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

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

I believe that was the point I was trying to make. That most "japanophiles" and you must admit that anime is a huge subset of that, don't actually live here or have first-hand knowledge of the culture. The number of people interested in Japan because of the medieval culture (not derived from anime, which takes place within that culture, often) is much smaller than the hentai and pocky crowd. That's the way it always is, history is for geeks. I'm a geek. But I'm a classics geek, so this is very strange water for me.

My husband loves zen philosophy and medieval Japanese culture. That's why we're here. I certainly was not insulting that.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

But by using the blanket term "Japanophile" in your criticism, you lump your husband in with the "hentai and pocky crowd" you so despise. And, by the by, I've met rather more people who are interested in Japanese culture, history, and/or religion than raving catgirls. Yes, I know people who like anime and pocky, but they're not raving idiots, and they don't romanticize Japan especially, either.
You make your point very poorly, and come off sounding like someone who met 3 annoying catgirls somewhere and that was your entire experience of Japanophiles.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

You know, I wasn't actually trying to construct a detailed argument, I was just answering a question. The fact that you feel the need to be so rude in your response to something that was in no way addressed to you reflects more poorly on you than me. You have your idea of japanophilia, I have mine. I may be wrong, but don't assume you have any idea what I really think because you construed a paragraph as a rant and decided that that was the extent of my opinion and knowledge on the subject. I didn't mention catgirls at all, please don't tell me what I mean to say.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to be rude, any more than you did, although you sounded very rude indeed. Nor did I make any assumptions about what you think. What I said was how you sounded, how your comments read. Since, from your comments here, you obviously feel that many people mistook your meaning, perhaps it had something to do with the way you said it. I thought I'd let you know how you came across, and maybe give you some insight into why so many people had such a strong reaction to your entry.
Furthermore, your understanding of the word "Japanophile" is based on connotation, while I am using the denotation of the word. When writing for a general audience, one should be aware of denotation (which is to say, the definition) of the word, not merely one's personal connotations. When one uses one's connotative meaning in writing that goes to a general audience, one is often misunderstood unless one goes to some lengths to impress that connotation upon the audience. Since you didn't, it's unsurprising that many of us mistook your meaning.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Yet none of you even considered asking me personally.

You should know that in any fandom, the crazies are louder than the normal, positive folks. I don't think I should be lambasted for mocking the stranger parts of japanophilia, just because you don't identify with them. It would be impossible for me to delineate every single iteration of the phenomena and keep the brevity of my statement. I said "most" and "likely" I did not in any way include all of the japanophiles in my statement. However, your interpretation of a casual answer as "writing for the general public" and a "rant" makes what I said sound calculated and deliberately obtuse. If I wanted to write an essay about japanophiles, I would have. Trying to keep it to a paragraph, I used the generalization. It's really not a crime, and if you can't admit that there is a population of very strange people in the japanophile community, there isn't any common ground for us.

I live here. One might think that meant I had a right to comment on what I observe. I guess not.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't ask you personally. The reason I didn't is that, from the tone of your entry, you sounded like someone who would fly off the handle. You did. Thank you for proving me right.
I didn't call what you wrote a "rant"; that was someone else. But when you write on a public site like LJ, you are writing where the general public can look at it, at the very least. You shouldn't be surprised when they do.
When you use a blanket term, it reads as if you are talking about everyone who falls into that category, whatever you might mean by it. That's all I'm trying to point out to you. Really, if you wonder why so many people reacted negatively to what you wrote, maybe you should actually look at your words. You're a published author, you say; you ought to know how much effect the written word can have, even the casually written word.
No one said you have no right to comment on what you observe. Some of us are puzzled by, or disagree with, your opinions, but that's our right.
Since you seem determined to take offense at anything I say no matter what, I'll stop here. If I had more sense, I wouldn't write this. Obviously, I don't.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

The personal attacks I found here were completely inappropriate. I am not flying off of anything--if any of you had brought this up with me, I would have been happy to talk about it. As it stands, this smacks of griping behind someone's back. I'm sorry that you felt you were not represented by what I said, and I wish you could simply have said that to me and tried to engage in a debate instead of assuming all manner of things and grousing about it elsewhere. That's all I'm trying to say.

I'm well aware that what I write is public. I simply expect people to come to me when they disagree, so that we can clear up the misunderstanding and move on, instead of congregating to bash me where I might never have seen it. That's why comments exist.

I apologize that I was not able to address every aspect of japanophilia. I don't seem to be able to express that it really isn't all that big a deal, either.

[jgreywolf.livejournal.com]

If it wasnt that big a deal, you would not have bothered to take the time to write your original post, nor would you have responded to all of these posts.