Stop having so much fun, you anime-watching, sashimi-gobbling, kanji-studying poseurs

[rachelmanija]

Um... interesting rant by a woman whose journal I've been reading because she's a good writer and she lives in Japan. On the basis of this post, she clearly would completely despise me. (I'm amused to see a comment or two on her journal by people who apparently completely missed her point.)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/yuki_onna/133593.html

I'm not going to go pick a fight with her on her journal because, unlike my most recent online fight, she's citing opinions as opinions rather than facts, which is her right; and it's certainly not uncommon for Westerners to move to Japan and absolutely hate it, especially if they never wanted to go there in the first place, and I've never lived there at all.

(It does slightly crack me up that she's going off on Americans who use Japanese when her journal is called Yuki Onna-- "Snow Woman.")

However, to get into a larger issue which she raises, what exactly is so bad about people from one culture being interested in another country's culture?

The usual arguments are that if another culture is appealing, the fan is by definition romanticising it, and would be terribly disillusioned if they ever took their blinkers off. There's no way to answer this charge: if you're having a good time in Japan or India or America, you can't possibly be seeing the country as it is, because if you did, you would hate it. Or at least not be so damned embarrassingly enthusiastic.

(I'm going to focus here on Japan, India, and America, since those are the only countries I know anything about, and since India-America and Japan-America both have two-way love-hate relationships going on between their citizens.)

There is no room in that argument for sincere enjoyment. If you're Japanese and you enjoy sashimi, that's OK; if you're American, you're only pretending you like it because of your fetishization of all things Japanese. If you're American and you like Elvis, that's only natural; if you're Japanese and you do, you're betraying your heritage in order to falsely suck up to the dominant culture.

Now, I was raised by an American woman who thought anything Indian was wonderful and anything Western was terrible, so I can see why people get frustrated with that sort of attitude. But that's going way beyond the kind of harmless fandom and cultural appreciation which is what's really being criticised, and which I have to defend.

It seems to me that America as a whole is far too insular-- a charge which could be applied to Japan and India as well. I think all three countries need more cross-cultural fans, not less; and if, like the Hiroshima math professor who earnestly informed me that he wanted to move to America because the academic infighting and vicious battles for tenure in Japan were getting him down, some of them are headed for painfully disillusioning experiences, anyone who thinks any country is perfect needs a little disillusionment anyway.

If you're female and want to have a normal career, you'd be best off in a big city in the US; but if you want to hold public office at a high level, you just might have a better shot in India. And it's probably better to be a career-minded Japanese woman in the US than in Japan, but the US is a pretty lousy place for any young black man who doesn't come in with a degree and a green card and a bucket full of cash.

I'm not trying to excuse any country's sins by saying that they all have problems, only saying that it's unfair to say, "How dare you be fond of this evil country?" I am well aware that all three countries I feel the most connected to are right-wing and prejudiced and have done terrible, inexcusable things to their own population and to other countries. But I'm just not into Danish TV or Finnish cuisine or the handicrafts of Tibet. My politics are my politics, and my enthusiasms are my enthusiasms. I reserve the right to have a blast at a nightclub in Berlin and make out with any cute German guys who might catch my eye, and not feel that I'm betraying my people.

What I like best about LA is that, at its best, it's an example of what I love best about America: that it's a place where a Jewish woman who grew up in India can go downtown to have dim sum with six friends, all of different nationalities, and there run into another couple we all know, an Iraqi man and his Okinawan wife and their adorable little son, and reflect that LA leads America in interracial marriages.

And when all their children grow up, I hope that whatever culture interests them, whether it's one of the ones they grew up with or something else entirely that intrigues them solely because it's so different from the Korean/German/American/Thai heritage they're familiar with, that they go ahead and buy its DVDs and study its language and save up their plane fare for a visit. And that if anyone tries to make them feel guilty about it, they shrug or write an essay, then load some CD in a language they barely understand. And dance.

Comments

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

It's the misuse part that gets me.
I used to hang out with a couple of guys who loved Japan (and either didn't care for or really disliked anime), and specifically Japanese as a language. One of them was even double majoring in it (and comp sci, I believe). SO they'd wander around and jabber at each other in as much Japanese as they knew.
And then they'd say it to me.
After a while, I started responding in Latin, just to make the point. (Er, the point being that people who don't know the language don't really want to be talked at in it.)
Since they both went out of their way to study the language and use it properly, I see nothing wrong with this one. On the other hand, there are an wful lot of fangirl twits running around who, I'm told, do grossly misuse the handful of words they think they know. That's offensive stupidity in my book.
Also, most of the English loan-words I know that made their way into Japanese are technical terms. I doubt anyone would have a problem with that.
Of course, there might be hoards of raving Japanese fan-schoolgirls running around saying "Cold!" when they mean "Cool!" That, too, would be offensive stupidity. But, of course, Japan tends to educate its children more effectively, and, as I understand it, many schoolkids actually get decent instruction in English, which ought to cut down on that a bit.

Um, I'm not sure I made any clear point there. Oh well.

And yes, PLEASE write more Can't Sleep.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I don't find personally find it offensively stupid if people misuse words. Hey, at least they're trying, and English and Japanese are notoriously difficult languages. The worst that happens is they look silly. I'm sure I sounded like a total goof in Japan. At one point I informed someone that I had taken the rat to Kyoto. She just about died laughing before explaining, "Nozomi: train. Nezumi: mouse ."

I think the use of loan words in Japan goes a lot farther than technical terms. They just give them Japanese pronunciations so it takes a while to notice that it's actually an English word, or word from another non-Japanese language, like "pan" for bread or "marron" for chestnut in the context of pastry.

Off the top of my head (and I won't try to replicate the actual pronunciation-- it's much easier to decipher if you hear it spoken than if I were to try to write koohii or biiru): coffee, beer, milk, credit card, hot, hotel, jacket, OK, radio, and a slew of incomprehensible English slogans on T-shirts. And many more. Loan words are so prevalent that there's an entire alphabet, katakana, specifically to write them in.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I find a lot of things offensively stupid. Misusing words in any language bugs the snot out of me (that's why I ended up as copy editor at GMR), especially when it's not that hard to just check the meaning of them. (And yes, I get really annoyed with myself when I do it, too.)
I do know that I'm in the minority. I'm okay with that. I don't expect anyone else to agree with me.
Fairly obviously, Japanese pop culture isn't something to which I've paid much attention. I have no clue. And since Telophase just elaborated on this point, I'll go respond further to her.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

*pleased* I wondered when I heard "pan" for "bread" in The Elephant Vanishes whether it was a French loan-word or just coincidence.

I've noticed from anime subs that the average Japanese person knows a lot more English than I know Japanese -- but they don't always know all the English they *think* they know. Or, if they can communicate with each other but boggle me, I suppose it's technically a new dialect, which is just nifty.

[oyceter]

I think "pan" for "bread" came from Portuguese (of all languages!)... apparently during the Portuguese missionaries in Japan around the 1500s.

I just about fell off my chair when Sorata said "sweet lover" in a sort of Japanized English in X. But hey! The propensity to directly transliterate English and other words into Japanese was a huge help when I was writing my thesis -- I could just sound out words like "heteronormative" and "sexuality."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My French teacher told a story about her first day in France, how she was trying to buy a gift for her host mother. This was the early- or mid-1960s, so a certain class of women still wore gloves on a semi-regular basis. So she went into a department store to buy gloves for a gift, and she kept saying, "pour un gateau, pour un gateau." And the clerk kept looking confused and alarmed. Un gateau is a cake. Un cadeau is a gift.

Mmmmmm, glove cake.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen, most of the English loan words and phrases used in Japan are actually advertising slogans, and used in ways that are inappropriate for English, but appropriate for the Japanese. I wish I could remember the details, but I read an essay some time ago about this, where the author dissected the T-shirt slogan "Let's Sex!" which is completely nonsensical in English, but ends up having a cultural meaning in Japan (on the order of teh advertising slogan that it is, of course).

And as far as English instruction in Japan goes, again from what I understand, it's not that kids learn English for six years in shcool, it's that English is taught at them and some of it sticks, but not that much.

I don't mind the mis/use of Japanese loan words by fangirls because that's part of the nature of language. They're *not* speaking Japanese, and they have no /intention/ of speaking Japanese. They're speaking in a lingo that's current among their crowd. If a miracle happened and it caught on among the general population, we'd be saying "Kawaii!" within a generation. Of course, I'm discounting fanfic that misuses Japanese words for Japanese characters here -- in *that* case it's sloppy writing and a lack of research. But when I'm doing art at a con and I hold up a picture of Gojyo from Saiyuki and the four fangirls in front of me squee "KAWAIIII!!!!!" (true story - I was illustrating the power of bishounen to a friend and the fangirls behaved as predicted), they're misusing the original word, I think, which has connotations of cutesy-cute, not handsome-cute, but ... they're not speaking Japanese, and they're not intending to.

If any of that made sense.

Re: Can't Sleep -- thanks. :D

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

All of what you say makes perfects sense. However, as I said to Rachel above, I get really, really snotty about words, and I know that it's just me, and I'm okay with that. Assuming I knew what Japanese words the catgirls were misusing, and knew exactly how and why they were misusing them, I would not castigate them. If I thought that they might listen, I might, very calmly and politely, correct them, but more likely, I would snark, very quietly, to my friends.
So I see your point, and recognize its validity, but I will not hold that opinion myself.
Dropping loan-words into the languages that borrowed them and using them as the grammar of the new language demands, rather than the grammar of the original language demands, I will give on a bit more; however, your example of 'Let's Sex!' falls into that category of things that bug the snot out of me.

I know I get very absolute about these sorts of things. In my defense, however, I don't hold that my opinions are true, just that they're my opinions and I have a right to hold them.

Yes, I am one of those people who got utterly incensed at Alanis Morrisette's song 'Ironic'.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just tend to be on the side that sees languages as ever-changing things, and I'm just fascinated with the process of change, and more willing to sit back and watch what they're doing, instead of trying to proscribe things. (I'm still stymied by the Great Vowel Shift in English and how it happened so fast.)

My opinion is also based in what I see as the reality of language shift and change: that trying to stop language change is about as effective as nailing Jell-O to the ceiling. I understand the necessity for nailing things down in written and formal usage, especially as the globalization that this whole discussion started being about continues, because we need to have some sort of agreement on words and their meaning in order to communicate, but as far as informal usage goes, I don't see the point in caring.

(er - I'm with you on the seeing-your-point-but-not-sharing-it thing, if it's not clear.)

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

I acknowledge that language changes, and don't even see this as a bad thing. I do, however, object to it changing due to ignorance and stupidity. I'd rather just educate people. I know it's a lost cause, though.
I'm done.

(It was clear, but thanks.)

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not done, because I finally found this:
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp01192004.shtml (http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp01192004.shtml)
THAT sort of misuse is offensive stupidity.