My friends know that I don't really like to think of myself as part of the furry fandom. More than half a decade ago, I left it completely because I was disgusted about behavior, presumptions, etc. Then I discovered kemono art (kemono = けもの = 獣 = "beast") , and I liked it―everyone was so polite, so considerate. It didn't seem to have a lot of the problems of the furry scene that had bugged me. Also, where the furry scene had always long focused on "anthropomorphism" (giving human characteristics to animals), the kemono scene term for an animal-person, jūjin (= じゅうじん = "獣人" = "beast-person" = "therianthrope") , refers to a therianthropic person instead (essentially a human or demi-human with animal-like characteristics). The concept of therianthropy is related to the more well-known lycanthropy (werewolves, etc.) , but as opposed to werewolf-style transformations, most jūjin characters are always only seen in their animal-faced forms. Some artists even draw these characters having normal human (non-kemono) friends and associates, as if both normal humans and jūjin coexist together in the same world. This should be familiar to people who have played game series such as Breath of Fire, where virtually no town doesn't have at least one normal human and one therianthrope in it. Kemono has had a very long history in Japanese culture, with kemono artworks still surviving from centuries ago (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemono ).

I have since more openly associated with individuals among the furry fandom, but still consider myself relatively independent of it. Additionally, I have seem more and more kemono artists come to associate openly with participants of the furry scene, at first a few individuals such as Kazuma ( http://wolf.fang.or.jp/kazuma/ ) and ShoK ( http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/8105/ ). But a couple of years ago, I started to see more kemono artists at first join Y! Gallery, and then here at FurAffinity, where the automated art community service seems to simplify online interaction among artists and their art on a level not really witnessed a decade ago. Here are some of the Japanese kemono artists I have so far found here on FurAffinity:

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/-N-
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Anchor
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/audie-gryph
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/daich
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Eiji
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/EXZ
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/gamma-g
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/hama
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/inotetu
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/inuryu
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kedama
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Kitora
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kome
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kuro-inu
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kuro1
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/kuroma
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/leopon
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/manya
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/nirnir
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/oomizuao
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/rix
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/ryuta-h
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/sinbeh
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/tesso
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Uchider
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/Ushigami
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/yuichi-tatsumori

(Why won't FurAffinity allow me to embed more than 12 icons?)

Surely there are others I haven't noticed. Most are not very good with English and have seemed to prefer not to speak it idly, except perhaps to thank people. Though most cannot reply to general comments in English, but I have found over the years that some artists will respond if I try to comment in Japanese. Even if it's broken Japanese, I have had better experience with that than with just speaking in English. Over the years, I have generally used the Excite! Japanese-English translator ( http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/ ) for quick translations I don't have time to gingerly prepare manually. Because there are many deep grammatical, cultural and nuanceful differences between English (英語) and Japanese (日本語) , I don't just type "Hey, howya doin'?" First, I prepare my thoughts, and I type in proper grammar and punctiation, always using the clearest terms possible and avoiding slang. Then, I translate the text and copy the Japanese machine-translated text into my clipboard. But I'm not done yet. To make sure I haven't made a *total* ass of myself, I translate the Japanese text back into English and read it back, comparing it with my original English text. Some round-trip translations fail by resemble little of the original meaning, so I have to diligently revise my English again and again until the round-trip translation matches my intended meaning. Even then, there are no absolute guarantees that my comments will be properly understood, and the Japanese grammar will still be very odd to a Japanese reader. Just in case, I also try to post both my original English and my machine-translated Japanese together, in different paragraphs, to maximize the likelihood that my intended meaning will be understood.

Here's an example of a round-trip translation by me. I would post the first English and the Japanese, but the second English is just to show the effects of the round-trip translation and is not something I would usually post.

<<Hello. My name is Dermot. I like your artwork. You are very talented. I apologize for the quality of my Japanese language text.>>
<<こんにちは。 私の名前はダーモットです。 私はあなたのアートワークが好きです。 あなたは非常に有能です。 私は私の日本語テキストの品質を謝ります。>>
<<Hello. My name is Dermott. I like your artwork. You are very able. I apologize for the quality of my Japanese text.>>

(Note that in Japanese I actually prefer to go by ダーメット, which reads as Dāmetto.)

And remember. Before you start typing anything, make sure your browser is viewing the webpage in the proper character encoding. Many Japanese people use Shift-JIS, a proprietary Microsoft encoding. The most truly international encoding, however, is UTF-8, and any language supported by Unicode can be represented in UTF-8 in the same page. Do not try to post Japanese text if your browser is viewing the page in ANSI encoding, ISO-8859-1 encoding, Windows-1252 encoding, etc.

Overall, I am pleased with the increasing kemono artist involvement in FurAffinity. It makes the place feel that much more colorful.