From: rhb@world.std.com (Robert H Brueckner)
Subject: Re: Is this offensive?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
	<1993Jan22.060210.29587@omrongw.wg.omron.co.jp>
	<RHB.93Jan22222015@world.std.com>
	<1993Jan23.074019.11958@Csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:03:21 GMT

In article <1993Jan23.074019.11958@Csli.Stanford.EDU> hiraga@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Yuzuru Hiraga) writes:

   In article <RHB.93Jan22222015@world.std.com> rhb@world.std.com (Robert H Brueckner) writes:
   >Well, you don't have to be Japanese-American to get thrown up against
   >a locker in high school. Actually, all you have to be is smarter,
   >shorter, weaker, or not a football player. So you're not being singled
   >out, believe me, except that you are different.

   That's "one hell of" a compassion.

I'm not trying to be compassionate here, I'm simply pointing out that
being different is a red flag to certain Neanderthals who inhabit
American high schools. That they are racists is almost incidental to
the fact that they are bullies who seek an excuse to torment anyone.
Chill out, dude.

   >But let's compare
   >treatment here, just for the hell of it, with that of anomalous people
   >in Japan. Owada-san, the future empress, herself was victimized in
   >this way, probably much more cruelly and relentlessly than any
   >football player ever would have done it, merely because she had been
   >abroad.

   Again, why can you be so bold in making such statements
   of things you don't understand or have little knowledge of?
   I, being one of the earlier Kikoku-shijo (returnee), as well as my
   brother and sister, my wife, and a number of friends in a similar situation,
   will testify that such is not the case.
   Of course, there do exist such cases, but that doesn't warrant making
   such blanketed, ungrounded guesses.

   (BTW: Kiko, the wife of the other prince, is also a returnee.)

What do I need to understand here? That you, being kikoku-shijo,
accept such treatment as part of your national identity? Are you
denying that such treatment exists and that I have no right to say it
because I have merely been informed about it second-hand (by other
kikoku-shijo) and not experienced it myself? Your case, if it is as
benign as you say, may be anomalous. But I have read otherwise about
Owada-san, and not in the tabloids, either. Obviously you admit that
"there do exist such cases" but what I was making was not a
"blanketed, ungrounded" guess. It was a statement based on facts
(which, admittedly, I did not witness firsthand) and I challenge you
to refute it with facts of your own before accusing me of ignorance
and generalization (which are themselves "blanketed, ungrounded
guesses). Adducing your own personal story does not refute my
argument, since my argument was not that ALL returnees are persecuted,
merely that some are. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough, in
which case I apologize, but the persecution does exist and for the
reasons we have all become too familiar: Japan is racist and
xenophobic to a large degree, and fearful of outsiders even if they be
racially and politically identical with themselves.

BTW: What does the fact that Kiko is kikoku-shijo have to do with
anything?
-- 
|"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who  |
| have loved it." -- George Santayana  // Opinions expressed here, when |
| clear and persuasive, are my own. --Rob Brueckner (rhb@world.std.com) |

Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan