[PREV - MULTIETHNIC_AINU]    [TOP]

NATIONAL_VOIDS


                                               May 11/Sep 20, 2012
                                               January    21, 2014
                                               October     6, 2016


Trying to identify absences, parts of the story
that aren't talked about...


James Fallows, "More Like Us" (1989):

    "Depending on their founding principles, different societies
    can use different incentives to make themselves go-- to hold
    people together and make them rise to their best.  Japan and,
    to a lesser degree, Korea seem to rely on an embattled sense
    of the national family standing united against the world.
    China, too large and varied to be a single family, seems
    driven mainly by the effort and honor of its hundreds of
    millions of component families.  Germany, France and England
    each has its national spirit.  And America has a peculiar
    national genius of its own.  The force that motivates the
    country is a vision of people always in mortion, able to make
    something different of themselves, ready for second chances
    until the day they die." (p.2)

Every country has it's blindspots,
subjects that no one wants to talk
about that fall into a zone that are       James Fallows, "More Like Us" (1989):
known about (at least in an
intellectual way, perhaps only by          "... One of the things that make
specialists) but is not allowed to         America most unusual is its
penetrate the country's self-image         assumption that race should not
because it goes countrary to the           matter, that a society can be
characteristic narrative.                  built of individuals with no
                                           particular historic or racial bond
                                           to link them together."  (p.2)



Part of the United States understanding
of itself is that it doesn't have any
subjects like that left: the treatment     It's perhaps true that the United
of the Native Americans, of the            States is better than average in
Afro-American slaves, and of the           this respect, but if you *think* you
Japanese in internment camps are all       know about every national
things that we know and talk about, at     embarassment lurking in the US
least to some extent.                      closet, you might want to look a
                                           little closer.  If you haven't been,
                                           say, following Noam Chomsky the odds
                                           are good you're missing some.



In the case of Japan, there's a people
from what is now the northern end of        MULTIETHNIC_AINU
Japan named the Ainu, who are arguably
analogus to the Native Americans.

  Back in the late 80s, the
  well-respected anthropologist
  C. Loring Brace concluded
  that the Samurai were descended
  from the Ainu, not the the
  Yayoi descendents that make up
  most of modern Japan.

  John Noble Wilford wrote about
  this is the New York Times:

     [ref]

  This discovery goes against the
  grain of mainstream culture in         But then, there also doesn't
  Japan, and as far as I can tell,       seem to be much follow up, at
  it's been essentially forgotten.       least none that's leaked out
                                         into the searchable web...

                                         Maybe Brace's ideas haven't
                                         come to much... or could it
                                         be it's hard to do the
                                         research, because Japanese
                                         culture doesn't cooperate?


One thing that struck me about
Hiroki Azuma's "Oatku: Japan's
Database Animals" (2001) is that      OTAKU_BASE
there's no mention of racism.

    In many respects, this book follows
    along with the international
    postmodern tradition of politically
    correct commentary... but while there
    is some discussion of issues loosely
    related to "imperialism", there's no
    pointification about Japanese racism.

        E.g. he talks a lot about something he
        refers to as "snobbery", but draws no
        connections between that and racism: and
        yet both involve finding excuses for
        condescenion, though perhaps they're based
        on different grounds.

                     Azuma's work was
                     very popular in
                     Japan: perhaps it
                     might not have been
                     if it poked fingers
                     in too many wounds.



--------
[NEXT - JAPANESE_RACISM]