Blogcritics Author: Shari

Japan: A "Safety" Country

Shari — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:16:51 EDT

There's a big difference between "safe" and "safer than."
A little over a year ago, an attractive young British woman named Lindsay Hawker was murdered in Tokyo. Her body was found, half-covered with sand in an attempt to hide it, in the tub of an apartment owned by a young Japanese man. This young man had been pursuing Ms. Hawker as an English instructor and had persuaded her to come to his home,...

The Body Language of Prejudice

Shari — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:42:38 EST

Visitors to Japan are told silently but unquestionably that they are different.
It’s New Year’s Day at a shrine situated in a residential area in central Tokyo. There is a long line of people waiting to enter the shrine to pray, dispose of last year’s good luck charms, and purchase new ones for the coming year. Tables selling a wide variety of charms to aid in making every wish for the coming year come true...

Book Review: Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons

Shari — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:15:20 EST

An author finds the answers she wants to hear rather than seriously exploring the issue at hand.
Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons is about the "hidden culture of aggression in girls." The main theory that the author is exploring is how girls use isolation, manipulation, and backstabbing as a means of bullying each other because overt hostility and physical aggression are socially denied for women.While reading this book, I've had a...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Wallowing in Victimhood

Shari — Mon, 9 Jul 2007 15:36:29 EDT

In news from Japan that barely registered on the radar screen of the U.S. media, the Japanese defense minister was forced to resign after making a comment that could be interpreted as trivializing the impact of the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. This was not big news anywhere but Japan, as politicians all over the world routinely put their feet in their mouths. It did prompt me to talk to my students about it. (I am an American English conversation teacher in Tokyo.)I got mostly the reactions I expected, along the lines of “Because the bombs were uniquely destructive, and only Japan suffered their effects, Japanese people are sensitive about them, especially those who suffered or their relatives.” Definitely understandable, but it also reminded me of a sentiment I’ve heard a number of times, from English language teachers who’ve talked to their students about this topic: “Japanese tend to talk as if WWII started in August 1945,” referring of course to when the bombs fell and the war ended. In other words, Japanese focus on what their country suffered, not what their country did to others. It is the rare Japanese who brings up Pearl Harbor.This is also understandable, yet ironic in its own way. For while Japanese understand their own sensitivity to the atomic bombings, their country utterly fails to understand the sensitivity of the countries upon whom they inflicted atrocities. Recently, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe retreated from his predecessors’ expressions of responsibility for Japan’s use of Southeast Asian women for sexual slavery during WWII, saying the military was not responsible, despite strong evidence to the contrary. Did he, or Japanese people, I wonder, consider how such actions would affect women who suffered such a horrific and shameful ordeal, or their relatives? Japan’s government continues their effort to whitewash history books, minimizing such atrocities as the Nanjing massacre in China. Many similar examples are available.Yet, again, this is hardly unique. I wondered if I could come up with a similar situation in America, and it didn’t take long. 9/11 is still a very sensitive topic in America, and with good reason, of course. Any politician who was seen as trivializing it would find his career over instantly; even when libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested in a debate that 9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum and that we would do well to consider the consequences of U.S. actions overseas, he was pounced on by the other candidates, especially Rudy Giuliani, whose political raison d’etre is that he will protect the country from terrorism. Apparently, considering the causes of terrorism is not a possibility, and no doubt some 9/11 relatives would consider a discussion of the causes of terrorism to be tantamount to justifying the attacks.The relatives were no doubt furious at seeing pictures in the media of some Palestinians joyfully celebrating in the streets upon hearing news of 9/11; that this is disgusting need not be said. But how many Americans have considered the perspective of a Palestinian -raised in a refugee camp, told many times about how the land their family had lived on for decades was stolen by the Jews, a relative or two killed, living their whole lives under foreign occupation. (I do not think that Israel has all the responsibility and the Palestinians none; this is just the perspective of a Palestinian.) To them, America is the country that supplies and arms their oppressor, and is its main defender and benefactor. Do we give them a second thought? Most of us, no. Should we be surprised when some of them celebrate that their oppressor’s benefactor was dealt a heavy blow? I wasn’t. Appalled, yes. Surprised, no. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the question “Why do they hate us?” was often heard; I couldn’t help but be sad that 9/11 was what it took to make people even care enough to ask the question. Culturally, America and Japan are very different countries, but they both focus on their own victimhood and refuse to deeply consider how their country’s actions might have affected others. Most people do this, either as a country or as individuals. Some situations give us the chance to notice and reflect on this. The more we do, the less fuel it will give to demagogues, and the wiser and stronger our country will be.

Shari has been disrupting the placid waters of Japanese life with her western ideas for the last 17 years. She's written textbooks and been a teacher and remains ever vigilant for her own tendency to view the world through the eyes of ethnocentrism.

Gays in Japan Stay In The Closet

Shari — Mon, 9 Apr 2007 09:34:46 EDT

Japan is a very group-oriented society, and most Japanese do not like people to be too different. Not in small ways, of course. It's fine if you practice hula dancing, study Greek, or listen to opera. Even if you are an otaku -- roughly the equivalent of a geek -- people might look at you a bit askance, but it's not a big problem. The differences that are a problem are those that cause people to be unsure how to relate to you. Being foreign isn't a huge problem because you're not really part of the group. Some Japanese, however, go abroad for a couple of years and come back to Japan with a personality changed somewhat by the experience, and they have social problems when they deal with other Japanese again. They speak too bluntly, they give unsolicited opinions, and they don't defer to others in the right ways. They can lose friendships and cause acquaintances to back away. Japanese are not sure how to relate to the person anymore.As a country, Japan isn't sure how to relate to gay people, so their solution is to not do so. Social conformity is paramount in Japan, and social conformity requires gay people to stay in the closet. Part of the reason for this is a great deal of ignorance of what being gay is all about. Most Japanese think all homosexuals have opposite-sex gender identification - all gay men are queens and all lesbians are butch. When I explain to students (I'm a straight American English teacher in Japan) that this isn't true and that only a minority are queens or butch, students are very surprised. They are surprised because this isn't what they see on TV. The only gay men they see on TV are queens. They never see men who look and act normal in every respect except that they're attracted to men. So if you ask them how they'd feel if it turned out that their brother or friend was gay, in their mind, they're imagining their brother or friend as a flaming queen.On the other hand, Japanese society and Japanese individuals aren't actively hostile to gays. Even in the relatively tolerant Western countries, there is always a certain percentage of people who think being gay is simply wrong due to conservative moral ideas, religious training, and the notion that gay sex is icky. (I personally think the first two are convenient excuses for those whose biggest problem is the third.) While Japanese may feel the third, the first two don't tend to be an issue. Some of the students I've talked to are gay-friendly. The majority think it's strange but don't have a fundamental problem with it. Granted, my students aren't truly representative of Japanese society because they chose to take English lessons and talk to foreigners, so they would be more open-minded. Some have the familiar 'what if he comes on to me, or checks me out in the locker room' prejudice, which probably only disappears with education and experience. The strongest negative attitudes I've encountered were from students age 60 and over, so it may be that it will be different in a generation or two.It's difficult to imagine the situation changing too much, though, if only because it's hard to know how it would start. For things to change, people need to start coming out, and in Japan that's very difficult. Not that it hasn't been difficult for people in Western countries, of course, but the social dynamic is different in Japan. One can be out to friends, in some cases, but my students agree that if a man's company found out he was gay, while he probably wouldn't be fired, he would definitely never be promoted and his co-workers would socially ostracize him. This is a very frightening thought for Japanese, for whom social inclusion is extremely important. Bullying is considered a big problem in Japanese schools, and the most common form of 'bullying' is one in which most or all of a class ostracizes one child. In America this wouldn't really be considered 'bullying,' but in Japan, students have committed suicide because of it. It's a very big deal. Gay Japanese know that the more out they get, the closer they get to that.This is unfortunate because most Westerners know we learn to be most accepting of gays when a close friend or relative comes out. We put the effort into understanding what we otherwise wouldn't. More coming out increases understanding and acceptance until a critical mass is reached and gays finally achieve something like society-wide equality. We're not quite there in America yet, but are getting close. In Japan, the process has barely begun.

An Apology Goes a Long Way in Japan

Shari — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:37:23 EDT

Takafumi Horie is one of the most famous men in Japan. He amassed a substantial fortune by his early thirties by starting a company called Livedoor and becoming a pioneer in the late-starting business of hostile takeovers in Japan. He will soon go to prison for a crime that, most observers agree, would not normally send a first offender to prison. His real crimes, most agree, were that he offended the Establishment and did not apologize at his trial.Not that he did not commit a real crime, of course; he was accused of providing false information about his company's finances to increase its prospects and stock price, which most agree he did. (He maintains subordinates carried out any illegalities.) Most also agree that such actions are taken, by many Japanese companies, in a way that does not come to the attention of the authorities. Some say this is because Horie stretched the boundaries of what is unofficially allowed, and some feel Horie was singled out because he had antagonized the Japanese business establishment.Japan is a country that values many characteristics Americans would consider old-fashioned: Tradition, modesty, formality, consensus, doing things the right way, respecting one's seniors, and setting aside one's interests in favor of those of the group. Horie not only did not follow these values, he flaunted his disregard for them. He launched hostile takeovers in a country where that was simply not done. He wore T-shirts to meetings with the biggest wheels of Japan, Inc., which many felt was a sign of deliberate disrespect. He boasted that he would become the richest man in Japan, and famously said he could buy anything with money.Japan is the ultimate 'go along to get along' country. Little is more important than keeping good relationships - with relatives, schoolmates, co-workers, and even competitors. High-level businessmen make and keep friendships with government officials. One has no problem imagining business and government leaders drinking together in an expensive restaurant, commiserating over how terrible Horie is for Japan. What can be done, one asks? Well, I heard through the grapevine... Another thing that is very important in Japan is the apology. Japanese routinely apologize for things that are not their fault; it's considered polite. Apologies are part of the fabric of society; they keep things harmonious. The apology need not be sincere, of course. One must at least give the general appearance of sincerity, but what is in one's heart is not considered important. What's important is that by apologizing, the person has indicated their submission to the greater society, the humbling of one's own ego. Society can then generously forgive the person, conditional on the offender's future good behavior.Schoolchildren who break school rules are expected to write what could be called an apology form. Businessmen whose companies go bankrupt apologize for causing distress to their employees and stockholders. Executives who get caught cooking the books make convincing apologies during their trials. It's common for first offenders of non-violent crimes to confess, apologize in court, and receive suspended sentences. It's not unlike a plea bargain in the U.S., except there's a trial.Horie, unsurprisingly, did not confess and did not apologize. No doubt he knew he would go to prison as a result, but he has never gone along to get along. Some Japanese see it as standing on principle, while others see it as an ego out of control, thumbing its nose at society. The average age of the former group is much lower than that of the latter. Japanese society is changing, most agree, just very slowly. Horie is a harbinger of that change, but he moved too far too fast, and society has slapped him down.The Horie case shows that Japanese society will overlook or forgive certain types of crime or misbehavior, but only if one is a club member in good standing. In Japan there is a saying - "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down." Horie stuck way out, and has been hammered down hard. His prison sentence is two and a half years, and he will likely be back - unrepentant, no doubt, but more careful.

Comfort Women or Sex Slaves?

Shari — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:53:35 EDT

It has recently been in the news that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe distanced Japan from its 1993 apology for Imperial Japan's actions in confining large numbers of young women, mostly Korean, Chinese, or other Southeast Asian, for the purpose of providing sexual services to Japanese troops. As those who follow international news know, Abe relies on the support of Japan's nationalistic elements, who prefer to see all of Japan's WWII actions in a much less negative light than most historians do. Whatever his personal beliefs, it is widely assumed that this is Abe's primary reason for his actions.I teach conversational English in Japan and I often discuss the topics of the day with my students. They are usually keen to do so, but I've noticed their interest and enthusiasm drops somewhat when this topic is raised, though they do gamely have a go at it. This lack of interest is also seen in the popular media. NHK (Japan's public television network, much like the BBC in the U.K.) and other hard-news programs carried the story, but the 5:30-8:30 a.m. news-ish shows (think Today or Good Morning America), which think first and foremost about ratings, won't touch it. One might say this is quite natural, as mass rape isn't a topic that goes well with breakfast. On the other hand, a few months ago there were two cases in Japan of murder/dismemberment, and the morning shows couldn't get enough of it.Terminology is very important to this topic. The term Japanese prefer is 'ianfu,' which translates to 'comfort women.' When this story became prominent in the 1990s, Western media at first used this term, but the organizations representing the victims protested that it was a euphemism that completely distorted the reality of what happened. Today, the Western media uses the phrase 'sex slaves.' The Japanese media, however, still use 'ianfu,' or 'jugun ianfu,' which may be roughly translated as 'comfort women following the military.' It gives a stronger impression of the military's connection to what happened, while falling far short of assigning blame.Most students don't defend Japan's wartime actions, but to my surprise, one student objected to my characterization of what happened as 'mass rape' on the grounds that some of the women were there voluntarily. Other arguments he made were the same ones that the nationalists make. Some records, they say, show that at least some of the women received payment. Some women signed contracts, meaning they gave consent. Perhaps unscrupulous middlemen misled the women by telling them they would do office work, but the military isn't responsible for what those people did. Few records exist from the time, so little can be really proved. To the extent that anything like that happened it's regrettable, but rape is extremely common in war. Japan did nothing that other countries haven't done for centuries; they just did it in an organized way. Yes, the women who say this was done to them are Korean and Chinese, so they have a motive to lie: to help their governments who are using this issue as a political weapon against Japan.The counter-arguments are, to me, obvious. The stigma of rape is such that elderly Asian women don't make such claims lightly. Just because Korea and China use it against Japan doesn't mean it isn't true. The preponderance of evidence does not prove, but strongly suggests, that Japan did this on a massive scale with no regard for whether the women consented. The women were confined by the army and couldn't leave. Japan was responsible for what the middlemen did, especially if no steps were taken to correct abuses. Because rape is common in war doesn't make it all right, and any countries that allowed such a thing should apologize. No one should defend it.I did not, however, argue with him. He clearly had his mind made up and he was paying me for my time, but I found it rather revealing. When you don't want to believe or accept something, you look for reasons not to, and the nationalists provide those reasons. This guy buys into it enthusiastically, as do many Japanese. Many others don't pay much attention, feeling that since there are two sides to the story, how can we really know? Such ambiguity is comforting. The Japanese hate conflict and love ambiguity. The Japanese reluctance to believe what most historians consider very clear gives their government the ability to shove it in the closet, excise it from history books, and run out the clock until the last of the victims have died.This is hardly surprising, of course. People in any country don't want to face the unpleasant things their country did. In America, most people ignore the clear fact that despite the President's protestations that "we do not torture," we do according to any reasonable definition of the term. In Japan, sex slaves are 'comfort women.' In America, torture is 'coercive interrogation.' People are the same, the world over. It's only the details that are different.

TV Review: 24 - Season 6

Shari — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 02:51:02 EST

This commentary will be very non-specific except to relate the backdrop for the story. As it begins, the U.S. is in the middle of a storm of terror attacks that have continued for weeks amid hundreds of deaths. This is something of a departure for the show. Usually the threat is only beginning in the first hour of the season. This background is presented in the very first scene and provides the framework not only for this season's threat, but also for a type of social commentary. In an early scene, presidential advisers are seen arguing over security measures, including racial profiling, that may deprive some (especially Arabs) of their rights. One of the early subplots involves a man, apparently guilty of nothing, but under what the FBI considers reasonable suspicion, is taken into custody under 'enemy combatant' designation. We are led to believe this is not exactly unusual. He is one of a group we see being dealt with in such a manner.This is a very direct reach into current headlines. We cannot help but think of the Padilla case. So far as we know at this time, it is very rare for an American to be labeled an 'enemy combatant' and thus deprived of his/her Constitutional rights. 24 is asserting that if the situation gets bad, it will get a lot less rare. When I saw the man get slapped with the 'enemy combatant' tag, my first reaction was, "That would never happen." (I have this reaction quite a bit when watching 24.) But then I thought, would it? We're obviously intended to consider this question - what the ability to label someone an 'enemy combatant' could lead to. An adviser in an early scene specifically mentions the 'slippery slope' argument. It's not too subtle, but then, 24 rarely is. It also seems more like a political commentary than is usual for 24 because it implicitly criticizes the Bush administration - or it simply raises questions about it. I suppose it depends on your point of view. The arguments raised by advisers are balanced and reasonable. It's what happens to the character who is arrested that seems heavy-handed.As for the episodes overall, they're what we've come to expect from 24: action and story that pulls you in right from the beginning and doesn't let go. Kiefer Sutherland is given a more subtle acting challenge this time. He says little about it, but we see in his eyes and face the effect of having been held and tortured by the Chinese for two years. At least in the beginning, Jack is not quite himself, and Sutherland does an excellent job of making us understand that. The overall level of acting is excellent as usual, and in a treat for Trek fans, Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir of Deep Space Nine) has a substantial early role.Another heavy theme early on is public anger directed at Arab-Americans. (This was seen also in Season 2, but that was more of a temporary plot device.) The extent of this appears, again, heavy-handed at times, but 1) hey, this is TV, 2) this is in the context of many terror attacks (though no one has taken responsibility), and 3) there was a certain amount of this right after 9/11. Would this happen to an even greater extent if there was a wave of terror attacks? Given the statistical likelihood that a suicide bomber will be an Arab as opposed to any other ethnic group, is racial profiling defensible? If people are dying in terror attacks almost every day in a way that normal police and legal measures are unable to prevent, is it acceptable to violate the Constitution in an attempt to provide greater security? If yes, what do you say to those who will certainly be locked up and abused for no other reason than their association and/or the color of their skin? If no, what level of risk are you willing to accept to protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution? One of the things I like very much about 24 is that it forces us to think about many moral questions such as these, in addition to providing nonstop, addictive action and entertainment. Rare is the show that can do both.

What's Your Blood Type, Baby?

Shari — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 14:07:40 EST

When a Type A personality is talked about in Japan, it isn’t what you’d expect it to be. Many Japanese people believe that personality is influenced by blood type. Upon first learning of this theory, I found it amusingly naïve and preposterous. I couldn’t imagine what would have led to such a dubious theory. Upon further reflection, I realized that the Japanese hardly have the market cornered on dubious personality theories. While growing up, I was told by my mother on more than one occasion that my supposedly fiery-tempered nature was the result of my having red hair. She never told me that red hair also meant I would also purportedly grow up to be highly-sexed. While I was a temperamental child (as many children are unable to control their emotions), I’ve grown up to be quite a bit more composed and in control of my emotions as an adult than my (dark-haired) mother.Character possibly being influenced by hair color doesn’t end with redheads. Blondes are commonly thought of as being innocent, naïve, or just plain dumb. Both redheads and blondes are more strongly associated with libidinous proclivities than brunettes. When I share the hair color-influenced theory of personality with students, they have the same reaction I did when I hear about blood type influencing personality. They think it’s an incredibly silly concept. This is a reflection of a culture in which the overwhelming majority of people are born with nearly identical hair color. It makes sense that they’d have to find something less superficial than outward appearance to formulate an idiosyncratic personality theory.Of course, cultures of similar-looking people could have gone the route of Franz Gall and looked at bumps on the head to look for character pointers. Gall’s pseudoscience of phrenology inspected the bumps and indentations on people’s heads and reached conclusions about such character aspects as courage, pride, desire to reproduce, ability to love, and even religious beliefs. This theory had the vague ring of science since it was complicated and required instruments to “read” a person’s character.Finally, there is the biggest arbitrary indicator of personality of them all -- birth date. This one is embraced in a wide variety of cultures to a greater or lesser extent and has a long history. Nearly everyone I speak to says that they don’t really believe in astrology, yet everyone knows his or her astrological sign and most have a peek at the predictions now and then but claim not to take them seriously.All cultures seem to have a need to find superficial indicators of personality. This is a curious tendency on the one hand and an understandable one on the other. It is odd because believing one’s character is in any way influenced by arbitrary factors places control of one’s behavior outside of oneself. For example, if you believe being born blood type B means you will be irresponsible, self-centered, and forgetful, you may accept these negative traits as inevitable and incapable of being improved upon. Feeling that you are saddled with character flaws for reasons beyond your control is hardly an attractive proposition. The flip side of this is that you have an excuse and don’t have to take responsibility for your problems.The most understandable reason for such personality theories is that it allows others to quickly sum you up without having to get to know you or understand you. The clichéd pickup line about asking about someone’s sign developed from a tendency to feel that finding out this key piece of information would provide a wealth of character data when considering compatibility without having to go through the pesky process of actually talking to someone. When I asked a variety of students if blood type is often discussed as part of getting to know a prospective boyfriend or girlfriend (or considering a future mate), I was informed that it is often casually mentioned and discussed as a point of interest. Most Japanese people also seem to feel that there is an “ideal” opposing blood type for them to marry and that taking up with someone of their own blood type is a less than perfect choice. However, they would no more reject someone based only on blood type alone than most of us would based on hair color, astrological sign, or head bumps.

Is Racism Against White People Possible?

Shari — Wed, 6 Dec 2006 11:40:47 EST

There’s a growing fad among Japanese novelty shops and variety television shows. This is dressing up like a “gaijin” (foreigner) and acting like one by donning a large fake nose, bushy wigs (and sometimes beards) then speaking in loud, broken and poor English. A few examples of the types of items can be seen here and here. The gaijin community that takes notice of such things is uncertain whether or not this is offensive to foreigners or simply amusing.The fact that white people, who are typified as big-nosed and hairy by the Japanese, even question whether or not this is offensive raises the question of whether or not anything which portrays white folks in a negative light by non-caucasians can ever be considered racist. After all, if you change the costume to one which would allow a white person to dress up as a stereotypical Japanese person – geeky glasses, buck teeth, yellowish skin, and “slanted eyes” - it can be recognized immediately as an offensive negative stereotype.Since black comedians can say nearly anything they want about white people as part of their comedy routines while white comedians are forbidden from using any stereotypes about minorities of any stripe in their routines for fear of being seen as racist, one has to ponder whether or not racism against white folks is considered impossible.On more than one occasion, the argument has been made that it’s not racist to make wholesale negative remarks about white people because they are in the majority and therefore “in power”. The idea is that you can only be a racist if you are in a position to oppress someone. This argument confuses “discrimination” with “racism”. For behavior to be racist, it is only required to be based on stereotypical (and usually negative) thinking. Most racist commentary is meant to belittle those who are different in appearance from oneself as a means of elevating oneself.There is little risk that white people will eventually find themselves oppressed or in a situation where they are discriminated against wholesale as a result of spreading racist sentiment. However, that is not the point. Racism of any kind serves to separate people and breeds resentment and hostility based on superficial differences. Even if white adults can laugh at themselves as they are stereotyped by others, this type of humor subtly teaches children who grow up exposed to such humor that it’s okay to make fun of others because they are different. It also increases the likelihood that they will apply such humor to their contemporaries with potentially disastrous results.While it may sound far-fetched and alarmist, a comment on one of the many blogs about Japan regarding the “gaijin” costumes illustrates just how potentially dangerous racial humor can be when children are exposed to it. According to this comment, a Japanese child grabbed at his teacher’s crotch because he had heard jokes about “big gaijin” penis sizes.