Posted on 11/20/2005 7:55:12 PM PST by neverdem
TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a market of millions, that's a nothing share.
"Even today Koreans and Chinese can not achieve full Japanese citizenship."
Yes, they can. Even Caucasians can. However, it is not easy, and the Japanese will still seize upon any tiny difference as a reason to exclude.
That's why the population of North Korea, Iran, and Cuba is under the heal of the loonies. They're a bunch of stinkin' cowards who don't deserve freedom.
In the second graphic, the panels should be read right to left.
The Korean guy is saying, "Does tke Kyokuto Asia Chousa Kai think that the Normalization Treaty Between Japan and South Korea (1965) is a correct treaty?"
(Google Japan turns up eight pages of hits on Kyokuto Asia Chousa Kai, but none that gives an English name for the organization. A direct translation would be something like "Far-east Asian Investigating Group." They appear to have published a report that dealt with a number of perceived social problems, including shoplifting of sweets and relations between Japan and Korea.)
(The term used for "correct treaty" is "tadashii jouyaku." That phrase generates only eight or ten internet hits, which makes me think it's not widely used.)
The Japanese yoot in the second panel says, "A correct treaty?" Which I interpret to mean that he doesn't get what the first fellow means by "correct treaty," because he's not familiar with the phrasing, or possibly the concept, or both.
The blonde-haired, round-eyed Japanese girl in the far left panel is saying, to translate loosely, "Has someone been telling you that we are the only ones who think so?"
(Actually, she uses the mirror image of "has someone been telling you," which is "have you been hearing," but I think the two phrases are functionally the same. Shuuken usually means subjective, so a direct translation would have been, "our subjectivity." However, on the Internet I found the following definition: "Jibun hitori dake no kangae," which indicates an idea held by one person alone.)
There's some material on line about the Normalization Treaty Between Japan and South Korea, if anyone's interested.
We agree wholeheartedly, and I apologize for my imprecision where it seemed to denigrate Americans' ABILITY to understand. I intended only to show that, having not been raised to believe in their own racial or ethnic superiority, they cannot identify easily.
I don't think you can as an American comprehend the depth of racism and ethnocentrism in Japanese society until you've lived with them. That is not to say these people are inherently evil, but that sort of view of humanity lends itself to great abuse, and they seem as a country both unwilling to change and completely unhindered by their opposition to Western society's more egalitarian view of the value (and human status) of other races and peoples.
Rearming them would simply be asking for trouble...far more trouble than it would be worth. But I'm sure there will be plenty here that will disagree in the name of balancing the evils in the region, but I'd rather simply have one less evil, and be able to avoid worry about at one more country shooting us in the back.
toyo1919: Thanks for the link to the critique of the NYT.
Although much has been said of Japanese xenophobia, I know that there is a strong self-critical movement also. In my own tastes of manga, I read a lot of Tezuka Osamu, which has a humanism parallel to the films of Kurosawa Akira. Nakazawa Keiji's "Hadashi no Gen" is very critical of Japanese militarism and imperialism. And mangaka Takahashi Rumiko's "Ranma" was openly Sino-philiac, yet quite popular in its day. No, as yet I've not visited Japan, but I believe there are some countervailing winds such as these.
OTOH, when I started to learn a little rudimentary Japanese, I was somewhat surprised to see that they had two separate alphabets for spelling "true Japanese" words and for spelling "foreign" words. That sort of bifurcation lends itself to a xenophobic mentality.
"The Japanese don't reproduce themselves anymore and will allow very few immigrants (close to none, really)--they'll have all the threat of a nursing home very shortly."
If your argument is that they'll be too old to fight, we should probably surrender the U.S. now to India and Mexico--after all, the biggest part of our population, the Baby Boomers, are coming up on Depends, too.
"Japan is just bidding its time until the US withdraws from its "defense", then just watch the region explodes."
I think you go too far there. But in the long run, with their racist societal mores, they will eventually be just another threat TO US if we arm them with nukes. Left in self-defense mode, they are allies by necessity, who are beholden to us. I would rather have to defend them than defend against them.
On the other hand, if a country has already time and again sided with our enemies and stupidly placed the U.S. in an adversarial position for political benefit, one that makes it difficult to consider that country an ally, we should let them cover their own asses. That's why the current leadership in the ROK should be put in its place, as the U.S. hung Germany's lefty now-former leaders out to dry, with complete withdrawal.
Japan hasn't been that foolish. But they shouldn't ever be mistaken for true comrades in arms, given their bigotry and past.
"We agree wholeheartedly, and I apologize for my imprecision where it seemed to denigrate Americans' ABILITY to understand"
No apology necessary. I just wanted to make that explicit.
"Rearming them would simply be asking for trouble..."
Yes, but they are going to rearm. On the up side, a rearmed Japan might be enough of a speed-bump to give us some time to gear up for the next war, much as the Philippines and Japan's planned invasion of Australia gave us time in WWII.
That's impossible...America's the only racist nation in the world!!
/DUmmie
I've heard that too about the Ainu (that they're white) but they do still seem to have "Asian" type eyes and the dark hair. I would almost think they might be some ancient mixed-race group between Russian whites and perhaps Korean or Chinese.
I don't know. The oldest undisputed Mongoloid skeleton is only 10,000 years old, Re: professor Stepehn Oppenheimer.
I suspect the Ainu and the Mongoloids sprang from a common source, maybe the Jomon? The Jomon are the anscestor to the Ainu...the oldest Jomon skeleton ever found in Japan is 13,000 years old.
Also, keep in mind that Kennewick Man is thought to be Ainu.
Please watch it and let me know what you think.
I remember hearing of that movie but never saw it ... thatnks for the ping I put it on my list
One of the most ignorant things I've ever heard on NPR was a reporter, doing a piece on the Salem witch trials, and wondering why Americans, in particular, have ~always~ ~had~ this particular intolerance for difference.
The idea that racism or other kinds of prejudice are an especially American thing is part of the insanity being fed to our young people in schools and colleges. So sad. So clueless as to history and the rest of the world. So filled with pathological self-loathing.
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