The following comment was made about Neko Hiroshi:
Well, now that Neko is out of the race, he wants his Japanese citizenship back
However, the headline ends with 戻れる！？, the potential form of the verb, indicating that this is Sanspo’s speculation, not a definite statement by the man himself, as there are no quotes from him in it. (And he’s not out of the race yet.) Mr Arudou cannot resist a bit of feline abuse himself:
Love also how the article puts “gaikokujin” in “so-called quotes”, as if he’s a so-called foreigner. Lookit, if he gave up his Japanese citizenship, the fool is a foreigner, even in Japan. And this is no laughing matter.
I would have thought that most Japanese readers would be well aware that 「」 are used less as “scare quotes” and more as just italics.
In addition, Neko chan gets swiped by the Phnom Penh Post, via Post Seven, where he is dismissed with:
所詮は日本人です。
Will Mr Arudou condemn the Phnom Penh Post too?
funny! I really laughed out loud when I saw the……I wont give it away. I’m ordering it immediately.
If you enjoy books in the Malcolm Gladwell vain, I recently read Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, You probably heard of it or read it. He says, “That MFA’s are gaining ground on MBA’s as a preferred graduate degree for young people who want to make their mark in business. New york university has even begun offering a joint MBA/MFA degree. Creativity and innovation have always been important; what’s new is that they’re becoming more economically more valuable by the day.”
I hope he speaks the truth, I think self awareness and creativity go hand in hand, Steve Jobs seemed pretty existential and obviously creative.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1857885198
Dunning-Kruger, indeed:
- “those who label themselves as experts, more often than not… aren’t”
- tend to overestimate their own level of skill
- fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy
Methinks the Dunning-Kruger wiki page should have a picture of Christopher Johnson Asia Japan freelance journalist.
Don’t lose site of the ultimate irony of it though — if you think you’re smarter than them, you probably aren’t…
*sight.
@Laxman,
A couple of examples of ways people “suck up to people ..” in order to “get on in Japan” might be useful (as requested by Level3). Alternatively, any examples of “opting out in Japan” might help in understanding. I don’t think anyone is advocating putting up with crap, exactly.
@Shaun:
You mean – a white American from an affluent family.
I just tend to divide up pundits/assholes/loudmouths into 3 groups
1. Those who think they’re smart.
-People too stupid to realize how dumb they are. They tend to ridicule fancy book-learnin’
2. Those who pretend they’re smart.
-Deep down know they aren’t, and try to compensate by using big words like “paradigm” and “social construct” (often incorrectly).
3. Those who actually are smart.
-House M.D.
Speaking of experts, here is a three part documentary called The Trouble With Experts. The quality is very good for youtube. You guys can watch it at work to help kill the day off, he he.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-trouble-with-experts/
@Level3:
and only the last group ever admits they’re wrong.
I think social science in general is quite awkward. Despite being rooted in the scientific method, it’s strayed away the last hundred or so years, and now it looks very difference from science (for the better I say), but to the naked eye, somewhat similar to layman opinions.
I wonder if this makes it hard for some in the social sciences to differentiate what words are 専門語 (forgot the English, I’m an idiot), and what words are general knowledge. Likewise, because it looks similar to general opinions, people not thoroughly educated in the subject can pose as an expert without some people skipping a beat. These people then talk about Kuhnian paradigm shifts, and people go “wow, that sounds intelligent! he must be smart!”
Despite all that, I did my undergraduate in Sociology/Anthropology, and loved every second of it, especially social theory. I don’t remember everything clearly, so I can’t talk as an authority on anything really, but I can have fun conversations at dinner parties, which is what BA’s are really all about.
I think I stole that speel from someone, possibly VK. Apologies, it was subconscious.
@beneaththewheel: Technical terms is the word you’re looking for.
As I know sod all about social science, I just get baffled by the terminology that gets thrown about here and Debito.org…
@Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo): When you lot talk about computers and whatever you call the scurrying homonculi that make the Interwebs work, I feel much the same way.
@beneaththewheel:
I don’t think it’s a matter of genuine social science “straying” away from science. It almost goes without saying that we need to use different methods to get and analyse useful and usable data out of human beings compared to physical objects.
The problem is that a lot of people don’t appreciate (or care) about this, and so jump in thinking it’s always easy. Data becomes a propaganda tool: it doesn’t matter if the numbers you produce are good or bad, so long as you can fit them into a narrative and make yourself look sciencey. A bigger problem is that this can extend even into universities.
It’s the same way that people use technical terms as a gloss. It’s like a woo merchant using the term “quantum” (Such as “quantum healing” or “quantum physics will explain consciousness”). Or how herbalists always seem to look like apothecaries from children’s stories. It’s part of the sale. (People citing Kuhn for “paradigm shift” when they mean “a change in opinion” is one of my sad, tedious, pet peeves.)
Have you ever heard of the Sokal hoax?
@VK:
The Sokal hoax just was a blatant demonstration of the reason people like debito and Christopher Johnson will manage to get published somewhere no matter what bull they write, as long as it fits the biases of the anti-establishment, white-guilt crowd.
If “oppression” in Japan weren’t so laughably trivial compared to almost any other place in the world, they would probably get more attention.
@Level3:
white-guilt crowd
I’ve been thinking about this recently, although probably not in the way you meant here. It seems that some people have taken their history lessons in the wrong way. For them, racists, oppressors and general baddies are other people that our history books tell us we defeated. They are inhuman, we are human. All our racist history is in the past, and we have grown up. These people go around the world like evangelicals, presuming before they touch down that “of course, this country is afflicted with racism”.
It’s how we get surveys asking if we think that deep in their hearts, a certain proportion of this or that ethnic group is carrying an ineffable hatred of others. It’s surreal.
anti-establishment
This used to be the province of the far left, and generally they had reasons for it, based on often sophisticated views of how capitalism determines the shape of the establishment and the values of the society. One may not have agreed with them, but they’d thought about it – and often had interesting things to say. Now a knee-jerk “you can’t trust THEM” (politicians or scientists) has infected people right across the spectrum. It’s indescribably dull, pointless and annoying. It stifles change and improvement. It’s really fucking up the environment.
And if you make THEM and THEIR subjects non-white, well, it all goes a bit mental.
@VK:
And combine the two points, perhaps that’s why some go a bit mental in Japan, non-white people being in control of the establishment, even the ones pulling the strings aren’t white?! OMFG! Must be savages!
Yet when white people take over a darker-hued country with backwards ways through force and install puppets and bring schools, womens rights, and Coca-Cola, that is also savage and must be protested!
But perhaps we analyze too much at least as far as the Japan-bashing blogsphere goes. They’re just people who FAILed in Japan in one way or another and blame the entire culture – yet that loops right back to the points about latent racism, or at the very least being closed-minded.
@Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo): @beneaththewheel:
“Jargon”.
“Now a knee-jerk “you can’t trust THEM” (politicians or scientists) has infected people right across the spectrum.”
This has been around for a while hasn’t it? John Birch and all.
Is it just me, or is debito.org becoming more and more trollish as of late?
Trying to follow the site’s logic is really proving to be impossible:
- Japan isn’t allowing in enough immigrants; BAD!
- Japan institutes a point system to bring in more foreigners with specialized training; BAD!
- Specialists aren’t lining up to enter Japan; HA!
- Point system is too strict, making it useless; BAD!
- A clear and transparent point system is actually making immigration into Japan much harder; BAD!
- The point system doesn’t put enough emphasis on learning Japanese; BAD!
- Even if foreigners are allowed in using this new point system, it still doesn’t guarantee that they will be fully assimilated into Japan; BAD!
So apparently Japan is racist for not letting in immigrants. It is also racist for letting in immigrants. It is also racist for not emphasizing learning of the Japanese language. It is also racist for placing too much importance on the Japanese language via the nursing tests.
Also, doing a Google search for 褥瘡 gives us a wikipedia link first:
褥瘡（じょくそう、英: Bedsore, Pressure sore, Pressure ulcer、羅: Decubitus ulcer）は、臨床的には、患者が長期にわたり同じ体勢で寝たきり等になった場合、体と支持面（多くはベッド）との接触局所で血行が不全となって、周辺組織に壊死を起こすものをいう …
I really do wish Debito would stop using the word “vernacular.” It is another one of these words that has never really meant what he thinks it means, that is, the national language of the country he happens to (or claims to) live in at the moment. Most linguists seem to think it is rather insulting and prefer terms like “dialect” these days.
In Debito’s case it is doubly insulting because Japanese is the national language. That means it is precisely the opposite of the highly localized form of speech that the term vernacular entails. Sure, a vernacular (like Dante’s florentine dialect) can replace the lingua franca (in this case Latin) to become the national language (Italian). But then it ceases to be vernacular. It’s as if Debito’s implying that Japanese is a small, highly localized, unimportant dialect in a larger world of English.
But we all know that this is not his intention, of course.
@George:
I think perhaps everything is treated linearly. Today’s post is today’s post, not part of a bigger picture, and each story is filtered through the same old lens of confirmation bias.
Thus, the consistency is only that “Japan is unfriendly toward foreigners,” and the contradictions are irrelevant to the theme.
I suppose it could also be argued that the last two posts don’t contradict because they’re governing two very different sets of potential immigrants in different ways and failing for different reasons.
By the way, does anyone know anything about the
?
@George:
All these conflicting statements are very stressful, I think I’m developing a Debitoitus ulcer
I don’t think anyone is saying that what is being implemented by the government is perfect, or even good for that matter (someone even pointed out that it is still in draft form). However, a little consistency on that site would surely make the debate more productive.
For example, the specialized foreigners and the nurse program should really be considered hand-in-hand because nurses *are* specialized foreigners. They may not make enough money in their respective countries to qualify for that specific point value, but the other qualifications seem pretty applicable. There is so much potential to create a robust immigration structure, but Debito.org is all but ignoring that fact.
I think I’m just getting tired of the fact that the only reason debito.org exists at this point is to say that Japanese people are all racists and can go fuck themselves. That’s all I’m getting from the posts, and the comments on his articles aren’t doing much to persuade otherwise.
@The Chrysanthemum Sniffer:
For what it’s worth, the Japan Times has (or had) a section called “from the vernacular press” which is an article from yomiuri or asahi usually, so they use it the same way debito does.
I personally never really knew what the word meant, but kind of assumed Debito was using it right. The more you know.
@George: And any “NJ” who don’t conform to the party line are also welcome to a
@beneaththewheel:
According to Google (
):
Noun: The language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region.
Adjective: (of language) Spoken as one’s mother tongue; not learned or imposed as a second language.
So as an adjective, its usage would appear to be correct in that case.
@iago: And so, correct in the debito.org posting as well…
@The Chrysanthemum Sniffer:
It’s a fair point to raise JBS – the radical/far right in America also has a history of being anti-establishment. But no matter how silly, they had a theory to support why they were anti-establishment (communist infiltration), and they were not mainstream at all. My point is that this has now become a fashionable stance right into the mainstream. Trust in public institutions has measurably declined, belief in conspiracy theories has blossomed, and various anti-science movements flourish, but much of this for no particular expressed reason except a trendy generalised suspicion.
“Critical thinking” as promoted by a lot of people is actually an invitation to paranoia.
@George:
It’s not that hard.
The Prime Directive of debito land is
Everything the Japanese government does is wrong.
If it does something “right”, then it’s not doing it enough, not doing it for the correct “pure” reason, or doing it with some ulterior motive – therefore it is still “wrong”.
Easy.
This is all getting pretty pointless guys. Find something better to do with your time.
Yes, Master.
@Laxman Sivaramakrishnan:
There’s no need to go shy. You’re a principled person as (basically) the rest of us are. You know yourself that one can’t say all the things you’ve said about Japan without giving details and substantiation. Anonymise all you like: if we’re really in danger of being done over here by what you call “the master race” , it’s your duty to explain how it happens.
@Laxman Sivaramakrishnan: Go on, post that to Debito.org where, as others have pointed out, it’s basically turning into Japan Today with an even worse moderator.
Oh, Lord. Japan Today! Now that’s a really scary place.
@iago: Dictionary definitions don’t always carry the nuanced meanings of particular words. “Vernacular” usually refers to a subset of language in a broader linguistic family. So, for example, Australian English, although a national way of speaking, might be described as a vernacular because it is a subset of English (just as Italian grew out of “vulgar Latin”). Standard Japanese is not a subset of another language. It is the lingua franca (that is, the opposite of a vernacular) in Japan. The term “vernacular” is also often used when there are several options for communication, as is the case in only one of which is the indigenous or “national” language. Even then it is a problem in the case of nations like Singapore, where there are several options as to what is considered native to the country. In any case, those options don’t exist in Japan. However, I think Debito’s use of it simply reflects his unconscious colonial mentality. As for the Japan Times, it has been a long time since I have given a fuck what I read in that paper.
“…hearty “fuck you” with two fingers raised back atcha.”
Note, please, that this witty riposte came off the back of an entirely reasonable comment, and that it was part of a longer diatribe where debito insists that he is *ahem* a native speaker of Japanese, and is therefore accepted by many Japanese as one of their own, an assertion, one would think, that undercuts the motivation for most of his on-line activities.
Sorry to go on about this, but it is clear that Debito sees standard Japanese as both a lingua franca (when he wants to place his own fluency in the spotlight) and a vernacular language (when it is used by Japanese):
“even yourself portray a lack of “true fluency” in the lingua franca”
The two terms are normally considered binary opposites and, perhaps despite my comments above, neither really describes the use of standard Japanese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
The point is, whatever they actually might mean to linguists, it seems clear to me that Debito uses them (however unconsciously) as terms to either distance himself from the national discourse (in the case of vernacular), or portray himself as some sort of hero of internationalism (in the case of lingua franca). It is his usage that is significant here, and I don’t think he even notices he is doing it.
@The Chrysanthemum Sniffer:
thanks, so given the advice that dictionaries are not to be trusted, and referred instead to Wikipedia (
), it would seem that focusing on the word “vernacular” is also misleading, as it’s the compound term “Vernacular Press” that carries the meaning. A meaning that is rooted in colonialism (and, coincidentally, proposed by Robert Bulwer-Lytton, son of Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton from whom we get the Bulwer–Lytton Fiction Contest which strives to identify the worst possible opening line for the worst possible novel; what a small world… :twisted:).
So, long story short, you’re probably right if we focus on the term rather than the words, and JT is probably using the term ironically (at best), and it doesn’t really mean what many people think it means…
“Trust in public institutions has measurably declined, belief in conspiracy theories has blossomed, and various anti-science movements flourish, but much of this for no particular expressed reason except a trendy generalised suspicion.
Critical thinking” as promoted by a lot of people is actually an invitation to paranoia.”
Not all anti-government activists are nutters. Classical liberalism (libertarianism as it is called in US) favors limiting government powers as much as possible.
It is not necessarily an “invitation to paranoia” to insist that governments should be constrained and their only role should be to protect natural rights (property, freedom of exchange and expression, security…).
Therefore it is legitimate to criticize government intervention. Japan policies, with decades of Keynesian interventionism, can and must be criticized.
The Fukushima debacle showed the nefarious influence of crony capitalism and government collusion with “private” companies. Japanese people (included my wife and her colleagues) started distrusting their government policies, it doesn’t make them natters.
@Piglet:
I had a professor last term who recently wrote a book with the thesis that it wasn’t the Keysenian policies that gave Japan two lost decades, but there abrupt stop to them in 98. Furthermore, with those Keysenian policies, Japan would’ve been a lot worse. He taught a great class, and hopefully the book is on store shelves soon. I’ll post a link when it is.
@The Chrysanthemum Sniffer:
Debito sees standard Japanese as both a lingua franca (when he wants to place his own fluency in the spotlight) and a vernacular language (when it is used by Japanese)
I can’t speak for Debito’s motivations, but it’s basically true that Japanese (“Common Japanese”, the Tokyo-centered language taught in schools, 共通語) can fill both of these roles at the same time.
For a newspaper with pretensions of having an international audience, their English-language editions are for the larger world and that world’s expatriates in Japan, and their Japanese-language originals are in the “vernacular” language of Japan’s common people.
Within Japan, “Common Japanese” (CJ) usually serves as the lingua franca when someone from one part of Japan talks with someone from another part. These differences are becoming less distinct as the Ministry of Education and NHK television slowly eliminate Japan’s wonderful linguistic variety, but it’s still true.
It’s particularly true when people are coming from not just different dialects, but different languages: about 100 years ago, two people from, say, Miyako and Ishigaki islands might have used Shuri Okinawan (the big Okinawan island; Naha today) to communicate; today, they’d use CJ. Same for Ainu speakers up north (and today they probably use CJ even in their own homes).
And it’s of course true when immigrants from various countries communicate: if Japanese (or whatever variety of Japanese is spoken where they live) is the language they have in common, Japanese is their lingua franca as well as being the vernacular. (For expatriates who may not have learned any Japanese before arriving, English is probably a better lingua franca.)
I don’t think that colonialism has any place in the discussion of these words and how they’re used by either people or the press.
@Piglet:
Given that property rights libertarianism is the basic position of a Wall Street Journal Editorial, I would hardly call it anti-establishment. It’s one, older part of the establishment against another, newer part. It’s a theory of how to do things better, not a theory of why the government and other institutions will suppress truth and actively seek to undermine the wellbeing of the population.
What I’m talking about is not big government versus small government. It has nothing to do with whether Keynesianism is a good idea. It’s about empty-headed cynicism that soon turns into paranoia. Regarding Fukushima: a good example is how some people reacted to the radiation readings for large population centres. It’s one thing to worry if the government is covering up radiation in Tokyo, it’s quite another to presume it’s covering up even though legions of private individuals with Geiger counters also found levels were not high.
Regarding TEPCO: has the problem been a dysfunctional relationship between government and business, or are all government enterprises bound for failure AND any enterprise involving a private company bound to endanger society? The former position is not at all mad. The latter is a paranoia that refuses to engage with how to make things better. It’s verging on Alex Jones territory, and with regard to Japan, it’s Debito and JapanToday territory. No matter what happens, for these people it’s evidence of a conspiracy against the population and against foreigners.
It’s not just about government, but other public institutions, such as science and medicine. You see it in climate change denial, you see it in anti-vaccination campaigns and unfortunately in the environmental movement.
There have always been conspiracy theorists and woo merchants, but recently otherwise normal and responsible individuals have been joining in. There were members of congress who were birthers, for pity’s sake.
If things had been like this 40 years ago, there would have been people on mainstream TV calling for a congressional hearing into whether the moon landings were a hoax.
As a late update to this discussion, Neko will be running in the Olympics for Cambodia after all.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/olympic/2012/news/track/marathon/1/20120325-OYT1T00611.htm
@sublight: Congratulations to him! I should also post an update that more Indonesian nurses passed their exams this year.
And, as it happens, no he won’t:
http://www.asahi.com/sports/intro/TKY201205090583.html?ref=fbox
Some international committee has decided that he hasn’t been a Cambodian long enough to qualify. This is apparently based on a rule that only took effect this year.