If you get familiar enough with the people and the language of Japan, you will soon learn that those of a certain generation (70 and older) often have been completely shaped by WW II. Their views on life, education, what’s important and what’s not, non-Japanese (see where this is going?), and even food have all been cemented in their minds. Being bilingual and a martial art practitioner, I have been privy to numerous rants about how Japan has been “infected” since losing the war. Examples include:
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America (and all it stands for) is the worst country on the planet. (Pre-Dubya or Post-Dubya makes no difference)
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Japan was a victim of the war.
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Young Japanese are nothing but lazy, pampered, and without an identity.
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Equal rights for men and women is an abomination.
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Losing the war was the greatest shameful experience ever.
On the other hand, I have been told by numerous people in Japan, people I know on a personal level and were born after the war (or were too young to remember), that the best thing that ever happened to Japan was its losing the war. After all, if Japan had won, present-day Japanese people certainly would have very few of the freedoms they enjoy now. Travel outside Japan is now routine (something unthinkable for most even up to the 1970s!), women in Japan have the right to vote and study at university, people generally marry who they want when they want, and living in a large metropolitan area means access (if you are willing to shell out the money) to the best of anything the rest of the world has to offer!
So, what are the consequences for the non-Japanese in Japan? Well, since age is often more highly valued than ability, gender, nationality, and so on… it means most of the policy-makers, i.e. the older elite, love nothing more than discriminating between Japanese and non-Japanese. Anyone falling in the former group is automatically preferred to those in the latter. It also leads to issues of trust. Many people will refuse to have anything to do with you. You often can’t rent an apartment (heck buying a house was far easier!), you won’t be hired on an equal basis, and you will often find the seat next to you on the train is the last place anyone wants to sit. After 17 years of almost daily use of mass transit, and numerous apologist arguments that people in Japan are “too shy” to sit next to non-Japanese, I am sorry but I think the truth has much more to do with trust issues and racism. The seat next to me is empty – I gave up caring a long time ago!
Anyway, I digress. Just keep in mind that a great segment of society shares a personal history (and takes advantage of every possible opportunity) to perpetuate the above bullet points I mention above. For them America is the Great Satan, and their lifelong duty is to make non-Japanese suffer when possible. In fact, I will never forget the day after 9/11 and having my boss (at the time) gloat about how the “prestige of America was taken down a notch” by the attacks. Over 3,000 people died and all he cared about was America’s prestige taking hit. I think it would be safe to say that he had WW II on the brain.
Thanks for reading,
GBUJ
