You know how is arms got so big? Punching black people because he’s a racist asshole.

I don’t know how many of you are gamers, but if you remember game news from around a year ago you’ve heard of the Resident Evil 5 controversy. Many arguments were made saying that the game was racist. In retaliation many gaming websites made well written pieces about how the game is not actually racist, even if someone might think that it is. While I can see why certain people would think that the game is racist, when you take into consideration all of the circumstances (which none of them managed to do) you quickly realize that it’s definitely being misunderstood in a way than the creators of the series ever intended.

Little did the robot know but the depiction of him vs. praying mantises was considered racist.

If you haven’t read any of the criticisms you should probably give them a look-over and see what kind of arguments they are using. Do you see a common thread between all of the reasons they are using? They all rely on a US/Western perspective. Let’s pretend you’re a person in a whose spent their lives in another country, never lived in the US (thus no western education), and probably your only knowledge of segregation is that there were slaves up to around 150 years ago in the US. Armed with just this, do you think it would be racist to use Africa as a set piece for a video game? Many of those decrying racism said so because the protagonist is white. If you lived in an area that had very few black people (with most being African, not North American) would you think it strange for the main character in an earlier chapter of a series to come back at some point? Would you even consider that people would take the events out of the context of the game’s scenarios and imprint racist overtones over the story?

They were really just trying to take it back from the racists.

During the US primaries in 2008, Emobile (a Japanese cell phone company) released this ad. Pretty much immediately after this ad was made it was put up on youtube and people were screaming the r-word (not this one). In the ad (you’ve watched it already, right?) is a monkey giving a speech and borrowing many things from Obama’s speeches at the time. Because of this people were angry thinking that this Japanese company was being racist and calling black people monkeys. The question then is “Was it intended to be taken this way?” Many Americans who watched the ad seemed to think that the answer was yes. Is it?

Softbank came out with a series of hit commericals a couple years past. These commercials showcase a strange family with an interesting makeup; without asking for clarification, some people have said that this, in and of itself (please read this one), is racism. Anyways, the father in the series is a white dog. In English there is the phrase, “fighting like cats and dogs”; in Japanese there is a similar, but different, phrase, “犬猿の仲”. This phrase, lit. “like dogs and monkeys”, translates to “like cats and dogs”. By this point I hope you see why Emobile did what they did. Emobile, being in competition with Softbank, was trying to get customers to switch from one of the biggest carriers to one of the smallest. To show the competition between the carriers they used a visual metaphor for a Japanese phrase. Some American politicians are very famous in Japan (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to name two) and so it would make perfect sense to use such a popular figure, especially given the conflict.

Stupid humans don’t recognize a sleeper hold

I do not fault people for thinking that it was racist. All (or almost all) of the people who thought the video was racist most likely grew up in a country that had both racial conflict and such derogatory names; it’s only natural to think that anyone who makes an allusion to something that you consider offensive is meaning what they say, especially when it was something so racist. However, even though they made that connection in the brain that the imagery could be taken as racist they didn’t think about it enough to consider whether or not the people making the clip in question actually meant what they are being accused of; it’s ridiculous to expect a person who is not considering race/colour (i.e. not a racist) to stop what they are doing and start worrying about skin colour.

Crap, so I can’t just pigeonhole people just like a racist person would do? That’s not fun.

Think, within the context of a person who barely knows anything about America besides the exported culture, about what’s going on in the clip below (strangely, the TV program in that clip isn’t in Japanese). Is this racist? What do you think is the motivation? Do you see anger, hatred, and a lack of inclusion in their faces? Or do you get the feeling that they’re ignorant of the subject material and would be surprised to find that there are people that would find this to be racist?

Also, remember that Australians must be racist because of this clip. It has to be that, nothing to do with the country of the rival team being mostly black and that everyone in the freaking world loves chicken.

In the next three or four big posts I’m going to talk about different parts of this very complex subject. Here’s part one.

It can’t be tentacles all the way down, there had to be a first tentacle.

Since the inception of Youtube, the videos and details regarding “Japanese Only” signs have spread farther than they did back in the Netscape/IE4 days (the video is just a slideshow of this page). As most of you have probably guessed, this video shows the signs of places where foreigners are not allowed. Given that this video just takes the pictures of the page from Arudo Debito’s website and doesn’t give any text or dialogue, you’re not going to get the full story by just watching the video. When people see videos like this or hear comments from others that Japan is racist, even if they happen to go on a trip to Japan they’re not going to have enough knowledge to know if what they’ve been told is true or not. This alone is not (or at least it shouldn’t be) sufficient for a regular person to think that Japan, and not one old and cranky Japanese guy, is racist.

Japan, along with many other Asian countries, still connect nationality with race. This practice allowed (mostly) Brazilians with a Japanese relative to easily enter and work in Japan. While this practice might make sense for some countries, many people see it as a way of saying that those with “Japanese blood” are better than others. Furthermore, Japan did some horrific, unconscionable things 70 years ago that many people might see as racist. When you put all of these things together you end up with a lot of people saying/wondering about Japan and it’s supposed racism.

Hatsune Miku would love to make a song for you as long as you’re not a stupid smelly foreigner.

You mean the tubes can tell fibs?

Getting back to the “Japanese Only” video, check out the webpage and you’ll learn more of the story; many of these places are in Northern Japan, on the side of Japan that faces the Japan Sea, or near a military base. If you set up shop in one of these places there’s a chance that many of your customers will be Russian or, for the latter, American. When you keep having trouble with a certain set of clientele you have to decide whether or not you have to decide whether or not to exclude them. The places shown in the pictures all decided to restrict their customers to a certain subset.

Not only are most of the places listed in the areas mentioned, but most of them are a certain type of establishment, hostess clubs. Hostess clubs are something that are foreign to most people outside of Japan, this means (in almost all instances) that if someone doesn’t look Japanese that they most likely don’t know how things go down in a hostess club. To make things go smoothly they only want those customers who know what they’re getting into and not a tourist who’ll get pissed because the girl he’s been flirting with for the past two hours just freaked out and called security because he got touchy-feely. Oh, there’s also the language barrier, most clubs don’t require their girls to be able to speak a foreign language.

I hope a pure-blooded Japanese male stabs the owner in the fucking throat.

You might be wondering why I wouldn’t think that this policy (in both situations), while useful, is not as discriminatory as it sounds. The answer to this is that, these signs don’t mean what they say. Check out that webpage one more time and read the updates for each case, you’ll see that many of them have taken down the signs at the request of just one foreigner that can speak Japanese well enough. These places weren’t being racist against non-Japanese, they were trying to deal with people who didn’t follow rules, couldn’t understand the process, and/or didn’t know the language which caused some kind of issue.

Just because there is a general policy against allowing foreigners into certain places (i.e. soaplands, etc) does not mean that the locale is strictly for Japanese people. If you hint to the staff (in Japanese) that you know the rules they’ll get the drift and let you have your soapy fun. How the hell do I know this? Did I start going to hostess clubs and soaplands without telling you? No, but I know someone who has done just this and this has worked for him very consistently. You might have thought that since it’s on a sign (and thus a rule) that the Japanese would follow it unthinkingly, but I’m here to tell you that, on many occasions, Japanese people can be pragmatic even if they’re shitty at making signs.

(Click here to read Part 2)

By the way

Builder James Anthony Dean-Willcocks charged held over race-hate killing

By Lisa Davies and Gemma Jones From: The Daily Telegraph Sun Oct 11 23:53:46 EST 2009

A BUILDER celebrating his 23rd birthday allegedly bashed an elderly man to death in a drunken race-hate crime.

James Anthony Dean-Willcocks, of Illawong, was yesterday charged with the murder of Magno Alvarado, 67.

Residents of Elouera Rd, Cronulla, told police of being woken about 5.30am on Saturday by a male yelling: “F … off back to Japan”.

According to a statement tendered by police to Parramatta Bail Court, a man was heard to cry: “Help, help”.

One witness said he went to his balcony and allegedly saw a man “fling the victim on to the footpath, pick up the victim, shake him and throw him to the ground”.

The accused then allegedly punched Mr Alvarado in the head and body as many as 10 times.

Another witness said he saw the victim thrown to the road, and Dean-Willcocks on top of him, punching him.

Police will allege Dean-Willcocks was heard yelling “Ya Jap”.

Another described seeing Mr Alvarado tackled, “body-slammed” and punched many times.

One witness told police he yelled at Dean-Willcocks to stop and asked what he was doing.

“Mate, he’s Japanese and he deserves it,” the accused allegedly answered.

It is understood Mr Alvarado was Filipino.

Stunned onlookers prevented Dean-Willcocks leaving the scene until police arrived. Mr Alvarado was taken to hospital but died about 2.30pm on Saturday.

After Dean-Willcocks – wearing no shoes, and only one sock – was arrested, police noted he was intoxicated.

He has since told police he has “no recollection” of the incident and his last memory was “some time in the early hours of the morning” while he was at the Mercure Hotel in the city.

Dean-Willcocks said he did not know how he got to Cronulla.

He made no application for bail and will appear in Central Local Court tomorrow.

I’d say that if you want something to be pissed about, it should be something more like this.

This just happened on TV a couple of days ago. He says 馬鹿 (ばか, stupid), which is fine, but he immediately follows it up with チョン (epithet against Koreans). I think he got off too lightly with his quick apology. Interestingly, Debito has nothing on this yet.

Update: The video is gone, go here or here to watch the video.

Meet Mr. James; or for those in Japan, Mr. ジェームス. Apparently he’s a 43 year old American from Ohio who is promoting McDonalds for the Summer/Fall 09 set of burgers. From the ads in McDonalds and his blog he seems to really enjoy Japan, McDonalds, and Soaplands; actually, that last one might not be true, but let’s just say he does.

Captain Soap saves you from images of naked soapy Japanese women.

No problem with me so far, but some people have trouble with the next part. If you’ve been studying (I’m guessing no) and you’ve already taken a look at his blog you’ve probably noticed that he’s using a lot of Katakana. When someone uses Katakana it’s usually for a couple of reasons: non-Japanese words, emphasis, manlyness (yes, really), and showing badly pronounced Japanese. You can probably guess the reason why some people living in Japan, and the SF Chronicle, would frown on McDonald’s current campaign.

I can understand why a lot of people think that this is condescending, but I think a lot of people are going too far with this. I don’t feel this is any worse than some cereal commercials or another McDonald’s advertisement shown in the States. The campaign isn’t saying anything about people living in Japan or how good/bad their Japanese is so what’s all the fuss about? Another thing that I think has been forgotten about in all of this is that Mr. James studied Japanese from a phrasebook while he was still in the USA. Is it honestly that unrealistic to show someone who, until recently, had no real contact with a native speaker of the language they were learning and, therefore, had bad pronunciation? When you take into consideration how little people usually know about Japan/Japanese when they come to work/visit and also that there are people who live here for years without really learning any Japanese I’d almost say that this type of advertising should be encouraged.

Miyuki, meet your new father.

I know that things aren’t perfect here, nor anywhere else, but lots of people are overanalyzing this. Debito, a fighter for foreign rights in Japan is pretty zealous in his stuggle. However sometimes he goes a little overboard and I do believe this is one of those times.

Now, I’m not condemning all of them, but the generation’s activities as a collective has created many problems; these problems are probably greater than the problems that they have solved. They’re causing problems in Japan as well, but the problems they are creating here are completely and in no way whatsoever related to what I was talking about earlier.

Anyways, Japan is getting ready to fly the kite, of old age (dun dun DUN). Where do I get kite from? The population/age graph of Japan has gone from a pyramid shape to looking more like a kite. Unfortunately this kite cannot get off the ground since there is a lack of wind to get it airborne. There is an abundance of gruffled, but quiet, complaints as well as entitlement (17:19). Unfortunately, although entitlement seems to come with age it doesn’t bring with it a breeze to lift this kite (it does bring incontinence).

Japan’s fine females are not doing their job of being barefoot and pregnant (unlike France) which will lead to a lack of working age people at the current rate, maybe even as high as 1 retired person for every 2 workers. The government, being slow and all Japanese government like, hasn’t really done much of anything to fix the problem. Old people, however, are doing their part by trying to shame younger people by giving those without 5 children nasty looks.

The best and easiest solution has either not occurred to them or they are too afraid to try it, changing their immigration policy. They’re still hung up on maintaining racial purity so much that it seems they’ll try anything before letting anyone emigrate to Japan and become a citizen. There’s even been talk of using robots.

Once we hit the singularity you’re toast gramps.

The robot revolution starts in Japan. I hope it will be a long time before robots learn how to make themselves waterproof.