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I've been living in Japan for a couple years, and this reflects my experience too with regards to most people I've met. However, it's not just the government, b

by avallet 10y ago

I've been living in Japan for a couple years, and this reflects my experience too with regards to most people I've met. However, it's not just the government, but also a powerful and ageing elite which shares these views. Admittedly not people you'll meet everyday, yet they wield obvious political influence. Anecdotally, I hadn't met any such people until yesterday, where I had to attend a rotary international conference for a scholarship I receive from them. The audience was composed of around 700 people, most of them CEOs of local corporations, politicians or otherwise wealthy and connected people. The average age must have been somewhere in the late fifties/early sixties. The invited speaker was Masahiko Fujiwara [1], a mathematician turned essayist, who probably should have stuck to number theory. It was basically an hour and a half of chauvinist propaganda, hailing the past greatness of Japan, the superiority of the Japanese people, and mocking (I quote and translate) "Americans, Europeans and white people" at every turn with racial stereotypes. And the entire audience was laughing and clapping their hands! It's scary to think that these people might well be a representative sample of the ruling Japanese elite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Fujiwara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiko_Fujiwara

nihonde 10y ago
Scary indeed. Those were the same people who dragged Japan into imperialism. I guess waters in Japan run deep, and there have those small-minded people in the ruling class that you find everywhere else, too. I certainly don't see the current government of Japan reflecting the sentiments of normal people in any way whatsoever, but I think a lot of working class people feel like the government exists in a compromised world where influences of powerful nations like America and Russia use Japan as a proxy. Japan is not a passive player in that game, but the game itself doesn't seem to interest the average person. The people I know are just working hard to make ends meet and do a good job, raise a good family, etc.——normal human stuff. I'm not so naive to think that Japanese people aren't capable of being racist assholes, but I would say the prevailing sentiment here is more humility than arrogance or conniving. I'm a white American who married into a Japanese family with a (very) distinguished naval history. My ancestry here is definitely elite, but the money and power are a shadow of what they once were——and that's probably a good thing. There's no room for hubris when you're on the ropes. Everyone just has their focus at the human scale.

by avallet 10y ago

nihonde 10y ago

Scary indeed. Those were the same people who dragged Japan into imperialism. I guess waters in Japan run deep, and there have those small-minded people in the ruling class that you find everywhere else, too. I certainly don't see the current government of Japan reflecting the sentiments of normal people in any way whatsoever, but I think a lot of working class people feel like the government exists in a compromised world where influences of powerful nations like America and Russia use Japan as a proxy. Japan is not a passive player in that game, but the game itself doesn't seem to interest the average person. The people I know are just working hard to make ends meet and do a good job, raise a good family, etc.——normal human stuff. I'm not so naive to think that Japanese people aren't capable of being racist assholes, but I would say the prevailing sentiment here is more humility than arrogance or conniving. I'm a white American who married into a Japanese family with a (very) distinguished naval history. My ancestry here is definitely elite, but the money and power are a shadow of what they once were——and that's probably a good thing. There's no room for hubris when you're on the ropes. Everyone just has their focus at the human scale.