From: pascal@apd.cpg.sony.co.jp (Pascal Goguey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Not a Myth at All
Date: 14 Dec 92 09:16:21 GMT
Organization: Sony Corporation,Communication Products Group Audio Products
	Div,Atsugi,Japan.
In-reply-to: dcroz@twics.co.jp's message of 11 Dec 92 09:28:40 GMT


*=}But the frequency with which one is "told something bad" is correlated
*=}with the fact that the country is hostile or friendly, right?

*     No.  It could be correlated with the degree of *open* hostility or
*friendliness, but these are aspects of behavior that are not necessarily
*reflective of the underlying feelings.  Particularly so in a society that
*regards the failure to be sufficiently two-faced as not just bad form, but a
*severe moral deficiency.

        But you should agree that there is no open hostility without
"underlying" hostile feelings. So if you get "agressed", there should be
an underlying hostile feeling as well.

*=}I'm certainly rejecting YOUR reality.  Not THE reality.

*     Which the PC-Speak Dictionary renders as, "A convoluted way of saying, `I*think you're wrong.'"
        Not exactly wrong, but excessive. How can a guy who says : "more
than 99% of Japanese are racist" be objective ? I have experienced a few
disappointing things since I'm in Japan, and I have been excessive as well.
I'm not telling you that your opinion about Japanese will change, because
you do and think what you want. But your reactions to the Japanese's
behaviour seem to be disproportioned to their cause.

*=}Here we are!  These remarks were racist for you only.

*     Not if they arose from and reflected the speaker's belief in his own
*racial superiority.  Which is a sucker bet.

        So, ALL the Japanese you met had that kind of belief ? I doubt.
At least not more than in any other country. There are a lot of people in
France who believe that tha French culture is the best of the world, that
the French language is the richest language in the world, that the French
lovers are the best of the world, the french cooking, etc, etc... It is
like that in any country. And I think it's like that as well in US, or at
least was like that in the early seventies when the country was at the
top of its power.

*     Perhaps you didn't intend to say this, but you statement implies that
*either there is no such thing as objective truth or, if there is, it is not
*discoverable, and that we are therefore limited to viewing the world through
*the narrow slits of our cultural prejudices.

*     I don't subscribe to this.  I think it is possible to arrive at certain
*truths that exist independently of culture--or at least universally in all
*cultures, which for all practical purposes amounts to the same thing.

*     To take the obvious for a jumping-off point, it's not too hard to use
*reason to demonstrate that a society that proscribes rape and murder is a
*better place for non-rapist non-murderers to live.  I think this lifts the
*question out of the realm of ethnocentrism and plonks it down squarely in the
*category of culture-free truth:  the vast majority of humans will have a better
*time of it in a society that proscribes rape and murder.

*     So if we run across a society that regards rape and murder as meritorious,
*do we say, "Wrong according to our way of thinking," or do we just say,
*"Wrong?"  And when we do say "wrong," as most people do when thinking of
*apartheid, to pick on another easy target, are we speaking as narrow-minded,
*chauvinist French/American/Moldavian/Commanche/Whatevers, or are we speaking as
*human beings?

*     Well, some of my ancestors as recently as the nineteenth century lived in*a culture that held it meritorious for them to torture you to death with great*skill and patience, take all your possessions, take such female members of you\r
*family as they may want for sex (and labor) slaves, and just in general
*eradicate you and yours from the face of the earth in the most unpleasant ways*imaginable.  (They've been mentioned once in this note already; should be a
*giveaway).


*     It's just a "culture difference."  That's all.  So you won't have any
*objections, right?  Would you mind removing your hat?

        Although I don't believe that there is ONE truth (like the peole
who believe in one god or another), I believe that there is a "basic common
truth", like there are some similarities between the different human types :
two legs, two arms, one head... This basic common truth is : murder is bad,
rape is bad, pain is bad, love is good, ... But that's it.
        Concerning all the rest, there is no objective truth. For example,
in some states of the US, the truth is : a criminal must die. And the capital
punishment exists there. In some other states, and in a lot of countries,
there is no capital punishment, which means that EVERYBODY has the right to
live, even criminals. Where is the OBJECTIVE TRUTH ? For you, it may be either
of the two truths, and for me the other.
        Another example : there are some people who believe that a woman
should be able to decide whether she will or not give birth to a baby. Is therean objective truth ? There are two : one is the right of the woman, the other
is the right of the child. Two objective truths, or in other words no objectivetruth.
        These two examples are part of the basic rules of any society, but
the opinion is not identical in all the countries, so I believe that the truth
depends on the place. The truth depends on time as well : Take the first
example : there was a capital punishment in France until 1981 (if I recall
exactly) Can you believe that?

*=}I have Japanese friends (who are not racist).

*     Sorry, but in the absence of some corroboration I just can't regard eithe\r
*of these assertions as credible.  I don't doubt that you have Japanese
*acquaintances that turn a "friendly" tatemae toward you.  But, like they say,
*you don't find out who your friends really are until you sit on a rattlesnake.

        Just two examples, although I could give you more (I have five or
six goo Japanese friends).
        When I begun working here, I was quite alone. One day, I met a guy
in a restaurant. We started talking together, and although my Japanese wasn't
that good at that moment, managed to communicate. Since that time, I meet him
a couple of times a month. He (I should say they, because of his wife) invites
me every time in the restaurant, and never let me pay. And when some friends
came from France, he took one day off to drive them to Hakone, although he
doesn't speak a single word of French and of English either. Well, it would
be very long to tell you the kindness of that guy.. Yes, he lent me his truck
when I moved... and so on. Even if I make efforts, I can't imagine that that
guy is racist... If I was paranoiac, I could think of course, that he does all
these services to help a poor froggy who gets trouble a life which is quite
different to the one in his under-developed country...
        Another example. I met another Japanese at the beginning of this
year, who became one of my best friends. He's an "audiophile" (I don't know if
the word is the same in english) and we started to talk about music and about
techniques to reproduce sound images. I got soon invited to his home. I got
on of teh nicest dinners I've ever had. The conversation was about music /
audio / video / photohraphs. He gave me at first a videodisc player, and a few
times later a handicam (nantoka 900). Last time I went there, he gave me a
minolta camera with two zooms 35-70 and 70-210. For that other guy as well,
I can't believe he's thinking anything bad about foreigners.
        I know that what I wrote sounds a bit materialistic, but that's all
I can explain with my present english level. But I think it may give a good
idea about my friends. I think that one does not make so much presents to a
person if one does not really estimate that person.
        For these two examples, I have good reasons to think that it's more
than a friendly tatemae.

	By the way, do you have any reason to write g**j*n and n**g*r ?
Maybe I haven't read the post explaining it...

--
  Pascal Goguey  Sony Corporation  ($@GC9%7Z(J  $@8d7](J)
  Communication Products Group Audio Products Div
  Atsugi TEC, Japan