• Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Despite making up only 1% of Japan’s land mass, Ryukyu (Okinawa) hosts 70% of US military bases in Japan.

    US military bases cover about 25% of the land area of the main island of Ryukyu.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Westerners do not care about indigenous or minorities of other countries. As far as they concerned, they’re all part of the same race/ethnicity/culture. E.g. “Ainu people are still Asians which means it homogenous!!!” or “Pashtun? Tajik? I don’t care! They’re all freaking afghani Muslims!”

    Only the west is “not homogenous” because white people can only tell you apart if you stand next to them and your skin is darker.

    • Hello_Kitty_enjoyer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Only the west is “not homogenous” because white people can only tell you apart if you stand next to them and your skin is darker.

      it’s also because they like making up pretend ethnicities like Moldoslovasconian and shit like that while knowing nothing about the rest of the world

      “uhh…they’re just all Indian!”

      “yea I’m not a huge fan of European food”
      "WTF DO YOU MEAN THERE’S GERMAN AND FRENCH AND AND MACEDONIAN AND

      • bloubz@lemmygrad.ml
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        8 months ago

        Your peers really talk about “European food”? Damn

        To be fair the only food I know and talk about from the US is Tex-Mex

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          Conceptually, why not? People talk about “Chinese food” despite China being geographically the size of Europe and having at least 8 distinct and recognized styles of cuisine that are at least as different from each other as French is to Italian.

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
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            8 months ago

            I think the difference there is that when americrackers talk about “Chinese food” they’re very specifically and exclusively talking about the Americanized Cantonese cuisine that’s available broadly. The other cuisines are entirely unknown as they do not exist outside of a small handful of restaurants in only a couple of major cities, and are largely only available on a phantom menu in those restaurants. The same also happens with “Indian food,” which almost universally refers to an Americanized version of Mughlai cuisine, with maybe a couple Americanized items from Udupi cuisine.

            Americanized Euro cuisines had a very diferent thing happen and just like there is no monolithic “Chinese Food” or “Indian Food,” there is no “French Food” or “Italian Food.” No nation, no culture, no cuisine is monolithic. The difference is that the cuisines of European nations were blended into a generalized version, rather than one specific cuisine being the only one represented.

            The confusion and conflation of national cuisines that seems to frustrate people so has an unfortunate but material reason for existing. That reason being 20th century immigration patterns. Immigrants brought with them food and culture that was then smushed into a little generalized box blended on high as immigrants were largely segregated by national origin and particularly by language.

            European nations were devastated by the two world wars, with immigrants from virtually every geographic area of every affected nation arriving in the US. Many immigrants from other continents were severely restricted or outright banned from immigrating to the US up until 1965. Virtually all Chinese immigrants up until the ban in 1924 came from Taishan City, Guangdong and consequently brought Cantonese food. Up until 1965, Indian immigration to the US was nearly non-existent due to blanket ineligibility for naturalization, and virtually all Indian-Americans either immigrated from Canada or descended from those who did. Indian cuisine in the US has largely been copied from British-Indian cuisine, which itself is largely a product of immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and northern India, hence why north Indian cuisine is outsized in its representation.

            I understand you’re just making up a guy to get mad at, but it’s hard to blame individuals for being unaware and uninformed about cuisine that’s likely only available hundreds of miles away from their home, especially when virtually all other common national cuisines are massively blended versions of the entire nation’s cuisine.

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              I’m not getting mad at anyone, sorry if it sounded like I was.

              I understand the material reasons behind how people perceive foreign cuisine. The further away from a place the less granularity you hold for it in your mind most of the time. It’s very common for Chinese and Japanese people to talk about “western food” which is an expansive category covering everything from pasta to baguettes to burgers to borscht.

            • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              It’s particularly funny since here in Aus at least three types are easily recognisable, along with the suburbs you go to eat them. And that’s just coastal Han Cuisine. Meanwhile in Germany the “Asian Restaurant” served up Sushi and Dim Sims at the same time.

            • Hello_Kitty_enjoyer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              I understand you’re just making up a guy to get mad at, but it’s hard to blame individuals for being unaware and uninformed about cuisine that’s likely only available hundreds of miles away from their home

              Not really tho. Literally every westoid has the internet

              It’s not really a food issue either, it’s a literally everything about China-India-Africa issue. And I actually don’t give a shit if mayos know anything about us, but I need them to stop having strong opinions and making harsh value judgements about stuff they have literally a toddler’s understanding of (impossible I know)

              I also netted dozens of downvotes on reddit-logo once because I questioned if leaving the lobster vein in might be a New England thing (because literally 3 restaurants in Boston did that to me). They were literally frothing, while the same interaction reversed takes place all the time and the POC just expect the ignorance (some of them are even ignorant of it themselves)

              just like there is no monolithic “Chinese Food” or “Indian Food,” there is no “French Food” or “Italian Food.”

              Uh, no. Chinese food is not analogous to French food. It’s analogous to European food. Bengali food, or Sichuanese food, is analagous to French food.

          • Hello_Kitty_enjoyer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            8 months ago

            This is true but at some level POC are to blame for this as well–I know so many Indian people who can’t even name any states/languages and stuff

            Every POC aware of this needs to honestly just refer to themselves as their provincial identity. IE:

            “so what ethnicity are you out of curiosity”
            “oh I’m Bihari”

            “You’re Chinese right?”
            “yea, Fujian”

            etc. otherwise these things will never be recovered

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Advanced European racism technology is required to allow for the kind of distinctions that allow the Dutch to be racist against Limburgs

    • arabiclearner [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      It’s like you said in that other post about Japan: this site is weird sometimes. In that post (https://hexbear.net/comment/4649427) people were running around saying “not every person is Japan is XYZ” but in this post all of a sudden it’s “oh yeah Japan is super xenophobic.” It’s not wonder that the western left is completely impotent. It’s this kind of dumb ass flip flopping depending on their own personal emotions…

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      That’s a stat that gets trotted out when a Cracker gets indicted for a crime in Japan and the Westoid media wants to weasel them out of it by accusing the Japanese justice system of being corrupt or unfair or whatever.

      The articles who harp on about this 99% rate seldom stop to tell you that American Federal Courts often convict in the 99.8% range (pdf), or that the UK convicts somewhere in the 80 to 85% range.

      Of course the Japanese justice system is broken in many ways, but it’s not helpful to keep repeating this number like it means anything, especially when Japanese prosecutors indict at rates lower than American and English ones.

      • Tommasi [she/her, pup/pup's]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        China also has around the same conviction rates as Japan because indictments get withdrawn if acquittal is on the cards. I think there’s definitely problems with that kind of approach, but just pointing out the stats doesn’t paint the whole picture.

          • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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            8 months ago

            Yeah, I’ve had to correct people on this site on it like 6 times. No you can’t legally fuck 13 year olds in Japan!

            Well you can if you’re in one of a couple extremely isolated fishing villages with a population of like 20 where the average age is 65, but otherwise no.

      • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Deeply sad how much Japanese media points out these major issues with their society and it seems like it’s all shrugged at. The prevalence of dire working conditions and how that gets portrayed as essentially something that’s just a fact of life is just shitty. Guess that’s what happens when the US helps utterly crush all socialist/labor movements during occupation

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      thats partly because they don’t typically go to court unless they know for sure the case is a guilty case. they send the easy guilty cases to court. it’s shown by their relatively low indictment rate (implying they’re very selective on which cases go to court)

    • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Weebs will complain about evil authoritarian China but then jerk of to single party state monarchist Japan with a 99% conviction rate

  • SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Japan: has fully funded social welfare, cheap housing, job placement programs, city services etc that keep desperate people from turning to crime.

    Westerners: “Basically it’s because they’re racist and that’s a good thing.”

    Japan aint perfect but in my eight years of living there I noticed that nobody locked their door unless they lived on an American military base.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      I was able to make a weeb get concerned about yakuza once. I told him that a lot of their money comes from Chinese real estate developers who want land in Japan. I also mentioned most yakuza senior members can trace their ancestry to impoverished Korean immigrants.

      This guy started ranting blood and soil Japanese nationalism after learning that. He’s a white guy from Louisiana.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I have a Latino friend who lives in Japan. Whenever he goes around the Tokyo area cops will stop and ask him if he’s lost (a way of asking if he belongs in the area). He’s discovered that if he assures the cops he’s actually Latino, not Filipino or Indian, the cops get visibly less tense and let him go.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      I talked to an African American dude who lived in Japan and asked him if getting stopped was annoying. He said something like “yeah, but at least I know the Japanese cop isn’t going to shoot me.”

      Not making excuses for Japanese cops ofc, they should go find something more productive to do than hassle random people.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      The worst part is that the Japanese xenophobia/racism discourse is not focused on Zainichi Koreans/Chinese people, or Burakumin, or South and South East Asian people, or African people, or Ainu and Ryukyu people.

      It’s always drowned out by white guys yelling about how nobody wants to sit next to them on the train and how that’s the real racism.

      • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        One of my first experiences ever with my Host family in Japan was the mother pulling me aside to point out the Chinese tourists and saying like they were lepers. Legit didn’t understand what the problem was or why I should care.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    That one weeb Podcaster Garnt has literally talked about the systemic racism and xenophobia he deals with in Japan, mainly cops, because he’s ethnically Thai.

    • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Except it’s not “they didn’t have anyone to discriminate against - so they invented a group”, it was class based to keep people in those jobs be excluded from almost everything else and exploit their labor that way.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Yup, legit just a group that did the jobs everyone considered “unclean” but was also vital for society (i.e. butchers, tanners, trash collectors, etc). Blood based class systems are legit just old timey artificial racism (i.e. creating outgroups)