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So, umm, is nobody else going to call this racist? > Every bookstore, magazine stand, and school, has a significant portion of its bookshelves packed with comi
by yifanlu 10y ago
So, umm, is nobody else going to call this racist?
> Every bookstore, magazine stand, and school, has a significant portion of its bookshelves packed with comic books. Why? It’s generous, and a bit dismissive, to say that Japanese folks simply love “cute” things. It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level.
> Kids in Spain are reading Kiss of the Spiderwoman , kids in America Harry Potter, and kids in Japan . . . Naruto, the adolescent ninja. What’s Japan famous for? Literature? Movies? Music? Web design? Please. Comic books. Anime. Illustrations everywhere.
Right, I'm guessing they haven't read Tales of Genji or Saikaku or watched many of the films out of Japan in the Criterion collection. But let's dismiss an entire culture and history because of the popularity of anime (which, by the way, is not just for kids, but that's a different topic).
> Japanese people themselves are aware of this; if not individually, then at least as a group. In recent years a flood of new words has entered the language, and guess what, they’re all written with the Japanese phonetic alphabet, katakana.
And that's because they can't read it? WTF. Katakana is pretty. It's marketing. Sometimes Japanese poetry (yes it exists) uses katakana for style and emphasis. I don't claim to know how Japanese marketing works but you, author, don't either.
> Nobody bothers to make kanji for stuff anymore, because half the time, no one can read it.
What? Even if you're being hyperbolic, that's still too much. Yes, there's a lot of difficult kanji even for native speakers. For foreigners like me, it's the biggest barrier to learning it. But to claim that native born speakers can't recognize half the words in common use...
> Ever wonder why Japanese people have such trouble learning English? Just look at how well they speak their own language.
Again, even if you move past the reductive reasoning and general racist stereotyping, it's just plainly wrong. Even in a logical level. Do you really think a nation of people who speak a language can't do it well? Why do they choose that language then?
Seriously, I get "skepticism", but wtf HN. If it looks racist and smells racist, let's not just skid past it and just inquiry about "supporting data".
- bokumo 10y agoNo, because it is not racist. The author has lived in Japan and studied Japanese for a long time. If you read some of his other posts for context you will see that he deeply admires and loves the Japanese people and their culture. This article appears to me to be a cathartic rant about Japanese being so difficult to learn that even many Japanese don't master their own language. I lived in Japan for about 3 years and I can corroborate that Japanese people struggle with their own language. For example, the development of word processing has made the problem even worse. When Japanese people consistently use computers for writing they call themselves "Wa-pu-ro baka" (translation "word processing idiot") because they quickly forget how to write kanji by hand. Actually it is two rants in one. The first rant is about how college level educational standards are very different in the U.S. and Japan. Although I never attended university in Japan, I've met many Japanese college students and their stories corroborate the author's claims of ridiculously easy grading standards.
- abjwam 10y agoReminds me of the "I have a black friend" argument. >"It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level" This claim is ridiculous. There is no way you can construe this as anything other than racist.
- glandium 10y agoIt also completely goes completely opposite from my own experience, which is that on average the Japanese people I know are more literate in their language than the French people I know are literate in theirs (including myself). That sure is anecdata, but it's about as much anecdata as the OP. Edit: I should mention that I live in a "relatively" small city in Japan (180k inhabitants), that many qualify as "inaka" (countryside), although I wouldn't. So the population of Japanese people I know is not necessarily biased towards highly educated people.
- texthompson 10y agoI've never seen anecdata before. Thanks for sharing that word, love it. :)
- grobaru 10y agoI wonder if there has been a research that tried to incorporate Hangul (aka the best writing system on earth) to Japanese/CHinese lang...just for pragmatic reasons
- yifanlu 10y agoI have lived in America for a long time and can speak English fluently. However if I say "Americans are stupid, and most people don't know how to speak their own languages properly." even though it may be based on my observation living here for over a decade, it is ignorant at best and racist at average. I'm showing my feeling or superiority when in fact I'm the stupid one because I don't understand regionism and slang. But that's besides the point. Just because you lived there and learned the culture (who's to say how well) doesn't mean you can't be racist against them. Otherwise, there's a lot of colonists who we own an apology to. I've read the author's bio on their site and even there it downplays Japan and Japanese culture and up plays the author themselves.