Discrimination

Cameraman Visits Liancourt Rocks

NTV’s “Bankisha” recently paid a Korean journalist to take a tour boat to the Liancourt Rocks ( Takeshima / Dokdo ):

The issue has flaired up in recent months after Korean Air made a highly-publicized “test flight” over the disputed territory and the Japanese Foreign Ministry responded by asking its officials not to fly on Korean Air for one month (a meaningless action, because they never fly on Korean Air anyway). In response to the Korean anger of the “boycott,” a handful of Japanese lawmakers announced that they’d be taking a trip to South Korea’s Dokdo Museum, which exhibits evidence supporting Korea’s territorial claim. The lawmakers were denied entry to South Korea because authorities considered them a threat to public safety.

NTV’s trip to the rocks took place a few days after the lawmakers returned to Japan.

At Ulleungdo’s ferry port, the journalist filmed several Japanese language signs that had been put up. One sign tells Japanese politicians to come and apologize, and they’ll be given bananas (this is probably meant to be a racist insult, because Koreans have been known to mock “Japanese monkeys”). Another sign, written in very rude and direct Japanese, says something along the lines of, “You came? Take a look. What the hell do you bastards think belongs to you?”

As tourists board the ferry to the rocks, policemen are checking each passenger. Apparently they are there to enforce the recently-imposed ban on Japanese passengers. Korean police seem to be actively assisting the discriminatory policy of this ferry business. If NTV had sent a Japanese camera crew, they probably would have been turned away.

Inside the ferry, a concession stand sells snacks – many of which have nationalist slogans and images of the rocks on their packages. (The narrator reminds viewers are of recent actions by Koreans that have tried to escalate the tension between the countries, such as the Korean Air “test flight” and the purchasing of an advertisement in New York’s Times Square.)

The trip to the rocks takes about an hour. The passengers are allowed to disembark for 30 minutes, but their movements are restricted to a concrete observation platform. Policemen watch over them, making sure nobody does anything suspicious.

From the platform, one can observe the various buildings that South Korea has constructed on the rocks: a police station, a heliport, a radar tower, and several solar panels. The solar panels are a very recent addition. It seems that South Korea thinks that building more structures on the islands will help bolster its territorial claim.

They can also see the house of Kim Sung-Do and Kim Shin-yeol, a couple who are the only permanent residents of the rocks. Like some of the other structures on the island, Kim’s house has been upgraded in the last couple years. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the South Korean government paid for Kim’s house and also pays him a monthly stipend. When NTV calls up Kim’s government-subsidized phone line, he tells them that he has a very comfortable life, with access to plenty of electricity and fresh water.

The report closes with footage of tourists re-boarding the ferry. Two men scream about Korea’s ownership of the islands as a friend snaps a final photograph.

Look forward to more drama in the coming week: The Sound Korean National Assembly’s “Special Committee on Measures for the Safeguarding of Territory” plans to hold an official meeting at the rocks on August 12th.

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Japanese Commercial: White People Have Gigantic Noses

UPDATE: Choya has pulled the commercial after receiving complaints from readers of this blog post.

A commercial for Choya umeshu mocks the physical appearance of non-Japanese:

Those who don’t appreciate this kind of racial joke can send Choya a complaint via their online contact form (in English – For Japanese language complaints, use this contact form).

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Is Ramen Racist?

Over at the Huffington Post, Anneli Rufus writes that ramen is racist because it was once called shina soba (“It’s not racist in substance but in context — if you go back far enough.“):

As Japan’s most popular Chinese dish, shina soba symbolized the expanding Japanese empire, according to Katarzyna Joanna Cwiertka, author of Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power, and National Identity. By the early 20th century, this empire included Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, eastern Siberia, parts of China, and many South Pacific islands. Giddy totalitarianism spawned “a China boom” in Japan, Cwiertka asserts:

“Chinese-style decorations, costumes, and products were eagerly consumed by the Japanese public as they translated colonialism into a concrete experience. By physically interacting with China through the ingestion of Chinese food and drink, the Japanese masses were brought closer to the idea of empire.”

In other words, to eat shina soba in those years was to symbolically gobble up China itself. As China represented the empire’s biggest prize, a bowl of shina soba represented nothing less than world domination.

After Japan lost its empire in World War II, the word shina came under fire. Deplored by many as a symbol of imperialist aggression and Japanese wartime atrocities in China and beyond, shina was now seen as a horrific ethnic slur, embodying imperialist xenophobia: in other words, racist. Shina soba was briefly renamed chuka soba; chuka is a less politically incorrect Japanese term for “Chinese-style.” But in 1958, Nissin Foods introduced the first-ever packaged instant version of the dish. As its broth was chicken-flavored, the product was called Chikin Ramen.

As you can see from the photos at the top of this post, there are still quite a few ramen restaurants that use the term “shina soba” in their names or advertisements, and nobody seems to be lining up with protest signs to condemn them. Google Blog Search also shows plenty of blog posts about people who have enjoyed a bowl of shina soba. While it is true that using shina to refer to China or Chinese people has a pretty negative connotation in today’s Japan, it seems like a stretch to say that ramen’s old name is racist.

[hat tip to Steve]

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Japanese Soccer Fans Taunt Iranian-American Coach

Fans clashed at a J-League soccer match after somebody unveiled a banner meant to insult an Iranian-born head coach:

The incident took place during Saturday’s match between Shimizu S-Pulse & Júbilo Iwata. Supporters of Iwata made a banner that said “To Ghotbi: Stop Making Nuclear Weapons!” It was meant to mock Shimizu head coach Afshin Ghotbi, an Iranian-American who coached the Iran national team from 2009 to 2011.

The banner offended and angered Shimizu fans. Here’s a video that show some of them rushing towards the Itawa supporter section of the stadium:

Although there was a physical brawl between some fans, no injuries were reported.

After the match, both teams held an emergency press conference. The president of the Júbilo Iwata club apologized and said that fan-made banners would be checked in the future to prevent such an incident from occurring again.

The banner was created and unveiled by two teenaged Iwata fans. According to Jiji Press, they said didn’t really think much about it before creating the banner (“何の考えもなくやった”).

The incident has been formally reported to J-League authorities and an investigation is underway. The Júbilo Iwata club could face some form of formal punishment.

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Public Prosecutors Were Taught That Yakuza & Foreigners Have No Rights

Nico Nico News has posted an article about Hiroshi Ishikawa, a former public prosecutor who wants to spread the word about bad things that are going on behind the scenes in Japan’s justice system. Here is an English translation of the article, which was posted on Tepido.org by Level 3:

Stunning revelation from former prosecutor on the real situation of initial training, “We were taught that yakuza and foreigners have no rights”

The chief prosecutor in the Saga City Agricultural Co-op case, infamous for use of false charges, spoke at a symposium held in Tokyo on May 23, 2011. He gave a stunningly candid account of the reality of training for new employees. He disclosed that in his past experience, “We were taught that yakuza and foreigners have no rights.” and “Prosecutors are instructed to make up a confession on their own and then make the suspect sign it.” Further, he gave a chilling account of how under this warped training system, “While being trained in this way, I came to sort of agree that these kinds of things were only natural.”

The person bringing up accusations against his old training ground is former prosecutor Hiroshi Ishikawa. Ishiakwa was involved as the chief prosecutor in the Saga City Agricultre Co-op case that arose in 2000. In that case, during police questioning of the former union leader, a forced confession was obtained as police screamed, “We’ll fucking beat you to death, you bastard!” The union leader had been indicted on suspicion of breach of trust, but was found not guilty based on refusal to accept the confession was voluntary. As a result, Ishikawa received a harsh reprimand and resigned his post as public prosecutor.

Ishikawa spoke on that day as a panelist at a symposium on the theme “Prosecution, Public Opinion, and False Charges” held at the Graduate School of Communications at Meiji University. At first, he gave shocking testimony that, “I admit that public prosecutors, having committed errors unsuited to their position, must take the position of offering profuse apologies.” while also noting that, “I want to tell the whole truth, so we can know how many threat-spewing public prosecutors were created.”

Ishikawa was first appointed to the Yokohama District Public Prosecutor’s Office in 1993. In his first year there, he claims his superiors taught him that, ‘Yakuza and foreigners have no rights’ “That superior said on that point, ‘Foreigners don’t understand Japanese, so if you speak Japanese, you can heap as much verbal abuse as you want on them.’” Further, that superior said, “Once when we were interrogating a foreign suspect, we thrust an awl right in front of his eye and shouted abuses at him in Japanese. That’s how you get confessions!” as Ishikawa recounted his personal experiences.

In his third year, a superior instructed him on methods to take confessions. That being, the prosecutor rattling off a made-up confession and then thrusting the confession form at the suspect and making them sign it. If the suspect refused to sign, what should be done? “If the suspect resists, tell him, ‘This is not your confession form, it’s just [you acknowledging] what I’m saying.’” , Ishikawa recalled of that period.

“When being trained in such a manner, you come to sort of believe that these things are only natural. In my eighth year, even I verbally abused suspects, totally unsuitable for to my position. The case had a not guilty verdict, and it ended up with my resignation.”

In 2005, Ishikawa quit the prosecutor’s office altogether and is now practicing as a lawyer. On the day before the symposium (May 22), he appeared on the Asahi Broadcast Network news program “The Scoop – Special” to give a much talked-about televised apology to the family of the former labor leader he had once verbally abused. The Meiji Univ. symposium was live-streamed on NicoNico Douga where he gave his reason for making these statements in a public forum as, “To atone for my terrible mistakes, I thought, ‘Isn’t it my duty to tell what I have seen and what I have heard?’”

[via FG]

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Why I Turned On Debito.org

Earlier today, I came across a comment thread on Tepido.org, a site devoted to the criticism of blog posts and news articles written by activist Debito Arudou. Apparently there is a bit of an internet flame war going on between Debito.org and Tepido.org, with Debito alleging that his opponents are collecting personal information about people who leave comments on Debito.org.

One of Debito’s readers noted that there were naturalized Japanese citizens leaving comments on Tepido.org. He wondered (1) why there were naturalized Japanese participating in the site, and (2) why they were “attacking one of their own” by criticizing Debito.

In response, a naturalized Japanese citizen wrote a long and well-reasoned comment on why he “turned on” Debito.org. With his permission, I am re-posting it here, so that Japan Probe’s subscribers can read and discuss it.

[ - Note: All of the text beyond this point was written by a user of Tepido.org. - ]

Let me answer the easier second part of your question before getting to the first question, which needs a much longer reply: Not everybody naturalizes for the same reason, thus there’s no guarantee that naturalized English speaking Japanese all have the same opinions and mindset. In fact, out of the fifteen or so naturalized westerners I know — either in person or because they are on the Internet — about half of them seem to be either nuts, angry or unhappy!

I’ve noticed the following pattern: those that naturalized with some sort of angle, like a “means justify the ends” thing they wanted and thought that naturalization would give it to them, often seem to not be happy with their decision, even if they got what they wanted. The people I know who are happy with their naturalization seemed to naturalize for a much simpler reason: they’ve always liked life in Japan (which often includes a Japanese spouse and Japanese child living very domestically), and they are supremely confident they will continue to remain happy, for better or worse, richer or poorer, until death — probably because living in Japan is not the sole reason they’re happy. I’m sure there are exceptions to the pattern, but from my very limited personal observations, that’s what I’ve seen. I’ve also noticed that naturalized Japanese that have a healthy marriage and family tend to happy with their decision. This is not just because they’re always happy. Enjoying life when things are good is easy; anybody can do that. However, the strong marriages usually know how to deal with long term (think years, not months or weeks) adversity that always occurs. Perhaps this social skill is applicable not just to relationships, but also to the workplace and living in a foreign country. Challenges and hard times — short and long — always occur, no matter how good the marriage, the job, or the country.

Anyway, I enjoy spending time with the “well adjusted, happy” naturalized… be it westerners, or more commonly, non-westerners. Debito has never shown his “I hate Japan and almost everything about it except for the food” face to me in person, but it does come out obviously in his Internet persona.

As for the first part of your question:

First let me state this up front very quickly, then I’ll answer your question with a numbered list.

I know Debito. Personally. I attended a FRANCA meeting he had in Roppongi, I’ve bought his books (the Newcomer book was pretty good. The In Appropriate book was not in my opinion. And not just because I didn’t like the protagonist. I think Debito writes better non-fiction. Fiction is a very different writing skill). I’ve given his FRANCA organization money, and I used to be a frequent contributor to debito.org. I invited him to participate on my blog, and he’s featured my opinions both in his printed columns and his online posts. I enjoy spending time with Debito in person. I’ve had drinks with him on more than once in Tokyo, just the two of us and with others.

So why did I “turn on debito.org?” Four reasons, listed in order from least to most important:

1. I think he’s led a very tragic life, much of it due to bad life decisions. Regardless of whether his personal life is due to fate or his own choosing, I believe his tragic life has colored his judgement so severely that he is no longer able to be objective regarding anything related to Japan. It seems that every wrong he perceives in Japan he connects personally to himself and the life he lost or wish he had in Japan. This leaves the impression that his pain is too strong; he cannot separate his emotion and nor sense when it prejudices his judgement.

2. I think he’s good at his career, which is a professor of English (as a Foreign Language) at a university. I obviously have never seen him teach nor read reviews of his performance, but I believe they do not give tenure if they’re bad at their job.

   However, I think he’s very bad at his second career he’s trying to develop, which is being an “activist.” I base this opinion on his public record over the years: almost no tangible results that affect our day-to-day life. What few victories he’s had he failed to leverage or lost on appeal. He takes on too much for a single person and can’t scope, making him less effective at everything. He can’t differentiate between human rights and political opinion. He can’t moderate or filter or judge, and can’t distinguish between “instigating debate” and “instigating quality, productive, non-red herring debate.” He has a history of being difficult to work with — you can point fingers at everybody else being at fault, but after the third or fourth or fifth time, you have to start wondering if it’s you who are at fault — which is why he hasn’t been able to leverage the strength of other groups, which cripples his efforts. He lacks the diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise skills that are necessary to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. This prevents him from delegating and leveraging others which is necessary to be truly effective — especially when you have a real career that occupies most of your time.

   I now believe that if somebody else besides Debito, who had the above people skills, was the victim at the Otaru Onsen case, the case would’ve probably been solved in weeks, with the hot springs owner changing their policy and learning how to deal with and welcome foreign clientele. Now, Debito claimed he was diplomatic, but if you look at Debito’s recorded history on how he deals with problems, you’ll notice that “tact” has never been a tool in his social skill set.

3. I joined FRANCA and participated on debito.org because I’ve had a very good life in Japan and I wanted to give back and help the immigrant community be as happy living in Japan as I am. I originally thought debito.org and FRANCA were tools to help achieve this. I stopped participating on debito.org — FRANCA never really existed — near the end of last year after it became clear that many of the participants had no genuine interest in enjoying life in Japan or having anything positive to say or believe in regarding Japan. That, or they had an attitude of entitlement: Everything is a right. Nothing is a responsibility. I don’t have to change for Japan. Japan must change for me. It became clear that not a small number of debito.org’s contributors never or no longer lived in Japan and they never intended to go or return. For these commenters, debito.org for them serves as a venting outlet. It’s a affirmation vehicle for people looking others to share their similar bitterness. Sites like this on the Internet are everywhere. Debito.org is not unique.

4. THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT AND WHY I JOINED TEPIDO.ORG AGAINST DEBITO.ORG

   3/11 was a defining moment for me regarding my attitudes towards the international press. Even before 3/11, I always knew that the international press:

   • never properly hired enough people that have the credentials to properly translate Japanese in volume or in a timely manner

   • never properly did investigative journalism in Japan

   • rarely spoke or read or wrote proper fluent, native or near-native Japanese, which is required to be an effective reporter for Japan

   • rarely properly socialized and developed relevant powerful Japanese connections (political and business), instead preferring to hang out in the “gaijin ghettos” and wait for the Japanese with an angle come to them

   • rarely lived in Japan or had lived in Japan within the last five years — keeping their “street knowledge” remained relevant.

   … but I never envisioned how bad this unprofessional behavior could become until the Kantō/Tōhoku Disaster really put the international media to the test with a demanding journalistic task.

   Prior to 3/11, I thought the international press’ ineptitude was a harmless diversion. You could count on normally respectable papers like NYT to pander to its audience’s desire for the “strange and wacky and perverted” (it pays the bills) with stuff that normally would be embarrassing for even a minor paper to write: Japanese girls eyeing hostess careers (Tabuchi), people dressing up as vending machines (Fackler), and almost everything that CNN’s Kyung Lah writes (I did like that article on orphanages she did though). In many cases, I often find direct evidence where the international press used English blogs rather than Japanese as primary sources: for example, Fackler referenced a photo that existed nowhere except for JapanProbe (the Yamanote Halloween Party train) to make the case that right wingers were threatening innocent western Halloween “revelers” in public. These above examples are from one of the best international sources for Japan coverage! The rest of the international media is usually worse!

   After 3/11, the stakes changed. It was no longer about silly ero manga on the trains being read in plain sight. It was about death and destruction and tens of millions of people’s lives hanging in balance and a threat to the macro economic health of the entire nation. During this time Debito.org attempted to gleefully feed the schadenfreude of its core audience and delivered the “kick em when they’re down!” performance that its readers craved, hiding under the guise of responsible, conversative criticism and skepticism.

   The international press, having downsized whatever meager Japanese office they had during the recession, pathetically relied almost entirely on 4th or 5th level source English social media, English papers in Japan, and barely-able-to-speak interpreters — as they were caught unprepared to responsibly cover a national disaster affecting one of the most important countries in the world. Fortunately, they didn’t rely on debito.org at the time, because it was discredited during the peak of the crisis until the international mass media lost interest in Japan and moved on (not enough death and destruction anymore. Libya: new fresh death and destruction!)

   I don’t think I can shame the press directly because I don’t think they or their foreign readers really care that much about accuracy/ethics vs dirt/sensationalism — especially when it comes to foreign (Japan) news. Besides, there are other good sites that are trying to do that (ex. jpquake.info) that do a better job than I ever could.

   I want the international press to start hiring more professionals that will do their own homework, rather than distort information they got from an English blog in Japan, which distorted information about an English newspaper in Japan, which distorted a translation from an Japanese newspaper in Japan, whose editor distorted the notes from a Japanese press conference reporter, which distorted what a PR person said, who distorted the truth in the first place!

   The international press is feeding from the wrong end of that chain. Debito.org is one (of many) blogs on the wrong end of that chain. And debito.org is one of the worst, in that it’s (perhaps unintentionally) based on hate and the presumption that everything in Japan is bad, and it has undeserved legitimacy attached to it because the blog author has a monthly column in a relatively minor niche English national paper in Japan — which is given too much weight by the international press because the paper is written in English and the international press can’t read Japanese well.

   I believe one fix is to do as much as possible to take away these false crutches at the beginning of the chain-of-distortions — forcing the international press to improve their investigative legwork, follow-up, and verification skills. In other words, by discrediting (or, dare I dream, IMPROVE) the blogs and English-in-Japan sources that the international press uses too often as primary sources, I hope to force the overseas media to do their job better. It’s probably a unrealistic naive dream, but I think it’s more realistic than many other methods, and it’s one that I think benefits the world, including non-Japanese, in the long run.

   As I believe a solution is to get rid of or reform the English nth-in-the-chain sources that the international press crib-sheet cheats from when they’re Japanese-challenged, that means debito.org and company must change or go away. If that means debito.org switches to writing in all Japanese, I’d be for that. If it meant debito.org became a legit news organization and its editors and publishers went to journalism school and did all of the things I listed above that the international press does not do, I’d be for that too. Ultimately, it’d be better for the activism, too… as screaming on a blog in English about non-Japanese is as productive as navel-gazing considering that almost all Japanese and foreign residents (Chinese and Korean) do not communicate in English.

   If debito.org or “Just Be Cause” doesn’t or can’t be reformed, I’d be satisfied with discrediting them, so that no legit press, international or domestic, would dare attempt to use them as a source, lest they be caught and shamed and laughed at for using such a unreliable information.

   Tepido.org helps serve this purpose. It’s not perfect: it’s crude, often immature, and too personal. I often wince when I read both the posts and comments (including my own). But it’s free (as in speech), and it seems to be effective based on how I’ve seen debito.org react to it.

That’s why I read and comment on Tepido.org.

Additionally, I now work with other native Japanese to work on making Japan a little friendlier towards true human rights issues in Japan. I work with them, rather than debito.org, because they’ve demonstrated they have to will and the diplomacy skills (language, judgement, and compromise) to fairly assess and fix (where possible) true unfair discrimination — quickly and effectively.

I hope that answers your question!

To make very clear: my problem is with the opinions expressed within debito.org and the auxiliary vehicles used to promote it. I do not consider criticizing debito.org blog content being the same as criticizing the person. Likewise, I do not consider criticizing his tweets/social media/JT column to be same as criticizing the person as these media tools are not solely being used to represent the individual — rather they’re being used as promotional tools for the content on the debito.org. In the parlance of the industry, they’re mere crude “traffic driver” ads, designed to boost page views and participants of the problematic blog.

When I criticize, I TRY to use the term “debito.org” to refer to the hate blog to make it clear that it’s not about the person. I also try to use the term “Mr. Arudou” to refer to non-Internet activities such as his JT column or his books. However, as I’m often typing on a mobile (or worse, experimental or development) device and have a hard enough time editing simple English on tiny keyboards, I may make a mistake and occasionally slip and break my own rules. Despite this, the appearance of me attacking Debito The Person is not intentional.

However, the man has intertwined his blog, his activist work, and his personal life together so deeply that it’s sometimes difficult to criticize the work without criticizing the man.

[- END OF COMMENT -]

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