Why aren’t Asians Republicans?

And just one devastating World War and foreign occupation later. The fact remains Japan was forced open, against it’s will. Would it be ok by you if some other country in the future were to force it’s will upon America?

Who knows, perhaps the aggressors’ grandchildren can make a retroactive case for it.

DarkCurrent on November 30, 2012 at 2:07 PM

Hmm, a devastating war and a subsequent occupation to stop barbaric cultural practices? Why does that sound familiar?

Let’s ask the Ryukyu Kingdom what they think about forced cultural hegemony. Oh, right, we can’t, because they were conquered by the Japanese centuries before the end of Sakoku. I’m sure that’s somehow also America’s fault, even though we were a British Colony at the time.

And gee, how surprising to see you mouth more lazy rhetoric about the Japanese role in WW2. Yeah, between 1868 and 1941, the Japanese were perfect little angels who never agressed against anyone.

But really, we should have respected their superior morality and culture and just left them alone.

Good Solid B-Plus on November 30, 2012 at 3:25 PM

As I listen, I wonder what 汉宫秋月 could mean?

I’d translate it as ‘Autumn Moon at the Han Palace’. Perhaps that’s what it means?

DarkCurrent on November 30, 2012 at 3:39 PM

DC, it’s been a while since I practiced my Kanji. Could you translate “Why do I refuse to honestly answer any questions?” into Japanese for me? Thanks in advance.

Good Solid B-Plus on November 30, 2012 at 3:42 PM

Alright, I’m wasting my time. It’s obvious you refuse to be honest about Japanese racism, their depictions of black people, and their feelings about other Asian groups.

America can’t celebrate our “Judeo-Christian heritage,” but Japanese politicians say things like this: “Yasuhiro Nakasone, the conservative prime minister of Japan in the 1980s, angered minorities in Japan by referring to Japan as a “homogeneous nation” with “one ethnicity, one state and one language.” He angered American and American minorities when said that the “intellectual level” of Americans was below that of Japanese because of “people like blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.”

America is horrible because of Joe Arpaio and Arziona’s awful racist laws, but the Japanese do things like this: “On her experiences being mistaken for an illegal immigrant Kumiko Makihara wrote in the New York Times, “I am a Japanese woman living in Japan” but “a few years ago when I started getting pulled aside by police, apparently to see if I was an illegal immigrant. On three occasions, officers sidled up to me at busy train stations, flashing their badges and asking me where I was headed. When they concluded I was a Japanese national, they sent me on my way. Earlier this year, two officers approached me as I was exiting Tokyo Station and asked to see an ID and the contents of my purse. I refused their repeated requests while demanding an explanation until one of the officers finally told me, “You are tall and dark-colored and look like a foreigner.” He then added, “Every day we catch four to five overstays this way,” referring to immigrants with expired visas. [Source: Kumiko Makihara, New York Times, July 7, 2010]

America is horribly bigoted towards illegal immigrants, but Japan has protests like this: Reporting from Kyoto, Martin Fackler wrote in the New York Times, “The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. An armband worn by a member of the Japanese group Zaitokukai. The red characters say ‘The Volunteer Corps Against Lawless Koreans’; the black characters say ‘Expel barbarians.’” Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.[Source: Martin Fackler, New York Times, August 28, 2010]

And here we have Jennifer Golub commenting on anti-Semitism in a country with barely 2,000 Jews and no prevailing hegemonic Christian or Muslim culture: http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/889.PDF Or, as Stephen Roth puts it: The first and most successful nation to modernize in the Asia Pacific region, Japan also has the oldest and richest anti-Semitic tradition in the area. Japanese anti-Semitism may be the ultimate oxymoron since Japan is a Shintoist/Buddhist society with virtually no Jewish minority. Nonetheless, under the powerful impact of The Protocols (introduced by soldiers returning from the Siberian Intervention of 1918-23), and the regicidal Bolshevik revolution, anti-Semitism became a component of the Japanese national political discourse. The Protocols and The International Jew have been available in Japanese since 1924, Mein Kampf since 1934. This anti-Semitic trilogy has come out in new editions about every ten years.

But see, that’s the thing; America *isn’t* one ethnicity or one culture, we’re a conglomeration of many. We integrate, while a xenophobic country like Japan wants to stay “ethnically pure.”

Did we have our own issues with that? Of course we did. Killing the Native Americans, slavery and the Jim Crow South, bigoted immigration policies that targeted Asians…we’re not angels. We don’t pretend to be. But we became better, and nobody had to drop a bomb on us and occupy us to force us to get better.

Good Solid B-Plus on November 30, 2012 at 4:03 PM

Forget it, Jake. It’s Chicomtown.

Christien on November 30, 2012 at 4:03 PM

If DC tries to cut my nose off, we might have to rumble.

Good Solid B-Plus on November 30, 2012 at 4:05 PM