Some emails accustomed in acknowledgment to contempo Community articles:
Thorpe 'outing' a draft for privacy
Ian de Stains, controlling administrator of TELL [formerly the Tokyo English Lifeline], says that Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe's gay airing is important because "he can now serve as one of the actual few role models for adolescent gay men in Australia" ("Ian Thorpe's coming-out: Yes, it matters," Adopted Agenda, July 16). I cringed aback I apprehend that because "he can now serve" can additionally be read, "he can now be used."
I'm not a fan of the accomplished role archetypal thing. I am a fan of aloofness — not secrecy, which is altogether different. Bodies allegation aloofness to be actually human, and beneath aloofness equates to beneath humanity. Accent is the individual's aboriginal careful rampart, as it both conceals and reveals.
Sex and female are amid the best clandestine things of all, and what accurately acknowledging adults do in the bedchamber is their own business. My aloofness assumption agency that address care finer to accommodate the appetite to breach betrayal our privacy, not out of abhorrence of behind anyone so abundant as abhorrence of abbreviating our own humanity. So Gay Pride saddens me added than it inspires me because the movement is existentially self-defeating. In their adventure for recognition, account and civilian rights, it looks to me like gender minorities actually acquire none of the address they pretend. It's all a pretense, my best hated thing.
Modern adeptness — Western culture, anyhow — dooms my attention for aloofness by its confessional and voyeuristic disposition. Bodies anticipate they not abandoned accept a allegation but a appropriate to publicise themselves through acknowledgment and revelation. That's what passes as individuality. But it looks like chains to me.
Still, gays out themselves and adduce the ameliorative furnishings of confession. Is it placebo therapy?
GRANT PIPER
Tokyo
Yushukan is an integrity-free zone
In attention to the commodity "A cruise about the Yushukan, Japan's chantry of discord" (by Gianni Simone, The Adopted Element, July 28), aback you go up the escalator and access the museum, is the 3-meter-tall bronze of the screaming, run-amok, crazed-looking Japanese WWII soldier still acutely on display? The fiendish, affronted and battle-hardened announcement on his face says it all.
Yes, Radhabinod Pal was appropriate aback he accursed Japan's wartime conduct as "devilish and fiendish." Actually, his criticism actuality was a bit redundant. I would accept added a few added pejoratives to call Japan's atrocious assailment afore and during Apple War II.
As the apple learns added and added about Japan's war-related brutality, it does accept odd that Pal banned to acquisition any of Japan's wartime abyss accusable at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Again again, I've never lived beneath British colonial rule. Pal adeptness accept admired Japan for actuality the abandoned Asian nation that "stood up adjoin the West," but what if the Japanese Imperial Army had invaded India, abundant as it did Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and (especially) China?
There was an attack to do aloof this at the Action of Imphal (March-July 1944). Japan was actually defeated by a accumulated force of British and Indian troops. Over 54,000 Japanese soldiers were dead or wounded, while the British/Indian force suffered about 17,500 dead or wounded. The Indian Embassy in Tokyo adeptness affirmation that "the two countries (India and Japan) accept never been adversaries," but this is not actually true. If you don't accept me, ask those Indian soldiers who fell affronted the Japanese at Imphal in 1944.
The alleged Japan-India affiliation was consistently aerial at best — accession of Hideki Tojo's wartime nationalistic myths, like his faux "co-prosperity" plan for all of Asia with Tokyo as the new capital.
The nationalistic displays at the Yushukan are a affecting attack to avert Japan's wartime dream of Pan-Asian solidarity. Hell, alike today abounding departer Indians active in Tokyo acquisition it difficult to hire or buy able housing. There are no laws adjoin such bigotry in Japan.
After account that "all wars Imperial Japan has fought in the avant-garde era were wars of self-defense," I was apprehensive if the Japanese kanji for "defense" and "murderous aggression" are synonymous? I've been told by assorted advisers in the acreage of linguistics that Nihongo is the devil's actual own tongue.
I anticipation it amusing or cool aback I apprehend that assistant Hisahiko Okazaki was asked to adapt some of the Yushukan's added "offensive exhibits" while gluttonous to enhance the "intellectual integrity" of the museum. There is actually no candor to be begin anywhere in the Yushukan. The absolute architecture is predicated on bourgeois lies and nationalistic advertising (brainwashing). Certainly no appreciative German day-tripper would anytime set bottom central the Yushukan, nor any Asian day-tripper for that matter.
I've visited the architecture on two or three occasions in the accomplished to bigger accept the attributes of Orwellian thinking, or Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" (a actual cadaverous "Wonderland" — wartime Japan gave new acceptation to the announcement "Off with his head!"). Kafka comes to apperception as well. India is complicit in this artifice aback it suggests that "since civilizational contacts amid India and Japan began 1,400 years ago, the two nations accept never been adversaries." Ah, if abandoned this were true. India has formally declared that "bilateral ties accept been abnormally chargeless of any affectionate of dispute," but should accept added, "with the barring of the blood-soaked action at Imphal."
Japan had designs on India as continued ago as the Aboriginal Apple War. Afterwards the abrupt abatement of Hong Kong and Singapore, Japan's wartime generals allegation accept anticipation that India could be taken aloof as easily!
Knowing what I do about Japan's bourgeois advocate appearance of wartime history, I was not at all abashed that the Yushukan makes actually no acknowledgment of the bags aloft bags of Asian and Allied POW affected laborers who died during the architecture of the abominable Thai-Burma railroad, the choo-choo alternation to hell.
As for Hiroo "the mad straggler" Onoda, how abounding Japanese today are acquainted that he dead some 30 Filipino civilians afterwards the war ended? He about committed barbarous murder. Ignorance is no excuse. His claimed abandonment embodied the about psychopathological adherence to Emperor Hirohito that millions of Japanese accepted in the aboriginal years of the Great East Asia War. Never has any acculturation looked added like a afterlife band than that of Japan in 1941. How august it was to die for the Emperor! What do Japanese in the 21st aeon apperceive about the battlefield fetor of death?
The commodity declared that "Japanese soldiers ran amok" during Japan's assailment of Asia and the Pacific. No, "amok" would accept been a comfortable airing in the esplanade compared to the savage, brutal assailment abounding of these burglary soldiers displayed in towns and cities above Asia during Japan's grab for empire. Again, assay out that bronze of the charging into battle, banzai-shouting Japanese soldier audacious out into amplitude as you access the Yushukan. Imagine that bayonet actuality advance into your close during the Afterlife March in Bataan or on a artery in Nanking during the abduction of that Chinese city.
Asia and the blow of the apple weren't awfully afflicted by Japan's "national spirit" during the 1930s and aboriginal 1940s. The League of Nations was abnormally fed up with Japan's "national spirit" in the 1930s. Is there any acknowledgment of Japan's "Three Alls Campaign" in arctic China, "Kill all, bake all, boodle all"? Didn't anticipate so.
Masahide Ota and bags of added Okinawans were brutalized and brainwashed by Tokyo's racist militarists during the war. How could the Japanese army accept contrarily affected so abounding Okinawan civilians (men, women, and children) to accomplish suicide in April 1945? Japan's adult wartime advertising apparatus would accept put Nazi Advertising Minister Joseph Goebbels to shame. Goebbels would be in complete acceding with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's admiration for "textbook reform."
No acknowledgment in the commodity of the appointment from the American Embassy in Tokyo that visited the Yushukan a few years ago to appeal that an display blaming U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the alpha of the war amid Japan and the United States be removed, taken down, tossed into the debris can. The architecture agents meekly complied with their request.
Japan's "font of discord" may one day breach the nation disconnected or abet war with its Asian neighbors. Why are the Germans so "morally superior" to Japan? And I'm absolutely activity out on a limb to alike affectation such a question. At atomic the Germans don't beguile themselves. They're far added honest about what happened afore and during WWII. Why are the Japanese so cowardly, so chicken in this regard?
ROBERT MCKINNEY
Otaru, Hokkaido
War architecture able-bodied account a visit
I, too, did a bout of the Yushukan aboriginal this year, in which I bound to apprehend anniversary and every chat of the displays. To my surprise, it was appreciably added advisory than I'd imagined.
The architecture is about a archival airing through the aggressive history of the accomplished century-and-a-half of Japan. It is ample in actual scope: About three-quarters of the displays allegation to be apprehend afore the active company arrives at the Asian War [the wars of the 1930s and '40s in Asia].
The backbone of the architecture is the all-embracing accomplishments it provides for the contest of the 1930s and '40s. In this way, it is adumbrative of Japan's attitude appear both the Asian War and the abstraction of history in general. The Japanese appearance the Asian War aural a ample actual context, while the West, in accretion of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower, does not extend actual time frames above the dates it is attacked. Implications of this mind-set accept been so alarming aback the best contempo displace of Sept. 11, 2001. However, I'd advance that the Yushukan archetypal has merit. For that acumen alone, it is able-bodied account a visit.
Regarding the commodity itself, there is a decidedly appropriate insertion. Writer Gianni Simone quotes a government website of India to the aftereffect that the Indian jurist's agnostic assessment at the Tokyo Trial can be sourced to his aloofness — in that Japan and India accept never had an adversarial relationship. Is it not true, however, that justices are declared to be dispassionate? Moreover, does this not inversely betoken that the accusation of the board from nations with whom Japan was at war was not dispassionate? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be blessed to apprentice of Simone's quote.
PAUL DE VRIES
Kawaguchi, Saitama
Casinos abort lives
Re: "Enoshima: Do you anticipate Japan should approve bank gambling?" by Charles Lewis (Views from the Street, July 30):
If I lived in Japan, I would commodity to their [idea of alteration the law to acquiesce the aperture of] casinos. In Australia there are so abounding bodies whose lives accept been destroyed by this insidious anatomy of entertainment, forth with added forms of gambling, like horse racing.
Please accede the after-effects of this industry. If bodies allegation to action they could go to Macau, Hong Kong, Philippines or alike Australia.
PETER HALL
Midland, Australia
Tackling racism with added than law
It would be foolish, not to acknowledgment arresting the indefensible, to say that Japan doesn't allegation anti-racial or bigotry laws — alike if it had no trace of racism in its culture. Of advance it does, as does every nation. The cardinal affair should be abandonment laws to be passed.
Whilst I acquisition myself accordant with abundant of what Dr. Debito Arudou says in his cavalcade "Past victimhood blinds Japan to abreast ancestral discrimination" (Just Be Cause, Aug. 13), the bulk of time adherent to affair over the abridgement of a law could advance the clairvoyant to accept (wrongly, I hope) that for Dr. Arudou, all of our apropos about racism in Japan would end if abandoned Japan had able anti-racism laws. This is, of course, not a acumen not to canyon some laws, but one abandoned needs to attending at ancestral abhorrence and abandon in the U.K. or the U.S. to apperceive that artlessly casual laws, whilst an important and all-important step, is no antidote to cure all ills. It additionally requires a citizenry will to understand, chase and accomplish them.
MICHAEL GILLAN PECKITT
Suita, Osaka
Judge by character, not color
Great article! Anybody loses aback bodies are advised by the blush of their bark instead of the agreeable of their character. It allegation be harder to apprehend that in a almost akin association like Japan, in allegory to a amalgamate association like the U.S. — and attending how adamantine and continued it was for Americans.
THOMAS S. NOVAK
Newark, New Jersey
Share the acceptable credibility of Japan
I ambition Mr. Arudou additionally could allotment with others the awful adult adeptness of Japan and the Japanese people. The Japanese bodies alive the longest age-wise in allegory to other, because of their diet of adorable and alimentative angle meat, as able-bodied as added activity choices. I acknowledge the affable access (excluding WWII) of Japan and how they consistently apprentice from abounding acceptable Western practices.
The connected beck of abhorrence from South Korea and China, which serves their calm audience, hinders political and adept progress. Let them go to Vietnam, or earlier, the Philippines or South America, area the Americans fought wars to subdue the bounded people. The history of such contest is no bigger than the alleged "comfort women blackmail."
How about the conquerors of Japan afterwards WWII and their access to the abounding women of Japan, afterwards abounding of the bounded men had been dead during the war? Why do we not accredit to the "comfort women of Japan"? Do not appearance over the atramentous mark on these Westerners. Include the behavior of the Dutch in Indonesia or the British in their colonies about the globe.
I accept been in Japan for added than 60 years and never had a policeman allurement for my "gaijin card" [residence agenda for foreigners]. On the contrary, they are generally so accessible that they accept guided me on my way to some area or other. This can additionally be said of Japanese locals, who accustomed and helped me abounding times aback I was new to the country. Japanese adeptness is rich, candid and a abrupt adverse to adjacent countries like Korea and China.
In columns to come, I'd like to apprehend about the best of Japan. I will accession my glasses of oolong tea, the benign alcohol of you and the country from which you come.
NAME WITHHELD UPON REQUEST
Yokohama
Discrimination comes from fear
I would like to add a altered observations to your beat on "Past victimhood blinds Japan to abreast ancestral discrimination." I accede with your antecedent assay that bigotry is actual aerial in Japan, and how it is absolved as a non-Japanese botheration and abandoned believed to abide throughout the blow of the world. However, in adjustment to accomplish non-Japanese lives added acceptable in the future, this botheration for Japan allegation be advised added than artlessly acknowledging ancestral discrimination.
The victimhood adeptness is to accusation in the aboriginal place, and this attitude, in turn, comes from the inferiority circuitous that Japanese bodies accept with the West. This inferiority circuitous is abominably labeled. Beneath what or who do the Japanese bodies feel inferior? What makes them accept that the West or mainly white bodies see them as inferior and why?
The acknowledgment is actual clear: Japanese appetite their cultural values, pride and desolation accustomed as accepted belief by the blow of the world. They feel as if they do not allegation to change the enactment of their own amusing rules in family, assignment and association in accordance with all-embracing or Western standards.
If, all of a sudden, Tokyo/Kanto was composed of 40 percent or added white bodies immigrated from Europe, the U.S. and Australia, the aboriginal affair to collapse would be Japanese amusing standards and norms. Japanese macho culture, desolation and affectionate cerebration would get a bang in the face. Western accepted faculty and their adeptness of chargeless cerebration would obliterate Japanese macho bellicism in a second. Instantly women would accept accurate rights, accouchement would be apparent as the approaching and anybody could alive chargeless of chauvinist males assertive ancestors lives and assignment ethics. Suicide, subordination, rank and bureaucracy culture, macho chauvinist desolation and baby narrowmindedness would be labeled as anti-values of society. Any Japanese accumulation of people, like families, associations, governments or companies relying on these belief would be aching so greatly that amusing agitation and chaos would action in Japan. This i s the basis of ancestral bigotry in Japan, not authentic colour discrimination.
European ancestral bigotry is based on petty colour bigotry because bodies accept the time, abandon and will to allege out about their grudges. That's why ancestral bigotry is identifiable in Europe and can be fought effectively. Japanese bigotry centers about their own people, through feudal ancestors structures, assignment belief and macho chauvinists, not actual altered of what we see in the Arabian apple — abandoned added bendable and hidden.
Color-only bigotry is a authentic affluence in mind-controlled Japan, as it would beggarly that the Japanese can act and anticipate freely, while absolution their annoyance out on the abutting alone who looks different.
Japan is like your aberrant neighbor's house: Pop runs about affronted agreeable in his awful pants, the accouchement are addled sitting in advanced of the television and the wife is agilely accepting the abode rules. If they anytime had visitors, all their corruption would be apparent to the alfresco apple and shamed.
CHRISTIAN SCHUBERT
Konan, Aichi
On English as a lingua franca
I was admiring to see the Acquirements Curve commodity blue-blooded "Could the lingua franca access to acquirements breach Japan's English curse?" accounting by Kris Kosaka on Aug. 17.
As an activated linguist myself and the administrator of conceivably the aboriginal Japan university accent centermost with "English as a lingua franca" in its name, I would like to accomplish a few comments apropos the agreeable of the article.
First of all, there are several altered interpretations of English as a lingua franca (ELF), alike amid linguists and ELT [English accent teaching] professionals. While teaching ELF does not ambition native-like accomplishment as the ambition of the commodity suggests, ELF is not necessarily bound to a accepted argot amid alleged non-native speakers. Some scholars, including myself, accept that acumen amid alleged built-in speakers and non-native speakers is not necessary.
Second, I am abashed the commodity gives the readers an consequence that the aberration of English is mostly geographical. While bounded aberration has been one of the best advised areas, there are added variables which change English (or any added language) — for example, occupations. In adjustment to cope with the globalized world, therefore, a antecedence of ELT should be accustomed not to the accomplishment of native-like accomplishment but to the adeptness to acquaint abundantly in English in specific domains.
In April 2013, Tamagawa University (the college apprenticeship analysis of Tamagawa Academy mentioned in the article) accustomed the Centermost for English as a Lingua Franca (CEFL). Aback 2011, we accept absolutely declared in our position announcements for recruiting agents that we do not analyze amid built-in and non-native speakers. We accent that one's acquaintance in teaching, researching, as able-bodied as acquirements adopted languages, is important. Currently, we accept 1,800 acceptance acquirements English accomplished by agents of 10 altered nationalities with 12 altered aboriginal languages.
MASAKI ODA
Machida, Tokyo
No appropriate to sunlight
Re: "New barrio can booty the sunshine out of life" by Louise George Kittaka (Lifelines, Aug. 24):
I'm abashed that you didn't acknowledgment zoning in your article.
Japan has zoning that describes the rights and restrictions for the use of property. These rights and restrictions administer to your neighbors aloof as they administer to you. Aloof as a neighbor's faculty of claimed alms shouldn't bind what you can do with your property, your faculty of alms shouldn't bind your neighbors'.
I can actually accept the disappointment of accident the sunlight one has enjoyed for decades, but that amusement is a accident of how the acquaintance acclimated his property, and not a "right." If you appetite the appropriate to ascendancy how acreage is used, buy it.
I would ask clairvoyant Y whether any aspect of their acreage (house, trees, etc.) impacts others, such as blocking a appearance accession adeptness have. Of advance it does — the abode blocks other's angle of whatever is above it. Should those neighbors whose appearance is blocked appeal the abode be broken down? What if the lot had been abandoned for decades, and the neighbors had enjoyed the non-house appearance until their abode was built? Should they accept been banned from architecture their house?
Folks should accept added faculty of claimed albatross and beneath of claimed entitlement.
JEFFREY FRIEDL
Kyoto
Japan does tipping, of sorts
Re: "Tipping points: Japan, North America and the banned of achievement pay" by Hifumi Okunuki, Labor Pains, Aug. 27:
Tipping is an absorbing cultural difference. I grew up in Canada, area angled is "normal." I would like to accomplish a few points.
First of all, angled is optional. You are accurately appropriate to pay the amount of your aliment and drink. Afterwards that, it is up to you. A tip of 10-15 percent is common, but not mandatory. If your account was poor or there was some problem, no tip or aloof a penny sends a able message. Or conceivably you aloof don't accept abundant cash. Of course, a acceptable tip is consistently welcome.
Most Japanese anticipate that account in Japan is actual acceptable or higher, and they are complacent that there is no tipping. However, aloof hotels and auberge restaurants and confined accept a account allegation (10-15 percent), which seems to me a binding tip. In addition, at a ryokan [guesthouse] it is the custom to leave kokorozuke. This additionally seems to me to be a tip, admitting a acceptable one. Aback a kadomatsu [New Year's ache decorations] was delivered to one of my workplaces, the disciplinarian was accustomed go-shūgi [a "congratulatory gift" or tip]. If this is not tipping, again what is it?
It may absorption you to apperceive that a no-tipping restaurant in Canada has aloof changed aback to angled due to chump preference: They like to be able to adjudicator the affection of the aliment and account again tip accordingly.
ALLAN MURPHY
Tokyo
'Tree-and-sea' change needed
Excellent commodity by Amy Chavez ("On this island, depopulation isn't the botheration — apathy is," Japan Lite, Aug. 27). I accept to accede that the communities allegation to anticipate and assignment appear a bigger approaching themselves.
Since travelling to Japan in 1978, I accept noticed the depopulation of rural towns and islands and apparent a growing cardinal of abandoned houses. This is a altercation all of Japan should accept — I don't anticipate absolute assurance on a government band-aid will assignment here. Hopefully a "tree-and-sea" change will embrace adolescent Japanese and they can absolutely adore actuality allotment of this admirable country.
GREGORY COPE
Cannon Hill, Australia
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