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Anti-Foreign Graffiti

Prober Alice Volkmar has sent us this photo she took in Tokyo:

I recently spotted this bit of anti-foreigner Graffiti in Hiroo (the Embassy laden district next to Roppongi, as I’m sure you know). There was also a recent news article about an American soldier raping a Filipina woman pasted above the scrawl.

Looking at the graffiti, I can only ask, “which woman?”

22 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - April 19, 2007 at 9:24 pm

Categories: Discrimination, Foreigners in Japan Tags:

axs

“Stay away from OUR woman”

It’s a “anti-YOU” graffiti…
revil

OUR implies many people. That means many of them are sharing one woman. I think this is a message to promote polygamy.
http://lostinube.blogspot.com/ lost in ube

What does it say on the far left? Is that just someone else’s work and not related?

http://heyneatjp.blogspot.com/ Kaspian

Either the whole thing is a message to “Solo”, or it’s something else entirely. The handwriting is totally different so I would guess that it is unrelated.

roundeye

This is so crazy! well, maybe they should be thinking about their own shortcommings when it comes to the way they treat “their woman” and women in general. I commute to shinjuku EVERY day for work, not a day passes by when I am not subjected to varying degrees of sexual harrassment, from sick drunkn lurches, to having men call out their phonenumbers and speaking about “going home with a white woman” shouted behind me as I walk to the train station. My friend (a western woman) was abused today by a Japanese salary man, after he crashed into her and her child, for carrying her child and buggy down the stairs at a trainstation (due to lack of escalators or a lift). If you want to “keep” something you had better learn to look after it in the first place. Japan is still, unfortunatley, a country where womans rights and common courtesy toward fellow beings LACKS by fathomless degrees.

rahbot

yeah ! go roundeye!
i am the one with the baby who was verbally abused for carrying my baby in his buggy down the stairs at the station on my way to work due to there being no lift or escalator. A guy rushed around the corner and up the stairs, not looking where he was going, bashed into me and instead of saying sorry verbally abused me for carrying a baby buggy on the stairs. Never minding that it was his fault and that his action could have caused me to drop my baby. The daily tribulations of being a foreign working mother in Japan. My husband is always shocked when we go overseas and western men always help people in need unlike Japanese men.

ponta

I am sorry to hear that. That Japanese business man should be blamed. He is extremely rude or even insane even by Japanese standard. And even a Japanese woman would be furious if that happened to her.

I understand the frustration living in a different country, and as a woman, a female must have still another perspective on Japan : Japan probe might need a female writer as a poster.

rahbot

the whole experience was kind of surreal. Its the first time ive experienced anything that harsh and hopefully the last !!!! Even all the gaijin comments ,stares, rudeness and whatnots pale in comparison.

ponta

Whoever wrote it , I am a bit surprised he didn’t write it in Engrish but in a plain English.

For an average Japanese, it is a little hard to come up with the expression “stay away from ~”
An average Japanese would think first in Japanese, 手を出すな、近づくなetc, and would end up with the expression like don’t (be/get) close to Japanese women or something like that.

Anyway, he must be kinda intelligent.

For the record, as for the dating, ” leave it to the free market” is my opinion.
toru

Isn’t it anti-Japanese graffiti?
It could be “Stay away from OUR(English/white) woman”.

The NOVA teacher comes to my mind.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

If that was the case, they’d probably try to write the graffiti in Japanese. Using the word “woman” instead of “women” definitely gives it the feel of having been written by someone who does not speak English as a first language.

toru

Well, it is very, I mean very, hard for non-Japanese to write Japanese characters correctly.

I’d say it was someone who could not write Japanese.

http://surfin-english.blogspot.com Jamie

Well, it is very, I mean very, hard for non-Japanese to write Japanese characters correctly.

No it isn’t. Japanese characters are very easy to write with practice. Why do you think so many 8 year old kids in Japan can write them?

And I’m with James. No English person would write “woman” instead of “women” unelss they were trying to make out that a Japanese person had written it.

It is fundamentally incorrect to write woman.

Unless the guy belonged to some sort of Polygamous marriage, that is, which would be an interesting twist to the story.

toru

Please. “non-Japanese” does no mean “English person”
toru

My apologies.

I did a quick search on this topic and found this stupid book.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/377288350/in/photostream/
And the book has been banned in the most of the stores, right?

In this context, I can understand the meaning behind “Stay away from OUR woman”.

http://flickr.com/photos/vyxle/ alice

As I mentioned above, there was an article about an American soldier raping a Filipina woman pasted above the graffiti. I don’t think there’s any question that the graffiti was aimed at Foreigners in general, and possibly American soldiers in particular (based on the article).

http://surfin-english.blogspot.com Jamie

Correct, toru, non-Japanese does not mean English person. I don’t understand how you could assume I meant otherwise from my post.

Though if I were to guess, you were saying that a foreigner other than an English speaker could have written it?

In that case, you’re right, perhaps it was one of them. Foreigners do make up as much as 3.5% of Tokyo’s population, and subtracting the English speakers, I bet at least 10% of those speak English fluently. So…say…0.35% of Tokyo’s total population.

It is quite possible that a non-English speaking foreigner is the one who wrote that English statement considering the predominance of non-English speaking foreigners (0.5%) in Tokyo.
flashjapan

Surely this graffiti was written by a Filipino person and aimed at Americans, in which case it can’t be classed as anti-foreigner graffiti because both groups are foreigners in Japan.
http://www.keepingpaceinjapan.com Turner

How do you figure that?
http://www.mikroproje.com green

flash how did you figured out that point?

http://myspace.com/truthson D-san

As an American Sailor stationed in Japan, I’ll say that I have never experienced any Gaijin-hate from any Asian person in japan.

Although, I can see why tis person would be angry. I have witnessed many Foreigner-Japanese relationships end because the foreigner was cheating on their mate. Maybe this would spark some hate from the jilted lover’s friends or family.

holden

So ironic its almost tedious:
every other week my (Japanese) wife is harassed or abused by Japanese men on commuter trains, i say every other week, those are only the occasions when she chooses to tell me it happened, im sure there are times when she doesn’t say anything due to my tendency to go ballistic.
(ballistic i might add, not about the molesters but the so called normal people who sit by and ignore it, and dont step in to help a woman in distress.)

when i lived in Europe, of all my girlfriends or partners over the years i can think of only one occassion when my woman had any trouble from a guy, and even then it was someone she knew.
but since i came to japan, having to deal with my wife/gf being molested is practically a regular occurrence.

I’ve yet to meet a “foreign” girl here who doesn’t have stories of Japanese mens charming behavior.

more specifically related to this graffiti the writer (if they were a local)obviously wasn’t aware of the statistics regarding Japanese men who enter international marriages or Japanese sex tourism in Asia.

Anti-Foreign Graffiti

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