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Illustration of a Japanese person

The image used for the word “Japanese person” in a Japanese language textbook created by the Korea Association of Innovated Foreign Language Education (from Brian in Jeollanam-do):

japanese person

23 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - October 1, 2008 at 1:29 pm

Categories: Anti-Japan Tags: japan, Korea, nihonjin

Jarvik7

Is the picture of a Korean person a pigeon smashing finger chopper?
LB

Local variation of “ちび黄色ジャップ”？
http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

To be fair, I’ve seen some pretty tasteless images representing Koreans in Japanese publications. (They made me laugh, but only because of how absurd they were) The Japanese renderings of Koreans typically have huge cheek bones and squinty eyes, and the Japanese characters in the same book have eyes bigger than their own tiny mouths. It’s happening on both sides of the Sea of Japan / East Sea.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

See http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=4232 for a related discussion.

It would be interesting to dig up old Japanese English textbooks and look for stuff like this:
http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2006/02/where_do_korean.html
dogtato

Sounds like they copied Japan’s own cartoon depiction of Japanese people.

That picture is offensive though because it will make people think that the Japanese wear archaic clothing as opposed to the giant robots normally worn by modern Japanese people.
LOD

I’ve seen some pretty tasteless images representing Koreans in Japanese publications.

I can only think of Kenkanryu (Hate Korea Wave) and 2ch-related magazines as such publications. Maybe Gomanism Manifesto as well? None of these are not terribly mainstream, although the very existence of these are something to be ashamed of.
But for fairness, I’d love to see Japanese textbooks or newspaper cartoons to illustrate Koreans as such. …Well, no. Not really.
http://sleepytako.blogspot.com Sleepytako

I’ve got a copy of _New Crown_ and their photo of a Korean has a nice looking Jr. high aged boy dancing in seemingly traditional Korean dress. _Talk & Talk_ has a high school aged girl in traditional dress holding some sort of mask. The same book has Columbo the Italian who is a mustached policeman with blood shot eyes and a very phallic hat. There’s also Chulalongkorn the surprised Thai monk who looks like he was cropped from a larger photo.

onceuponatime

don`t like it when the shoe is on the other foot, huh? well, tough cookies.
Catch the Chicken

At least he has round eyes… something the Koreans dont like the Japanese drawing themselves as!
Tetras

This is hypocrtical… So where’s the post of how Japanese people draw Koreans? As an earlier poster said… I’ve seen many Japanee illustrate the koreans as having slanted eyes as well as high cheeckbones. It’s not only in kenkanryu or 2ch board. Many are in animes such as Whistle!

In my opinion, that drawing is a pretty accurate depiction of a stereotypical japanese person save the round eyes.
gargoyle1

What, no fangs?
Sen

Good ol James..you know how to stir sh1t up.
kenji

As a Japanese person, I don’t find this cartoon terribly offensive. The overall image of Japanese in this cartoon makes us look dumb with his buck tooth and big eyes, but overall if a Korean believes that Japanese people really look like this, then theres no helping them anyway. Normal people would just have a little laugh and go on with their lives. Stereotyping in a light hearted way is just humor, people do it all the time.
hamneggs

Its just a ridiculous drawing, clearly not having anything to do with caricature or stereotype. Just plain mean spirited.

From either cultures’ perspective, there may be stereotypical depictions of physical features, but the fact of the matter is, there is enough diversity in both Japan and Korea, to the point that in many cases one would have difficulty discerning which is which.

give exam #1 a try, and post how well you do:

http://www.alllooksame.com/exam_room.php

i didnt do nearly as well as i thought i would.
RMilner

I had taken it as pop eyes rather than round eyes.
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com Brian

The cartoon was just a small part of my post, and wasn’t even the theme of what I had written. I don’t find the cartoon offensive, but I did think it was kind of ridiculous for a Korean book to use that image for a Japanese person in a Japanese book. But Korean books do that kind of treatment for everyone: huge-lipped black people, big nosed white people, etc. I don’t live in Japan, but from what I’ve read it’s not known for its tolerance or progressiveness in relation to foreign people and cultures, so while the Korean effort was pretty bad, let’s not sound so suprised.

Tetras

I studied abroad in Japan for half a semester and I’ve seen plenty of stereotypical cartoons of foreigners of all types.
Many japanese drawings depict blacks as the typical blackface… such as dark skin, big nose, monstrous lips and big eyes and again… Koreans with very high cheekbones and small slanted eyes.

It’s not even a big deal but also take not that the Japanese are no different than Koreans when it comes to things like these. To single out the Korean side shows a clear bias in my opinion.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Back when I taught English at junior high schools, I found there to be no crude racial illustrations of foreigners in the official teaching materials [the Sunshine English series] used by teachers. Japan is not without such drawings, but I can at least say that I didn’t encounter them in official school textbooks that are supposed to teach foreign languages (along with understanding of foreign cultures).

If you were a regular reader of this site, you might remember that I have blogged about the Japan side of this before:
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=4232
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=3304
Aceface

“It’s not even a big deal but also take not that the Japanese are no different than Koreans when it comes to things like these. ”

I totally disagree.
When it comes to visual representation of Koreans in Japanese media,there is a huge PC restriction and you could lose your job if Mindan and Chingryon would find them offensive.

I would like to see this pictrure of “Koreans with very high cheekbones and small slanted eyes”appeared in J-media(except the one on Kenkanryu and Kobayashi mangas that has been underfire by almost every major press in Japan)that you find in your “half a semester”studiy in Japan.

weirdo

That guy looks like something you’d see in an episode of まんが日本昔ばなし。
hoihoi

I think most Japanese dont care …
The most disgrace is only to be said, “you are like Korean people”

the foreigner does not know the Japanese does not care how to be called and drawn from other country.

the Japaneseis not interested in Debito’s picture　of sarcasm to the Japanese
Pingback: ロスと日本の映画とマーケティング日誌
helical

Samurai garb, sure. Half-assed top-knot, maybe. Lame cartoon man, I wouldn’t expect anything else from a textbook. But buck-toothed? C’mon

Illustration of a Japanese person

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