Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
Status: offline
|
FR
There's another article that I came across this morning about racism in Japan. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to start another thread about it, but I think I'll put it in this thread, since the topic in this thread is America, our self-image, and how we are perceived by other nations: Article
quote:
Miki Dezaki, who first arrived in Japan on a teacher exchange program in 2007, wanted to learn about the nation that his parents had once called home. He taught English, explored the country and affectionately chronicled his cross-cultural adventures on social media, most recently on YouTube, where he gained a small following for videos like “Hitchhiking Okinawa” and the truly cringe-worthy “What Americans think of Japan.” One of them, on the experience of being gay in Japan, attracted 75,000 views and dozens of thoughtful comments.
Dezaki didn’t think the reaction to his latest video was going to be any different, but he was wrong. “If I should have anticipated something, I should have anticipated the netouyu,” he told me, referring to the informal army of young, hyper-nationalist Japanese Web users who tend to descend on any article – or person – they perceive as critical of Japan.
But before the netouyu put Dezaki in their crosshairs, sending him death threats and hounding his employers, previous employers, even the local politicians who oversee his employers, there was just a teacher and his students.
Dezaki began his final lesson with a 1970 TV documentary, Eye of the Storm, often taught in American schools for its bracingly honest exploration of how good-hearted people – in this case, young children participating in an experiment – can turn to racism. After the video ended, he asked his students to raise their hands if they thought racism existed in Japan. Almost none did. They all thought of it as a uniquely American problem.
The bolded part is interesting to me, since it fits in with what I've been saying about many of these America-bashers and how one-sided (and hypocritical) their attacks on America are. Racism in Japan is pretty well-known in the world, although this article indicates that the Japanese are in denial over it. (This teacher even received death threats from rabid Japanese nationalists who were outraged about his criticisms of Japan.)
Too often, I see this as being the case. The America-bashers can't take criticism as easily as they dish it out. They're all too eager to blame America for all the world's problems, while refusing to look at themselves and their own countries' contributions to the state of the world today.
Japan is a perfect example, since they are responsible (more than any other single nation on Earth) for causing America's foreign policy to shift from isolationism to interventionism. For all of you who are pissed off about America going all over the world and interfering with other countries affairs, overthrowing governments, destabilizing regimes, fixing elections, and military invasions - it can all be traced back to December 7, 1941. It's mostly Japan's fault for how America turned out, since they chose to attack Pearl Harbor and bring a previously neutral country into World War II on the side of the Allies. (Similarly, I would blame Germany for how the USSR turned out, although they were smart enough to eventually realize when enough was enough, while our leadership really hasn't learned that yet.)
quote:
Gently, Dezaki showed his students that, yes, there is also racism in Japan. He carefully avoided the most extreme and controversial cases – for example, Japan’s wartime enslavement of Korean women for sex, which the country today doesn’t fully acknowledge – pointing instead to such slang terms as “bakachon camera.” The phrase, which translates as “idiot Korean camera,” is meant to refer to disposable cameras so easy to use that even an idiot or a Korean could do it.
He really got his students’ attention when he talked about discrimination between Japanese groups. People from Okinawa, where Dezaki happened to be teaching, are sometimes looked down upon by other Japanese, he pointed out, and in the past have been treated as second-class citizens. Isn’t that discrimination?
I've seen similar national rivalries and bigoted attitudes in other countries as well, so if they think that racism exists only in America, they're dead wrong.
|
RE: Possible solutions for America's problems - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread