Has Arudou Debito Left Japan?

He can’t. He renounced citizenship in the country he came from.

I find it curious that people often refer to teaching English at a Japanese university as a great “gig” rather than great job or career. Are you inclined to think of a tenure track job as a professor of history or anthropology or economics as a gig, or do you only apply that term to language-teaching jobs at Japanese universities? 

We don’t want him here

It’s very important that Debito make his arguments in Japan. If he argues for changes in Japan, but is not affected by those changes, then his attitude becomes one of holier than thou.

For example, Debito doesn’t want Japan to have a seat on the UN security council. People could say, well why not, what do you have against the Japanese — nothing, I live in Japan. I am Japanese. This affects me same as it does you. Now please listen to my arguments.

However, if Debito is off in Canada — and it’s not just a one or two year study program — then the claim that he has something against the Japanese becomes more substantial. He has no stake in the game. So what if he is wrong and Japan suffers as a consequence.

This is even more true about Debito’s inflammatory rhetoric. While perhaps Debito has so marginalized himself that it doesn’t matter — to the extent he is succeeding in getting his views out there — for example that “Japan is a culture of deceit” — and inflaming attitudes against foreigners or naturalized Japanese — Debito suffers because he lives here and *is* Japanese. So again he’s got a stake in the game. Let him say what he wants. However, if he’s off in Canada — it becomes even more irresponsible for him to say these things.

It’s as if he came, stirred up a lot of trouble for the foreign community, created a lot of division, and then rode off into the sunset. Thanks, dude. See you later.

But if he’s truly worried about radiation fears, despite how unscientific such fears are, then he shouldn’t have to live here. Nobody expected a big earthquake and the problems that emerged after Fukushima. If he wants to tell the mothers of children in Fukushima frightening ghost stories like this, “For radiation has no media cycle. It lingers and poisons the land and food chain. Statistics may be obfuscated or suppressed as usual. But radiation’s half-life is longer than the typical attention span or sustainable degree of public outrage. As the public — possibly worldwide — sickens over time, the truth will leak out.”  And then quickly flee (as he has foreign connections most Japanese do *not* have) to an area he sees as being free of this “poison”, then I guess that’s his business.

I disagree.

You wrote:
He had these experiences in his past, but his experience-based knowledge is now fading and becoming obsolete as times moves on. Doesn’t matter if it is a cumulative twenty years because his knowledge-base is founded on personal experience — which becomes less relevant with time compared to timeless academic knowledge.

The problem I have with this is that then that makes any long-term English instructors here, as you write, “obsolete”. I don’t buy that. How does one’s culture or native language become irrelevant over time?

I have problems with your assertion and don’t believe it to be true at all. After living in Japan for nearly 20 years, I don’t think he will become that irrelevant – at least not for a long time to come. If ever.

David, like many other Japan focused academics, can continue to write about and discuss Japan without physically being in Japan. As others have said before, it’s a lot more difficult to criticize Japan while being in Japan – especially for Japanese people.