Reporter responds to attack on article about Japanese “rent a friend” agencies
Yesterday, Japan blogger Ampontan wrote a post attacking a Justin McCurry article in The Guardian about Japan’s “booming” rent a friend agencies.
Here’s an excerpt:
There are hundreds of fascinating stories McCurry could file about Japan if he would only bother to look. But hey, why do some real work when you can spitball your way through life?
Most puzzling of all is why McCurry thinks this minor “rent-a-friend” trend in Japan is worth writing about. The journalistic puffery employed to fill column inches is apparent before one is halfway through the piece.
When posts like this pop up on the blogosphere, mainstream journalists rarely respond. This is not one of those cases.
Justin McCurry has left several comments defending his article and answering Ampontan’s attacks. Read their exchange here.
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I do agree that the world media does have an annoying habit of relying on these little quirky stories about Japan for their fluff pieces. It has become a cliche indeed.
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Personally, I found it amusing that Ampontan went after this reporter with blistering personal attack claiming that he didn’t have his facts straight… when Ampontan brought no facts to the table. All he presented was his baseless personal conjecture about who this reporter was, how well he could or could not speak Japanese, ad nauseum. Pure Ampontan – he hates the foreign press and jumps all over them any time they produce anything other than “serious” news about Japan. Then when confronted he has the balls to say reporters aren’t “thin skinned, they have no skin”!
Hypocrite.
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1)There are many ways to describe Ampontan but “hypocrite” isn’t one of them.
2)”When Ampontan brought no facts to the table”.
Ampontan questioned the article since there aren’t many facts to the table brought in by the original.Not his fault,I guess.
3)”he hates the foreign press and jumps all over them any time they produce anything other than “serious” news about Japan”
Well,I also hate foreign press whom to my eyes seemlessly tweeding rudiculous news about Japan.McCurry seems to concern more about dolphines.but you cut trees to make papers and papers are used to print The Guardian.Why waste trees for this nonsense when they could suck up some CO2s had they still standing instead?
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Gaijin who get offended on behalf of the Japanese crack me up. Way ridiculous.
Given the amount of sheer, goofy insanity that the Japanese put on their own network television, the idea that a more sensitive hand should be used by foreign correspondents is absurd.
What’s more, your summary is disingenuous. I didn’t read “booming” anywhere in the original article… “growing,” yes… Booming would seem to imply very popular/everybody’s doing it as a opposed to growing – a niche market with a recently increased demand.
Look, paying strangers to show at your wedding to save face, from my limited cultural perspective, is really very odd. But it does speak to cultural mores in Japan and can give some insight on that. The fact it exists at all is newsworthy from a foreign observation perspective.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/japan-relatives-professional-stand-ins
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/09/japans-rentafriend-business-is-booming.html
McCurry can’t be held responsible for the USAToday bit, but you’re right, it does appear right there at the top in that summary – I’d skipped to the article itself – my bad. Though I’d hazard those one line summaries/headlines are editorial contributions, but regardless, I stand corrected. I’d argue that the summary doesn’t serve the article, but it is there, so…
Doesn’t change the fact it’s still a valid piece, imho.
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From my limited cultural perspective,Gaijin who gets offended on behalf of the Japanese IS really very odd.
Their cultural norm is to laugh from high horses and insist the locals to laugh along.
But such existence does speak to cultural mores in Japan and can give some insight on that. The fact it exists at all is blogworthy from a Japanese observation perspective.Me think.
McCurry can’t be held responsible for the USAToday bit,hence he wasn’t the first to write the story on rent-a-friend in English.He was the third.
(HT to Ajapa)
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Read this post from Mulboyne.James.
The accurate title should be “Japan’s rent-a-friend business coverage by foreign journalists are booming”
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/more-journo-snickering-at-japan-4625/#comment-20175
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Given the amount of sheer, goofy insanity that the Japanese put on their own network television, the idea that a more sensitive hand should be used by foreign correspondents is absurd.
Spot on! Well said.
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“Japanese game shows” make up a small part of Japanese television. And they aren’t full of offensive lies such as “the senior citizen porn craze is sweeping Japan!”, just paid actors getting humiliated on TV.
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Wasn’t referencing game shows. Nor is that stated as such anywhere above.
But the normal level of nonsense that appears on Japanese television masquerading as “human interest” stories and celebrity “news.”
You seem confused.
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Interesting twitter (?) comment from the journo…
“I write light-hearted pieces on cultural trends at my peril”
Firstly… don’t we all?
Secondly… welcome to the world of the internet and blogging.
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I don’t mind oddball fluff pieces about Japan in the foreign press but, dammitt, so much of the time it seems that they have taken some phenomena that’s barely even known among the Japanese and treat it as, well, as a boom or some palpable social trend, and then do the all too predictable editorializing on it (usually of the Sociology 101 variety).
The Porno for Pensioners story even made CNN International as a headline-bar item fer cryin out loud!
The foreign pundits often seem unaware of what actual out-there stories are really being discussed in Japan, what oddities the Japanese themselves are talking about these days (and it is usually these that make it onto the Japanese TV shows). And of course the Japanese themselves will usually be aware of how widespread (or not) this behaviour actually is.
Anyway, taking something that is pretty much unknown even here in Japan and pretending that it is something of an accepted norm, or treating it as somehow socially/culturally representative, is the real issue.
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can’t agree with more.
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I also agree.
I would add that a root of the problem may be generally ineffective PR efforts from within Japan at many levels. I have no specific idea how to address that, except minimally through better initiatives and strategy from Japanese media and perhaps gov’t. IMO Japan often has difficulty developing its messages and getting them out to RoW (in english) effectively.
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taking something that is pretty much unknown even here in Japan and pretending that it is something of an accepted norm, or treating it as somehow socially/culturally representative, is the real issue.
Well said. But the problem is not just that unusual occurrences are presented as the norm. It’s also that these unusual occurrences are often perverse and ridiculous. By highlighting the strange aspects of Japanese society and presenting them as representative, foreign media creates a distorted view of Japan. The audience’s view of Japan and the Japanese becomes distorted as a result.
The problem is both the presentation AND the substance of these dispatches. The emphasis on perversion and the bizarre is significant.
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I agree fully with your last paragraph.
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I think those Tokyo correspondents sometimes just write what their supposed audiences want to see about Japan. Nowaday in Japan, there are no warfare, genocide, starvation, terrorists, and dictators, unlike Africa, Middle East, or North Korea, so there are nothing interesting except wacky and weird stories of Japanese people. Japan is boring place. I heard someone who had once worked for English media had confessed how they distorted the facts in order to make their report more exciting and sensational. Unfortunately, those are rarely corrected since there are not so many Japanese people who can speak English fluently having much of spare time.
Will Justin McCurry of The Guardian become another legend like
Richard Lloyd Parry of The Times?
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IN JAPAN’S CURRENT RECESSION, [DEMOGRAPHIC] IS CHANGING AND STARTING A BOOM/SENSATION/CRAZE/PHENOMENON THAT IS SWEEPING THE NATION, EXCEPT IT ISN’T. WE WILL PROVE THIS BY EXPLAINING HOW A SMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE REPRESENTS ALL OF JAPAN. [DEMOGRAPHIC]‘S CHANGE IS CAUSED BY THE RECESSION/THE LOST DECADE/INCOMPETENT JAPANESE MEN/THE DOWNFALL OF JAPANESE SOCIETY. IN CONCLUSION, JAPAN IS VERY WACKY AND BACKWARDS.
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Article is ok, but that blog post is irrelevant. Why waste effort on that ? That McCurry is very polite guy to reply him.
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I say thumbs up to Ampotan. As commented previously, it’s become something of a hackeyed strategy to come out with “bizarre Japan!” stories. This strategy of revealing the nation through magnification of the minor has, after all, been a hallmark of British colonialism.
Good for calling McCurry out on it.
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Speaking as a non-Japanese I appreciate that bizarre/perverted things exist in Japan. That’s one of Japan’s charm points, in my opinion. From what I’ve seen it’s mostly pretty innocent anyway. What’s wrong with letting the rest of the world know about them?
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Do you feel happy if you are seen as a bizarre or perverted person? You may not be so offended if the person who called you as “bizarre” is your best fried. Your best friend surely understands that you might be just a bit of a bizarre person but mostly normal one.
Many people complain about the attitude of writers who often focuses on the bizarre aspect of Japan without clearly declaring it as a only minor portion of Japan.
They sometimes mislead their audiences with obscure words as if there were some tendency that bizarre or perverted things are getting more accepted by the vast majority of Japanese people. Those writers are suspected: They are selling “Bizarre Japan” image to earn money easily and they are merely an unskilled writer who can never write an insightful article without relying on the oddity.
And unfortunately, anti-Japanese people often employ those bizarre or perverted Japan articles as a proof of Japanese degeneracy, backwardness, illness, and others.
You can enjoy those bizarre Japanese stories as long as you are very sure that most Japanese are just an ordinary person like you or your neighbours.
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Personally, I didn’t think the story was “bizarre” at all if you consider some of the problems you encounter when preparing for a wedding ceremony in Japan.
For one, if the couple gets married in Tokyo and the groom is from let’s say Hokkaido, it’s really no small task to have his friends back home to come to Tokyo considering the Yen involved. I mean go-shugi,the rountrip air fare, and an overnight stay could easily top a grand per person so if I was a groom, I’d be very hesitant to ask them to the wedding under those circumstances. But as tradition, the groom’s guest number has to at least equal that of the bride and the bride could easily muster 100 guests out of 200 booked because she is born and raised and works in Tokyo,I can see why this service is useful.
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I actually came across a site like this in the US called RentAFriend.com
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