Some fans have argued for years that there are elements of Japanese culture and behaviors weaved into CCFS which really, really show that a Candy-Albert romance existed. Or, they use this same argument to deny facts in the story that point to the non-existence of such a relationship. For example, in the Epilogue of CCFS which took place after the original manga ending, Albert is shown to spend an extraordinary amount of time away from Candy — very far away, we’re talking Sao Paolo away. Ostensibly, he was away all the time because of his work.  (We will address this issue in one of our next segments.) Anyhow, pro-Albert fans like to say that Albert being entirely preoccupied with work and always away from Candy don’t mean they weren’t in a romantic relationship, because Japanese salarymen spend excessive hours at work. Therefore, Nagita must have projected the work culture of Japanese men onto Albert.

Another misconception they like to spread is that love existed between Candy and Albert because, in one of the letters she wrote to him in the Epilogue, she signed the letter “With love and gratitude.” They claim that signing letters with the word “love” is not part of the Japanese custom. Therefore, Candy must have been in love with him.

Thankfully, the myth of Candy Candy being a Japanese story, or that it was heavily influenced by Japanese ways, has now been completely debunked by the author herself. During the Livre Paris Book Fair, fans asked Nagita and her team several times whether CCFS incorporated Japanese culture in any way. From Nagita and her entire team, the answer is a resounding “No.” Here are the reports we have heard from various fans:

1. At the VIP afternoon tea Pika hosted for Nagita at the Ladurée, Sophie (host of the French website candyneige.com) asked Nagita directly whether Candy, a Western girl, actually Japanese in her personality. Nagita firmly answered no and said that CCFS is a story set in the West about British and American characters. She wanted to write a purely foreign story. (You can read Sophie’s own account of her afternoon with Nagita here.)
2. During one of the book signing events, a fan asked Nagita why Candy signed her letter to Albert with the words “With love and gratitude”, since Japanese people don’t sign their letters that way. Through her agent, Nagita said, “No. Candy Candy is a Western story about Western characters.” As to why Candy signed her letter to Albert this way, Nagita’s own daughter joined in to answer, in fluent English to the fans so there would be no misunderstanding, that the way Candy signed the letter didn’t mean anything. It was just the way how people sign letters in the West. She further emphasized that Candy Candy is not a Japanese story, and there is nothing Japanese about it.

   At the bottom of this page, we’ve included a video of this particular conversation, which has been posted on YouTube.

   It should also be noted that in her message to her French fans in CCFS’s French edition, Nagita herself signed the message, “With love and gratitude”. You can read the English translation of the message here, or purchase a copy of the French CCFs on Amazon and see for yourself.

3. During the Livre Paris event, various fans asked Monsieur Medhi Benrabah, Chief Editor of Pika Editions, whether CCFS contains any Japanese influence. To this question, he explained at length that CCFS is a Western story and not a Japanese story. For anyone who still has doubts, you can ask Pika this same question yourself on their Facebook page or email them via their website.

    

4. At the book signing at ICI Book Store, a fan had the opportunity to speak at length with Monsieur Jean Louis de la Couronne, the translator for CCFS’s French edition. Monsieur de la Couronne confirmed that CCFS is not meant to be a Japanese story, but a Western story about Western characters. Monseiur de la Couronne, who had lived in Japan for fifteen years, also said that CCFS is not a difficult story to translate, and the text is relatively simple. The challenge for him was to balance between writing for children readers as well as adult readers.

Most importantly in addition to the above, Nagita has shown herself to be a very worldly woman with a universal view to life that expands far beyond her home country of Japan. During her interview with Bulle Shojo, a French manga blog, the blogger asked Nagita what she thought of shojo mangas today. Nagita answered:

 . . .  from my personal point of view, the manga shôjo is disappearing. Why do I say that? It’s because we no longer have all these stories that happen in universes we do not know, far away, as in the past, stories that happen on a much larger scale, in a world that we do not know. I find it unfortunate that today’s readers have a very narrow point of view . . .  

She then went on to say:

 . . .  I hope someday we’ll come back to a time when we can describe much richer worlds. After, I do not know if this phenomenon that I see today is due to the readers, if they are the ones who do not want to read this kind of stories that happen in unknown countries, or that they are not given the opportunity to read these kinds of stories and finally their point of view is getting smaller and smaller. I do not know. I continue to search for works that come out of quality shôjos. Whenever I meet publishers I ask them if they have recently discovered an interesting shojo and the answer is still no. This is the same observation in the novels of young girls. The topics are always much closer to the everyday, the theme of bullying, abuse, parents who commit violence on their children … This reduces the point of view and I find it a shame. And I hope that one day will come back where we will be able to find stories that happen in larger universes.

As we can see Nagita’s own words, she likes stories to extend to a larger universe. She regrets that stories today no longer take place in far-away, unknown places. She describes stories that take place in unknown countries as giving readers a “much richer world”, and the current trend of looking inward “reduces the point of view” of readers and make their views “smaller and smaller”. Given how Nagita expressed these feelings, fans who would still insist that Nagita was writing a Japanese story would be reducing her to someone who cannot see beyond the limited scope of her own native land. They would be doing her a great injustice.

Likewise, during her live interview at Livre Paris, Nagita spoke a lot about how she wanted to write a story set in foreign countries when she first wrote Candy Candy, and her great love for international travels.

Here are some of her quotes from the interview:

At the time, there were a lot of manga about stories set in distant countries. I too wanted to write stories for manga set in distant countries because I had read novels as “Anne of Green Gables”, which I loved.

And  . . .  

Yes, there are lot of novels such as “Anne of Green Gables”, “Daddy Long Legs”. Also, when I was little, there were many children’s versions of Western literature, and I read the children’s version of “Wuthering Heights”, “Jane Eyre”, and among all these books I read, there was Roger Martin du Gard’s “Les Thibault” saga, which I enjoyed immensely. I loved Jacques’s character and I think it had a huge influence on Candy (as a character).  

In her answer, all the works she cited were foreign works. She did not mention any Japanese work even once as an inspiration for the story Candy Candy.

Further, she said:

Yes, I love traveling. I traveled alone in various places and the first time I traveled to the United States, I really went across the United States, and I took inspirations from all the places where I traveled for Candy’s story.

It is now a well-known fact that when she wrote the last chapters of Candy Candy back in when it was first published, Nagita went to France to write those chapters in a hotel in the French countryside that was once a castle. She talked about this during the live interview:

 . . .  the last chapters of “Candy Candy”, I wanted to go somewhere other than in Japan. I wanted to go to a place where no one around me knew me . . .  looking back now, I cannot believe that I had the courage to go alone in a country where I did not speak the language. I am already surprised I was able to go. I’m surprised I could come back alive.

Looking back, it is unbelievable that this young Japanese woman had done this in the 1970s. We’re talking about a time before the internet existed and you could not easily search for information anywhere, before one could book an airplane ticket online, and online translator was purely science fiction. Nagita had the audacity, the outward view about the world, and the curiosity about foreign lands, to travel alone like this. How insulting it is then for certain fans to insist that Nagita was basing her story on Japanese language, culture, and behavior! As if she could not tell a story that reflects anything more than her native roots. How horrible of them to try to constrain this internationally-minded woman in a tiny little cultural box of their own making, only because they want to justify their own reading of a romance that doesn’t exist!

Thanks to Nagita, her fans, and Livre Paris, we can dispel this myth once and for all that CCFS is a story filled with Japanese connotations that only Japanese readers can ever understand.