From: dcroz@twics.co.jp
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Not a Myth at All
Date: 11 Dec 92 09:28:40 GMT
Organization: TWICS, Tokyo, Japan

 
Pascal Goguey writes:
 
=}So, let's forget the fact that somebody is a foreigner. If I'm walking in the
=}street with a friend and I see a guy walking on his hands, it is an
=}impoliteness towards that person if I tell my friend : "Hey! That guy is
=}walking on his hands!" 
 
     Maybe not, but I think it would be impolite to say, "Hey! That n**g*r is
walking on his hands.  He can't be doing that because n**g*rs aren't smart
enough."  Which would be an accurate analogy for what goes on here.
 
=}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.
 
=}Yes, or in other words, normal to the point that they appear in the Japanese
=}culture.
 
     Or in other words, racism is normal in Japanese culture.
 
=}Everybody does.
 
     Irrelevant, even if true.
 
=}It's natural to be somewhat proud when something good comes out of your
=}country.
 
     Which has nothing to do with a people's crypto-religious belief in their 
status as the master race, the only true humans.
 
=}Who is more guilty ? The guy who's aware, or the guy who's not?
 
     Irrelevant.  The object, as I understand it, is not to assign blame but to
achieve awareness.
 
=}Doing something wrong?  Wrong according to Japanese way of thinking or
=}according to yours?
 
     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?
 
     If racism was wrong in America and South Africa, then it's wrong here; and
if the "Japanese way of thinking" holds that it's *not* wrong, then the
Japanese way of thinking is wrong.
 
=}You certainly may explain your point of view, and point out the culture
=}difference. That's all.
 
     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 your
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?
 
=}I have Japanese friends (who are not racist).
 
     Sorry, but in the absence of some corroboration I just can't regard either
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.
 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan