From: tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu (Tad Perry)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan,sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Miyazawa Comment (was Re: Honda vs Ford (+ Chrysler now))
Date: 27 Jan 1993 03:50:29 GMT
Organization: unaffiliated
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: gibdo.engr.washington.edu

In article <C1HGts.M2L@news.cso.uiuc.edu> aijuin@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Akira Ijuin) writes:
>rvkl60@email.sps.mot.com (Tom Mathes) writes:
>
>>I find it peculiar when people say "Bad American!!" whenever they
>>say anything not nice about folks outside of the country, but say
>>"he was probably misquoted" when referring to something ill
>>said about Americans.  Miyazawa did indeed say what he said,
>>and meant it.  It just wasn't meant for consumption outside
>>of Japan.  And the Japanese call us racists!!
>
>Now I'm not sure if the author of this article actually heard what 
>Prime Minister Miyazawa said, in Japanese.  And I'm not sure if this author
>understands Japanese, as used by politicians.  In case you did not know, 
>Japanese politicians have this way of saying things without ever giving out
>their true intentions.  Some (how much, I do not know) native Japanese
>speakers have trouble understanding this, so I have little reason to think
>that Prime Minister Miyazawa's comments were correctly understood,
>or correctly translated into English.  The latter is especially a problem,
>since Japanese as used by politicians are very hard to translate correctly.
>Translating the superficial meaning does not suffice when dealing with
>Japanese politicians.

Well, I'm really mad at myself now. I had the original quote from a
Japanese newspaper article. And it most certainly did say these
things, and it was most certainly clear in meaning. I posted it to
sci.lang.japan when this was the hot topic of conversation about a
year ago. (That's why I cross-posted this; in case anyone has it.) If
anyone does have it, please repost so this b.s. we see above doesn't
get believed.

>Now I don't remember the exact words Prime Minister Miyazawa used when he
>supposedly said "Americans are lazy".  However, I did listen to it quite a 
>few times since the Americans were having a cow over this, and some of my
>friends asked me what he said, in Japanese.  The impression I got when
>I heard his word was that he was more or less criticizing US management,
>although like I said, he did his damn best to blurr his true intention, so
>I cannot make any definite conclusions.  From the little that I can recall
>about his exact words, I believe he said something to the extent of,
>"It appears (to me) that some American laborers are less productive" or 
>something to that extent (I'm really not sure...correct me if I'm wrong...
>possibly with his actual words in Japanese).

Okay, you're wrong. It was much clearer than you try to represent it.
Also I don't know how you "heard" anything. The comments were written
down by Japanese reporters in a private meeting. What you *heard* was
probably his "explanations" which came later. This was not something
captured on audio or video tape. But the fact that several independent
reporters got the same quote attests to the accuracy of what was said.

>I do not recall hearing the word "Namakemono" = "lazy" from him.

You're right. He didn't use the word "namakemono" he said: "Ji wo yomenai.
Hatarakanai."

>So first, I think the interpretor made
>his own interpretation of his comments before translating it.  To hold
>Prime Minister Miyazawa responsible for what the interpretor thought of his
>comments seems a bit unreasonable to me.

Unless the interpreter was correct.

>And also, this thing about Japanese calling Americans racists.  I'd like to
>know how the author of the post came to this conclusion (I didn't see anything
>like that in what the Prime Minister said), and I would also like to know how
>this ties in with comments from the Prime Minister.  And if this is the 
>author's way of saying Americans aren't, I have one question.  Do you in any
>way think Americans are NOT racist? (I am not saying ONLY Americans are
>racists.  Keep that in mind if you're going to flame me.)

Now as for this part, I have no comment on the appropriateness of the
Miyazawa issue to this thread. But taken in isolation, you should be
very aware that Miyazawa's comments were both clear in meaning and
intent, and more or less fairly represented in the US media. I will
attempt to search out this quote (which should never have been thrown
away) and prove you wrong.
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