Saturday, August 2, 2008

Racist Cultural Imperialists

Do Australians hate Japanese?
NO!!!

But some Japanese people seem to think they do. I don't hate Japanese and I don't know anyone who does and I live in Australia. I don't like whaling. I find it offensive and the closer it happens to me the stronger the urge to try to stop it becomes.
I don't like whaling because I don't like seeing the demise of the whales. Just when it seemed the populations were going to recover people are killing them again? Have they learnt NOTHING???
Whales are being shot with canons, and dolphins hacked up with machette. Their bodies are sliced up into little bits and packed in thousands of boxes.
Theres no culture there, its just mechanised slaughter at a point in humanitys global culture where it is unnecessary.

But anyway lets let other people take over.


This link takes you to the Japan Reference forums with


Welcome to the Japan Forum, a friendly online community dedicated to all Things Japanese where more than 30.000 people sharing a deep interest in Japan come to discuss in over 31.000 threads with more than half a million posts!


Anyway I thought this quote really stood out in a thread well secured with UT's.

Originally Posted by MadamePapillon View Post

The fact that the whaling debate now is now riddled with politics and racist accusations just shows that this whole issue has been blown waaaay out of proportion.
The original reason for all this was that Japan was hunting whales while other countries (more specifically, the environmentalists) thought that whales should be protected because of ethical/ environmental issues. The intent wasn't racist, after all, these people go after the kangaroo killings of Australia, the seal killings of Canada ect, any place they see what could be considered the unethical killings or treatment of animals...Japan was just one of a long list off offenders. For some reason or another Japan took this as a personal attack and a matter of national pride. I can only assume it's because they haven't seen those Greenpeace types in action and so though the anti-whaling protests were a racist attack on the grounds of 'western ideals'.
The fact that Japan is a non-western country seemed to inflame a lot of people when it shouldn't have and turned this into a cultural debate and an international issue. I personally don't think it should have gone that far but both sides keep stepping up the attacks and turning a simple animal protection issue into a three ring circus.


Video 1
Video 2




"Whaling is a national symbol against the cultural imperialism of western nations," said Shigeko Misaki. "If we succumb to the moral standards of the western world, we would lose control of our people internally." Despite government-endorsed ultranationalist propaganda promulgated by Misaki and neo-con cronies asserting that slaughtering marine mammals is a patriotic duty, whaling has only a tiny constituency in Japan.





If your in the mood for a bit of satire on the whole situation try this thread but beware... if your not in the mood for lols it may be best to not!

So.... why do the Japanese think people are attacking them by wanting to protect whales?
Its a big question and really these links explain it far better than I can.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Source document.

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