Anger over Mainichi WaiWai column continues…
Last month, Japanese bloggers and 2-channelers scored a major victory by bringing public attention upon Mainichi’s WaiWai column, a popular section of Mainichi’s English language website that reported on some of the wildest and most perverted stories from Japan’s weekly tabloid magazines. Mainichi’s English language WaiWai column has since been discontinued and the company has apologized and punished employees that were deemed responsible for the column.
Many of those that had called and e-mailed complaints to Mainichi about the WaiWai column were probably satisfied with the result. However, some don’t think it’s enough. Blogs that called for the end of Mainichi’s WaiWai column are continuing their attacks on the paper and demanding that individual authors be outed and punished for writing WaiWai pieces.
There are also videos popping up on YouTube about the issue, such as this one that calls for a hanging of some sort (its description specifically names Ryan Connell as the author of WaiWai):
I also came across this blog post about a protest held yesterday. They include videos of the demonstration:
The man talking on the loudspeaker expresses anger over the “perverted” [hentai] column on Mainichi’s English site. Towards the beginning of his speech he implies that the disinformation being spread by Mainichi’s English website has caused crimes against Japanese women in other countries, a claim so idiotic I stopped watching the video at that point.
Meanwhile, Mainichi seems to be taking some additional measures. A source connected to GPlusMedia, the company that runs GaijinPot.com and JapanToday.com, has informed us that Mainichi has been pressuring the company into censoring some forum threads and articles that mention WaiWai and the controversy over it.
Update: The demonstration mentioned above also made TV news (including a mention of Japundit as a foreign website running WaiWai articles).
Update 2: The Aussie press has an article about Ryan Connell, claiming that he “has become one of the most reviled figures in Japan,” and that he is under police protection after numerous death threats directed at him and his family have appeared online. [via Marmot's Hole, hat tip to Julián]
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Yes, let us show that Japan is in fact a perfectly moderate and reasonable country by going batshit insane over a parody column and its author.
I can see no flaw in this reasoning.
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So, according to the article in the blog, Masuo Kamiyama has two faces: one of a “conscientious” journalist who encourages foreign correspondents in Japan to visit the Sino-Japanese War Museum in Beijing this summer (and write articles about it, of course); and one of a “sleazebag” journalist who writes numerous articles to disseminate the notion that Japanese people are perverted sex addicts or even worse. Very interesting. I hope to know more about this writer, although the Mainichi will never reveal who he is.
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Mainichi’s apology was not carefully handled, which makes 2chers even more angry.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1142520.html
On the page saying sorry, Mainishi also said they will take legal measures against “clearly illegal acts such as slandering”. This of course drew even more anger, as it was WaiWai that more or less slangered Japan.
Having said it, though, I wonder which would make Japan look worse; perverted tabloid stories from WaiWai, or screaming protests by 2chers?
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Does that give 2-channelers the right to slander and defame female staff writers who don’t have anything to do with WaiWai? Aren’t they “Japanese women” too?
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Which ’slander’ are you talking about?
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For example, http://society6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/mass/1214441047/
(see comments 28 or 46… and I don’t care about the ‘no intention of slander’ disclaimer)
I’m not justifying Connell or MDN, by the way.
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I’m not justifying 2chers, and I do not think they have any rights to slander women working at Mainichi.
But these slandes (28 and 46, including the “disclaimer”) are just WaiWai articles with “Japanese women” replaced to “Women working at Mainichi”, aren’t they? It’s Mainichi (WaiWai) who said “Japanese women are sexually stimulated by washlets”, so a 2cher said “According to Mainichi, women working at Mainichi (who are Japanese women) are sexually stimulated by washlets”. I’d rather call it a sarcasm (of bad taste, though).
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Yup. Anyway some people would interpret that as slandering, among them someone at Mainichi, I guess…
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If your Japanese is not good enough to understand the sarcasm in comment #70 of the same thread, you should probably refrain from commenting about 2 channellers.
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Sweetwater, that comment was good (it could still be applied to the shūkanshi). But I was referring to the other comments.
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Other comments like the ones you cited are basically the same.
“Yup. Anyway some people would interpret that as slandering, among them someone at Mainichi, I guess…”
So be it. By offending people at the Mainichi using their own articles, those 2-channelers try to make them understand how offending their articles were. Even though the Mainichi deleted all of their WaiWai columns, they have not made any corrections. Instead, taking the 2-chan comments as slanders to their female staff writers, the Mainichi is threatening 2 channelers with lawsuits, which reveals their elitism and double standard and keeps intensifying the anger toward them.
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Haha I laughed at that last video.
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I liked the WaiWai articles. They gave my girlfriend good tips on fellatio.
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Mainichi’s PR firm couldn’t squelch this? Oh, right…
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They’re taking it way too far when the column has already been pulled; what instead is a more serious issue is the story about the Narita airport customs officials planting illegal substances in people’s bags yet get off lightly…it’s just too ridiculous to me.
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Why aren’t these protesters out against the dozens of magazines that print the same stories–or worse–in Japan every week?
This is very odd.
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Because they are all reading them. SRSY.
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Maybe because Mainichi is a centre-left mainstream newspaper “owned by Zainichi Koreans”. Some protesters are nationalist right-wingers. They don’t care if those outrageous things happen in Japan or are “reported” by the shūkanshi (they claim “no one in Japan believes them”), as long as they aren’t translated or syndicated in foreign languages. That’s what worries them. They don’t want the world to learn about it, even if it’s true.
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> Maybe because Mainichi is a centre-left mainstream newspaper
> “owned by Zainichi Koreans”.
Where did you get this information? According to the Wiki, the top 3 owners are the Mainichi’s employee stock-holding group (13.1%), the Shimotsuke Shimbun (3.6%), and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi-UFJ (3.5%). I think TBS and MBS are the Mainichi’s owners, too.
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That’s why I put it into quotation marks. That’s what you can read at some 2ch threads. That, and the Sokka Gakkai connection, of course.
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You must not spread false information like this, and you cannot make any excuses by using quotation marks unless non-negligible number of people claim so. I don’t think you really read about this at the 2 channel. Show me the link if you can.
Some people say the Mainichi has a connection with the Souka Gakkai because they print Gakkai’s Seikyo Shimbun, and others claim Daisaku Ikeda is ex-Zainichi Korean, which I don’t know if it is true.
Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, the Mainichi Shimbun is NOT owned by the Souka Gakkai.
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I’ve watched some videos in which right wingers protest in front of Mainich company. Not that it is wrong to protest but they way they protest is a disgrace. Probably Mainichi needs to explain more clearly , but they also need to apologize to the Japanese because the way they protest dishonored the Japan.
Having said that, yes I guess they don’t want to the world to learn about what is written on WaiWai because the articles are not true, misleading if put out of context, and disgusting.
If you are a big fan of wai wai articles, I suggest you to learn Japanese. I think there are plenty of such articles in Japanese.
And suppose someone translates into Japanese the hundreds of articles, truth or not, depicting how pervert and wacky Colombian men and women could be, saying this is from the mainstream Colombian newspaper. Or suppose someone replace the Japanese with Colombians (or whoever) in the waiwai articles and pubilsh them on the Internet, saying, “hey this is how things are going on in Colombia, these are from serious jounarlists, Can you believe it?, they are having a big party, Yeheeeey.”
Do you feel comfortable? If not, you may understand their sentiments.
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Ponta, I’m not fan of WaiWai, actually. I think most of them are outrageous, with excessive exposure at the home page of a ’serious’ newspaper. Mainichi should use its English-language staff writers to translate their editorial and opinion pieces instead, for example, just as Asahi and Yomiuri do.
Though I understand that some of the WaiWai articles were twisted tabloid magazine articles, I still can’t get why 2channelers don’t protest in front of those publishing companies if they’re still profiting from publishing lies. Are they okay with shūkanshi’s lies and outrages?
I’m not a nationalist and I hardly believe in patriotism, though I still believe every country, just as every person, should keep a minimum of dignity. Unfortunatedly, the elites and the criminal minority of Colombians are enough to make feel shame on us, without the need of any newspaper to publish “lies” in a foreign language. FARC kidnappings, lies and terrorism, AUC’s child beheadings, chainsaw massacres, and alliances with allies of the current president (his cousin and other 30 lawmakers are in jail because of that), millions of displaced people, a re-election process stained with a bribery scandal (buried by Ms Betancourt successful military rescue), Pablo Escobar’s cousin as the main presidential adviser and “ideologue”, a right-wing government who follows everything Bush does and more worried seeking how to remain in power than for actually ruling the country… well, given all that I’d prefer my fellow countrypeople to be more “wacky” and “pervert” if that’s necessary for them to be less violent and intolerant. We “the good people” might be “more”, but we’re too indifferent or impotent.
(I apologize if I was kind of deviating from the subject)
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I rarely look at 2 channel so I don’t know much about them.
But I think they are angry because mainich put the articles out of context. The Japanese people know the articles are fictitious, or they take the articles with a grain of salt at the best. The readers enjoy them as such.
I read an English article by a Korean expat, condemning Japan that Japan has been morally corrupt and it is getting worse, citing an article from waiwai;’(if I remember it correctly) the article says that Japanese women on the street are at any time at the risk of their panty pulled down by pervert men. He took the article seriously. it was really hard to convince the author that the article was not true. I think ” channellers were angry because Mainich are responsible for causing such misunderstanding.
As for political and social situation about Colombia, I praise you for being self-critical. Now the Japanese people don’t know much about the country. So suppose that your neighbors in Japan who know you are from Colombia read the articles about tons of articles telling how violent Colombian men can be as well as wacky and pervert parties Colombia men are having every day and suppose further that she is told that the articles are written by very serious Colombian journalists and thus they take them seriously. Can you be indifferent?
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> Are they okay with shūkanshi’s lies and outrages?
I would not call the Jitsuwa Knuckle, the Asahi Geino, and the Shukan Jitsuwa weekly magazines (shukanshi). You would never want to put these magazines on your coffee table in your family room. What’s disgusting to me is that the Mainichi and Ryan Connell intentionally chose these dirty sex magazines and dishonestly referred to these as “weekly tabloids.”
There are not many outrages because Japanese people know these magazines are pornography, their circulations were much smaller, and those underground writers do not have any privileges the Mainichi reporters enjoy as the reporters from a national newspaper.
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I would not call the Jitsuwa Knuckle, the Asahi Geino, and the Shukan Jitsuwa weekly magazines (shukanshi).
But other people do call them shukanshi.
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I know. That’s exactly why the WaiWai supporters cannot understand why many Japanese people are angry about the WaiWai columns.
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Ponta, you cannot play the nationalism/patriotism/pride card with me. Prejudice and stereotype happens everywhere. Though shūkanshi and WaiWai articles might be “misleading” they have to be based in reality to be at least somewhat “plausible”, even if they’re a bunch of lies. That’s not a justification for Connell or whoever writes that to exaggerate and distort the already controversial shūkanshi’s “articles.”
Very few Colombians are mafiosos, drug dealers, terrorist, violent or disgusting, but they’re enough to create that prejudice, without the help of any media outlet. I get upset by those Colombian expats who in turn get upset when any bad news involving Colombians are published (just because they’re published, not because they’re still happening), and say stupid legends as “Colombian national anthem is the second best in the world after France’s” or repeat as parrot that stupid “Colombia is passion” slogan (yeah, “passion for kill”, e. g.). I cannot be indifferent, but if someone tells me Colombia is ruled by a corrupt elite linked with militias and drug barons and who cares little on the people except on election campaign, with an useless opposition with some of its members still justifying FARC’s terrorism… well, I can’t get upset at him/her, because, unfortunately, it’s true.
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Sweetwater: I mean that other Japanese people call the Shukanshi. They call themselves Shukanshi. Their sales people call them Shukanshi.
What do you call them?
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I am not playing nationalistic game with you.
I am asking what you are supposed to react, as a Columbian who know Columbia well, to the bunch of articles translated in Japanese from serious journalists telling something like “Columbian women are prostitutes, Colombian mothers love sex with their sons, Colombian school girls get frenzy by eating fast food, Colombian men make love with everything, even with manta, 80% Colombian women receive training to enjoy sex more,Colonbian men are so violent that they kill people for minor reasons etc together with articles about how corrupt elite link with miltas and drug barons etc.
I am asking if you can be just indifferent to them because they are based on reality to some extent and stereotype happen everywhere.
(And I have a feeling that you may misunderstand the nature of Japanese original articles. They don’t have to be based on reality. They are bullshit but some people enjoy them as such. )
If Colombia people are indifferent, some Japanese tabloid journalists will be happy to portray Colombia as a exotic, wacky pervert place a based on hearsay from a few pervert, crazy Colombian persons. Will you be indifferent if Mainichi run
such articles every day? Or will you protest to Maichi, asking if
the editor has some malice intention?
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Ken: My point is that shukanshi is a too broad category for this specific topic. If you put Shukan Asahi and Jitsuwa Knuckle or Shukan Jitsuwa, for example, in the same category “shukanshi,” you could never understand why so many Japanese people were protesting against the Mainichi WaiWai.
Answering your question, I would probably call these magazines “teizoku-shukanshi” or “porno-zasshi.” I think Jitsuwa Knuckle and others are the magazines you would never want to read on the Yamanote line when you’re sober, although I may be wrong… You can try it if you like.
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Ponta: you’re not considering one thing. There’s no “wacky, pervert Colombia” stereotype (yet). If Mainichi or other “serious” media indeed start publishing such stuff in a constant basis, well, of course it would be hard to stay indifferent.
Nevertheless, if the “wacky, pervert Japan” stereotype exists, it’s not solely MDN’s fault. Japanese porn stuff, Japanese shūkanshi, their consumers (domestic and foreign), etc., all contribute to the propagation of that stereotype. What I don’t understand is why the Mainichi is being singled out and why they don’t also protest the shūkanshi B. S. Are they okay because they’re Japanese and published solely in Japanese-language? How true is that “no Japanese believes shūkanshi”?
I’m not justifying MDN or Connell if they indeed twisted (some, not every) the already outraging shūkanshi articles. I just think there’s a double standard here. If a Colombian ’serious’ media outlet starts an English-language version with articles taken from (the few) tabloids here [well, actually, there's no need for it, newspapers like 'El Tiempo' or TV networks as 'RCN TV' are tabloid enough], I wouldn’t care. I don’t think it’d be successful anyway.
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Sweetwater, why don’t you provide us a small list with the magazines you consider “real” shūkanshi and another one with the ones you consider teizoku-shūkanshi or porno-zasshi, just for reference? Thanks in advance.
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The really funny thing about all of this is that WaiWai was essentially just a backwater column with very little exposure.
Now it’s getting worldwide coverage – CNN, the Sydney Morning Herald, and Youtube, to name a few – and that image that the 2-chans are fighting so hard to get rid of is getting worse.
This is exactly you never try to “delete” something from the internet – it never goes away, and is actually emphasized and multiplied in severity.
That being said, 2-chan is just a cesspool.
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It not solely their fault. And it is true there are real wacky Japanese people. And eroticism and wacky magazine are part of J culture just as any other cultures. There are also wacky magazines telling wacky things in Japan, truth or not. The Japanese know it and they know where they should be placed. You don’t dance naked on the street at noon and even if somebody said you did, few would believe it but might find the story fun, truth or not. As long as it goes, there is no problem.
But when Mainichi send such article in English without putting it into the context to the people who don’t know where to place it, especially when those people are already biased, it is misleading, and wrong.
Probably the article is worth reading for Japanese who is pervert-oriented or people who is interested in sociological tendency of pervert subculture in Japan. If put in the context, it is okay, but when put out of context, it is not.
You say you don’t care if the same thing happened to Colombia, I for one, don’t care if Mainichi put the article into the context, telling the readership these are articles translated from the magazines that you don’t put in the dentist waiting room, or public library;the articles are not the one for kids nor for sensible adults.(this happens to be criteria for the distinction between what sweetwater calls shukanshi and others, I guess)
But it is perfectly understandable many Japanese and many Colomibian people, nationalistic or not, will be angry at the media and journalists like Mainichi, especially when English media tend to over-focus on the wacky side of the country, no?
Of course I don’t endorse some of the way they protest, though.
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Julián, I am not Sweetwater, but I have written about the nature of Japanese weeklies and tabloids on my blog (linked from my name above). I hope it can provide some information required for considering this issue.
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Aki: Thank you for your blog post/survey article on the Japanese weekly magazines. It’s very informative, especially for us who are interested in the Mainichi WaiWai controversy; and I totally agree with your classification of the magazines, though I didn’t know much about the intermediate group.
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Because Yomiuri, Asahi or whoever is behind this isn’t paying them to protest the Japanese magazines.
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I should mention that the above comment is meant to be a joke, before it gets mistranslated and taken out of context.
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The loser right-wing NEETS in the video are hilarious! It’s daytime on a weekday and they haven’t got jobs… all they can do is protest against an irrelevant column in the Mainichi. When I saw their protest I was just laughing… there are so many serious issues in the world and all they can think about is the WaiWai column. It’s sad and pathetic for them… but I guess they are just loser freeters so it is all that can be expected.
The idea that Japanese women overseas are being harassed because of the WaiWai column is also hilarious. The posts on this board supposedly from Japanese women objecting to WaiWai are obviously posted by male Japanese 2ch NEETS. Another hilarious tactic that are making these anti WaiWai people look ridiculous.
If Japanese women abroad are getting hassle as a result of WaiWai, what about all the western women in japan getting sexual advances from creepy Japanese guys? Whose fault is that?
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But how about the “ma-ke-inu” right-wing NEETS in the video? It’s daytime on a weekday and they are not at work! All they have to do with their time is make a feeble protest about silly minor column in a newspaper. It’s hilarious!!
I thought Japanese guys were proud of working hard for their company, but obviously not these 2ch freeters. I think by showing themselves like this they are doing more damage to Japan’s reputation than the WaiWai column
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James, The Sydney Morning Herald has published an article on Ryann Connell (via Japundit and Occidentalism)
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When it comes to Japan, you don’t have to check the facts. Few English-speaking people know, and few cares as long as it comfirms their stereotype.
According to his diary on the Internet, he was born in 1955. Who is lying?
Where did the author get this “understand”ing?
And a poster called Yam on Marmot says he couldn’t find the quoted statement on 2 channel
When did Debito become a media critic;though he might be a unflagging reader of HENTAI articles like WaiWai?
Surely Japan is a wacky place where a human right activists is a fervent reader and defender of pervert articles with full of lies.
I wonder if the author has really checked the waiwai archive and if she realises that the original magazines were the ones like this. http://www.evilgerald.com/Issues/Issue22/4JapaneseProstitutes.htm
and Mainichi pulled the section because it finally realized what kind of articles were translated with “free imaination”.
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From the Sydney Morning Herald’s article linked by JOM,
Haha, funny. Is the Sydney Morning Herald equivalent of Asahi Geinou in Japan? I had been following 2ch threads related to this issue, but I have never seen such comments. Perhaps she herself thinks “Ryan Connell is a degenerate scatologist”. Also, she didn’t know that hydrogen atom bomb is something that Japanese never mention in this kind of situation.
Ponta, thanks for the interesting link. Why Japanese prostitutes have Chinese names? Haha.
That photograph used in the linked page is from “Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1880-1940″ by James Francis Warren. That woman was bought in Japan and forced to work as a prostitute in the brothel in Singapore that was approved by the British colonial government of Singapore. Chinese women were also being forced to work as a prostitute in Singapre at the period. That’s something that evil Japos should never mention.
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WaiWai – “an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives”. Well, perhaps if you overlook that they rewrote the articles to make them even more salacious, so much so that at times the finished product bore only the barest of passing resemblances to the Japanese original. It was like National Enquirer articles got rewritten by the Weekly World news and passed off as “translations of the original”. WaiWai was a guide to foreign attitudes and editorial directives, not Japanese ones.
Of course, I doubt Debito would know that, by his own admission he doesn’t read Japanese for pleasure often (probably because he can’t without great difficulty), so I doubt he has any clue what was actually in the Shuukanshi to begin with. Even if he did, holding them up as “an essential guide to Japanese attitudes” shows just how out of touch with most Japanese he really is.
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Waiwai問題は､大半の日本人が一見しただけで生理的嫌悪感を抱くであろう方々の登場で大衆の参加は見込めなくなりましたね｡
ちょうど街宣右翼が右翼に対するアレルギーを誘発しているように｡
この問題の背景について真面目に考えたい人にはこちらの本が参考になると思います｡
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%AC%91%E3%82%8F%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E2%80%95%E3%83%8B%E3%83%A5%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%82%BF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%81%8C%E6%8F%8F%E3%81%8F%E4%B8%8D%E5%8F%AF%E6%80%9D%E8%AD%B0%E3%81%AA%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC-%E3%82%B8%E3%83%91%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0/dp/4812306159
書評一覧
http://www.ezipangu.org/japanese/navigation_j/nihonjin/jmedia.html
引用
「日本は古いイメージのまま」ハリー・ハルトゥーニアン・ニューヨーク大学教授
１９９８年１２月４日 夕刊（P.2）中井良則
「タイムズの記事を読むと、昔ながらの異国趣味を私は思い浮かべます。古いイメージをさらに強めるだけのね。それを読むアメリカ人読者は、日本人って風変わりなんだ、われわれの方がいいんだと思ってしまう。」
「日本やアメリカのどちらかが相手よりもっと近代的なわけではない。ふたつとも極端に進んだ近代国家です。ただ日本は違った方法で近代化を薦めている。日本人も中国人もフランス人もそれぞれ違った方法で、同じことをやっているんです。われわれが理解しなければならないのはこのことです。みんな近代、同じ世界、同じ時間に生きている。多分、それが日本人とアメリカ人が互いに平等に話そうとする時のひとつの道でしょう。」
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English Version
http://www.ezipangu.org/japanese/navigation_j/nihonjin/emedia.html
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英語メディア書評一覧
http://www.ezipangu.org/japanese/navigation_j/nihonjin/emedia.html
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Yet another update:
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Interesting to read about the claims made by those “niichan (2chan)” people that Japanese women are hassled by “misguided” men overseas alongside the photo of a woman who calls herself “yellowcab” in the Personals section.
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Mainichi was supposed to be a regular newspaper—not a tabloid newspaper. The Japanese edition of Mainichi Shinbun never had such tabloid rubbish on there—and neither should such content be on the English edition as well.
If the waiwai writers wanted to publish tabloid rubbish, they should have created their own separate publication unaffiliated with the regular Mainichi newspaper.
That’s why I don’t understand why so many foreigners (specifically men) don’t see this as a big deal.
Think about it. Take any respectable newspaper in your country (not tabloids!), and let’s say they had a separate edition in a different language. The version in the original language has respectable news only, yet the foreign language edition has tabloid crap mixed in with regular news articles.
That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?
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Because Japan does not have spy prevention law, the human being of the enemy country gets into the media.
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This is what I posted on Meta No Tame
I was netsurfing on the other day and run into yet another Waiwai related entry with link to Australian newspaper,Sydney Morning Herald article.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/japan-rails-at-australians-tabloid-trash/2008/07/04/1214951041660.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
And here it said.
“Connell’s troubles began in May with one of his now infamous WaiWai columns, which cited a Japanese magazine article about a restaurant in the Tokyo district of Roppongi where patrons allegedly have sex with animals before eating them.”
And I hold my breath by reading the following.
“The piece caught the attention of a blogger called Mozu, whose angry post was soon picked up by 2channel, a massive, fractious web forum popular with Japan’s hot-headed conservative element.”
Now,Mozu,our fellow commenter and you can see his post in this thread too,is far from an ordinary angry 2ch type.He also has his own blog on French Politics and EU issues(in Japanese)and I’m a regular reader/commenter there too.And there,he posted an analysis on WaiWai and the response in English Japan blogsphere by quoting whoelse but our host W.David Marx’s post on Neojaponisme!!!
http://rockhand.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/04/post_6f5f.html
That means:
1)Waiwai had inspired Marxy to write a post in Neojaponisme
2)That inspired Mozu to write his post on his blog.
3)A 2Channeler had read it and started a thread and it went up in flame
4)Mainichi shuts down Waiwai…..
My conclusion:
On internet,what goes around comes around.
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And mozu didn’t criticize Ryan personally, he criticized the way Mainichi runs its English site, including WaiWai. He linked to Marxy’s post that criticized WaiWai and linked to some posts on JapanInc that criticize and/or point out the Mainichi English site’s choice of headlines compared to the Japanese site’s.
He’s not some angry person who goes around starting flamewars. I wonder how well that SMH reporter could understand what mozu was saying.
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>Aceface and doinkies
Thank your for explaning my argument point.
While I criticised it, I am not anti-Mainichi. I expect it to develop as a leading center-left newspaper. I thought its too tabloidish and vulgar English Edition disgraced its name and especially WaiWai violated obviously the rule and ethic of authentic journalism. I wouldn’t care if someone had a tabloid site named “Wonderful world of Japanese tabloid” or something like that. It’s another story.
As doinkies said, I’ve never attacked Ryan personally. I think it’s the problem of system, not of individual. Mainichi has been notorious for its weakness of checking system and it has caused many problems. As long as I know, the most angry crowds are not 2ch chicken patriots but doctors and nurses, especially obstetricians to whom Mainichi’s infamous misreporting caused severe damages. I hope Mainichi will succeed in handling this crisis and rebuilding its editing and checking system before this scandal reach to ears of general public(especially elders).
As for SMH, I don’t think this writer is a journalist. It’s the example of poor reporting. That’s all.
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{laughing}
… and here I thought the “True Sons and Daughters of China” were bad over on the China Daily BBS! Cripes, now I can see why the guys at South Park got flak about their spoof on Pokemon.
{shaking head}
For those folks in Japan – I ask only a question – can a country, too bridle to withstand poking humor at itself, can survive a true crisis without shattering?
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SMH reporter also failed to mention that Connell is now under suspension from Mainichi,but the article gives you the impression that he is in Salman Rushidie-like round-the-clock police protection in a hideout.
I think SMH reporter haven’t even read Mozu’s post.
There’s another SMH correspondent who has done similar journalism practice here in Japan a while agp.
http://www.debito.org/?p=112
And as in case of any Australian journalist working in Japan,he had also recieved “death threat from Japanese Right Winger™” in a form of “anonimous e-mail”.(They are so lethal and reading them could kill you,even you are in Down Under.)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/22/2011521.htm
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Heck, they didn’t even get his age right – another sign of a doinky article. You would think that an article in a large newspaper would at least make sure someone’s age is right…
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2ch is the last place on earth I would expect a crusade of morality to stem from. 2ch should clean up its own act first. Its a cesspool of pornography, racism, sexism, hatred and the occasional idiot spamming child pornography or announcing their plans to commit a heinous crime. 2ch is a hundred times worse than any waiwai column. The same idiots who are screaming bloody murder at the waiwai column are probably the same 2chers who post all those perverted and twisted garbage on 2ch.And I wonder why those loud mouth loser NEETs are so concerned with japanese women. Its not like theyll ever get girlfriends.
That said, not all of the stuff written in the waiwai columns are lies. Some of the more bizarre stories of Japan are true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGfaQCY_bo4
As much as you Japanese would not like to admit otherwise, the waiwai column contains some truth to them. I know a few girls who were groped on busy subways. And there are probably a lot of readers on this site who know some as well. Which seems to occur much more often in Japan then anywhere else in the world.
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