campground, a recreational outdoor sleeping and eating site * a temporary settlement for nomads * Camp, a term used in New England, Northern Ontario and New Brunswick to descri ...

and

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...

. In

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, is a word that is commonly translated to English as

curse words Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, ru ...

such as fuck,

shit ''Shit'' is a word considered to be vulgar and profane in Modern English. As a noun, it refers to fecal matter, and as a verb it means to defecate; in the plural ("the shits"), it means diarrhea. ''Shite'' is a common variant in British an ...

, damn, and bullshit, and is often said as an

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...

. It is also used to describe outrageous matters and objects of poor quality. This usage of ''kuso'' was brought into

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

around 2000 by young people who frequently visited Japanese websites and quickly became an

internet phenomenon An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

, spreading to Taiwan and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and subsequently to

Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

From Japanese ''kusogē'' to Taiwanese ''kuso''

The root of Taiwanese "''kuso''" was not the

word ''kuso'' itself but . The word ''kusogē'' is a

clipped compound ''Clipped'' is a video featuring five tracks by the Australian hard rock band AC/DC. First released in 1991, it contained three tracks from ''The Razors Edge (AC/DC album), The Razors Edge'' and two from ''Blow Up Your Video''. In 2002 a DVD ve ...

of and , which means, quite literally, "crappy (video) games". This term was eventually brought outside of Japan and its meaning shifted in the West, becoming a term of endearment (and even a category) towards either bad games of nostalgic value and/or poorly-developed games that still remain enjoyable as a whole. This philosophy soon spread to Taiwan, where people would share the games and often satirical comments on

BBS BBS may refer to: Ammunition * BBs, BB gun metal bullets * BBs, airsoft gun plastic pellets Computing and gaming * Bulletin board system, a computer server users dial into via dial-up or telnet; precursor to the Internet * BIOS Boot Specificat ...

es, and the term was further shortened. Games generally branded as ''kuso'' in Taiwan include '' Hong Kong 97'' and the '' Death Crimson'' series. Because ''kusogē'' were often unintentionally funny, soon the definition of ''kuso'' in Taiwan shifted to "anything hilarious", and people started to brand anything outrageous and funny as ''kuso''. Parodies, such as the Chinese robot

Xianxingzhe Xianxingzhe () is the first bipedal humanoid robot in China, created in 2000 by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan. The robot, standing 140 cm tall and weighing 20 kg, walks at a pace of two steps per s ...

ridiculed by a Japanese website, were marked as ''kuso''. ''

Mo lei tau ''Mo lei tau'' () is a type of slapstick humour associated with Hong Kong popular culture that developed during the late 20th century. It is a phenomenon which has grown largely from its presentation in modern film media. Its humour arises from t ...

'' films by

Stephen Chow Stephen Chow Sing-chi (, born 22 June 1962), known professionally as Stephen Chow, is a Hong Kong filmmaker, former actor and comedian, known for ''Shaolin Soccer'' and ''Kung Fu Hustle''. Early life and education Stephen Chow was born in British ...

are often said to be ''kuso'' as well. The

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

is often a subject of parody too, with songs such as '' I Love Beijing Tiananmen'' spread around the internet for laughs. Some, however, limit the definition of ''kuso'' to "humour limited to those about

Hong Kong comics Hong Kong comics are comics originally produced in Hong Kong. History Sun Yat-Sen established the Republic of China in 1911 using Hong Kong's comics to circulate anti-Qing propaganda. Some of the comics that mirrored the early struggles of th ...

or Japanese

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

, and games". ''Kuso'' by such definitions are primarily doujin or

fanfiction Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settin ...

Fictional crossover A crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings, or universes into the context of a single story. They can arise from legal agreements between the relevant copyright holders, unofficial efforts by ...

s are common media for ''kuso'', such as redrawing certain

bishōjo In Japanese popular culture, a , also romanized as ''bishojo'' or ''bishoujo'', is a cute girl character. ''Bishōjo'' characters appear ubiquitously in media including manga, anime, and computer games (especially in the ''bishojo'' game genre) ...

anime in the style of ''

Fist of the North Star is a Japanese manga series written by Buronson and illustrated by Tetsuo Hara. It was serialized in Shueisha's Shōnen manga, ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' for 245 issues published from 1983 to 1988 and initially colle ...

'', or blending elements of two different items together. (For example, in ''

Densha de D is a Japanese train simulation game series originally produced by Taito and more recently by Square Enix (who purchased Taito) and Railfan Holdings Co., Ltd. The series started with a 1996 arcade version and was first released in a home versi ...

'', both ''

Initial D is a Japanese street racing manga series written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno. It was serialized in Kodansha's ''seinen'' manga magazine ''Weekly Young Magazine'' from 1995 to 2013, with the chapters collected into 48 ''ta ...

'' and ''

Densha de Go! is a Japanese train simulation game series originally produced by Taito and more recently by Square Enix (who purchased Taito) and Railfan Holdings Co., Ltd. The series started with a 1996 arcade version and was first released in a home versi ...

'' are parodied, as Takumi races trains and

drift Drift or Drifts may refer to: Geography * Drift or ford (crossing) of a river * Drift, Kentucky, unincorporated community in the United States * In Cornwall, England: ** Drift, Cornwall, village ** Drift Reservoir, associated with the village ...

s his railcar across multiple railway tracks.) In

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, earlier ''e'gao'' works consisted of images edited in

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

. An example of this would be the

Little Fatty Little Fatty (小胖 Xiǎo Pàng) is an internet meme involving superimposing the face of a boy on various photographs. Because of the internet meme and the resulting sudden fame, the boy, Qian Zhijun, decided to become a public figure, and he b ...

internet meme.

Compared to ''e'gao''

In Chinese, ''kuso'' is called "''e'gao''" (), with the first character meaning "evil" or "gross" and the second meaning "to make unof omeone/something" In 2007 the word was so new that it was not listed in Chinese dictionaries.Wu, Jiao.
E'gao: Art criticism or evil?
''

China Daily ''China Daily'' () is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Overview ''China Daily'' has the widest print circulation of any English-language newspaper in China. T ...

''. January 22, 2007. Retrieved on January 25, 2012. According to Christopher Rea, "''E'gao'', the main buzzword associated with online Chinese parody, literally means 'evil doings' or 'malicious manipulation; he notes that ''e'gao''s "semantic associations

o ''kuso'' O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plu ...

can be misleading, however, since ''e'gao'' is not fundamentally scatological—or even, as the Chinese term might suggest, malicious. In its broad usage, it may be applied to parody of any stripe, from fan tribute-mimicry to withering mockery. In a more restricted sense, it refers the practice of digitally manipulating mass culture products to comic effect and circulating them via the internet. The term ''e'gao'' may thus be interpreted in multiple senses, as it denotes variously a genre, a mode, a practice, an ethos and a culture."Christopher Rea, "Spoofing (e'gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet". In ''Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times''. Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, eds. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013, p. 151.

References

Sources

* Meng, Bingchun.
From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as alternative political discourse on the Chinese Internet
." ''

Global Media and Communication ''Global Media and Communication'' is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of communication studies. The editors-in-chief are Daya K. Thussu ( University of Westminster), John Downing ( Southern Illinois University) ...

''. April 2011. Vol. 7. No. 1. Pages 33–51. DOI 10.1177/1742766510397938.
Christopher Rea
"Spoofing (e’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet." I
Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times
. Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, eds. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013, p. 151.

Citations

External links