Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!CALA-MUZIK!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan,fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: "gaijin hanzai ura fairu" entire contents online Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:38:51 +0900 Lines: 126 Message-ID: <53ug6uF1tcjh0U1@mid.individual.net> References: <1171357427.880787.198220@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <53f8saF1s9ogaU1@mid.individual.net> <53fcvsF1sm56tU1@mid.individual.net> <53hf7kF1se7laU1@mid.individual.net> Reply-To: john@rarebooksinjapan.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net OuSZPdES49b3OmsSz0Cg6QTdvgPUE7HqLFCzRqnMUPQ5ArIK4I User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (Windows/20061207) In-Reply-To: Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.life.in-japan:165236 CL wrote: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen#Recent_controversy > > Shameless self-promotion. You mean he wrote it himself? How does one check the authorship of Wikipedia articles? > But Wikipedia is famous for that. Not famous enough for me to have heard of it, but then I don't use Wikipedia very much. > -- do you think that there's any chance Debit profited financially > from the exchange? I wouldn't know. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Was Diana murdered? I do know that he'd lose whatever credibility he has if he did, so he'd be a fool to take the risk. >> the axe he's grinding applies much more forcefully to other, >> non-white, minorities. I wonder what sort of feelings people >> from Korean, Chinese, Brazilian or other backgrounds have about >> him? > > This is Missionary Church thinking at its finest. The inferior, > non-white heathen cannot fend for himself but, with the help of > me, the strong white man guided by the Hand of God (tm) I can > help him rise above his Life of Pain (tm). I'm not sure if you're referring to what you suppose to be my own attitudes here or to what you feel Debito is doing. If the former, then you're reading too much into what I said. As I said in response to one of Michael Cash's posts in this thread (in fj.life.in-japan only): > As I see it it's not so much about about "white rights" as about > unreconstructed Japanese attitudes, from "Nihonjinron" to > outright racial prejudice. The Japanese seem more willing to > take it from him than from a Brazilian, Korean, etc. - which > is racist in itself, but you've got to start somewhere! The white foreigner can protect his/her "favoured gaijin" status by colluding with Japanese racism against other, less favoured, minorities or risk that favoured status by not colluding. It doesn't have to be about missionary-style thinking, though I can see that it could be. Perhaps you're right in detecting such thinking in Debito's mindset; I haven't as yet, but then I haven't managed to read more than a tiny fraction of what he's written. [lots of fun stuff about bicycles and screwing with authority snipped] > He also writes as though he believes that the host nationals are > too stupid to do things his way (another 19th Century Protestant > Missionary Society attitude, by the way). Is this specifically a criticism of the way he goes about it, or would any gaijin who criticised Japanese bureaucracy provoke the same response from you? If you answered "Yes" and "No" respectively, can you give examples of foreigners who have criticised the system in a way you endorse? > As far as things being "discriminatory" life is about discrimination. > there would be no human beings if it wasn't. That's a bit of wordplay. "Discrimination" in these contexts is synonymous with "bigotry", and life isn't about bigotry. > The Korean community is going about things in as confrontational > a manner as works within the Confucian system Tell me more. Sorry to be so clueless; I am interested, but really don't have much knowledge about it! What exactly is the Korean community doing? I'm not asking for a treatise here, just a couple of links would be fine, especially if you have one that answers my query about what non-white gaijin think of Debito. > Too many foreigners mistake Japanese television advertising and > the products on offer in the stores for the existence of a Western > style social order I find that rather curious. To me, Japanese television advertising is markedly different from British advertising, or from that of any other Western country I know, and the stores are full of soy products, noodles, seaweed, Japanese sweets and pickles and a host of other very definitely non-Western products, among which, if one looks carefully, are sandwiched things like cheese, coffee and cornflakes. > and I believe Debit is one of them. If he is he must be extraordinarily unobservant. >> Going back to the onsen issue, I would >> have thought his action in suing probably did more to raise >> Japanese people's consciousness about the issue than anything >> else ever has. > > Disagree. It probably did more to circle the wagons, if what > the host nationals say is true. You mean people with anti-foreigner sentiments are closing ranks? That it's getting harder to sit on the fence? That people have to define themselves more clearly as reconstructed or unreconstructed? I think there are quite a lot of people who would see that as a good thing, and I must say I'm inclined to think that the more closely racist attitudes are identified with right-wing extremists who go around in armoured vans screaming hysterically through loudspeakers the better. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Your way is: > ("Ah, Nanani-san, you're a racist bastard? Why, so am I. You > want to head down to the yattai and catch some miso chashuumen > and couple of oyuwari? Yes? Okay, meet you outside."). Obviously, that works for you, or you wouldn't have said it. It wouldn't work for me, but I don't take a confrontational approach like Debito either. I guess we all have to go with what we feel works. Some of what you say makes sense to me and some of what you say grates with me. I have the same reaction to Debito. He makes some good points and he makes some bad ones. Like most people who actually *do* a lot he makes his fair share of mistakes, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss everything he says out of hand just because it's him saying it. John