Debby Coley debbycoley at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 28 16:11:13 EDT 2004


For my two cents worth, I have three Japanese friends and they are far from childish and theatrical.  I stay away from generalizations of people because they are inaccurate.  
  I just finished Ian Buruma's book, Behind the Mask, and he did, however, paint Japanese people as theatrical, but he was writing about Japanese media.
   debby coley
   

j.izbicki at att.net wrote:
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I expected a flurry of messages to appear about a previous poster’s blanket comment that "Japanese are childish and theatrical."  Others have apparently decided to ignore the remark but I think some comment is due.  

 I already deleted the message but with due respect must assume that the writer has had little or superficial interaction with Japanese people and is still under the sway of 1940s-50s generalizations about Japan.  Or have I lost my sense of humor and the comment was meant to be a joke?  I hope members of this list have gotten beyond attributing any single trait or peculiarity —positive or negative— to ALL the people in any given country--or of any ethnic or racial or gender group.  It’s much more informative and helpful to look at specific forces and contexts at play than to simplify cause and effect by asserting instead that there are sweeping national traits to explain specific human actions or situations. 

 

In 1951, Douglas MacArthur made a post-SCAP (i.e., after he’d been fired by Truman) comment that lost the respect he’d gained (gained justifiably or not) of many Japanese while he had been Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.  The comment was that ‘the Japanese’ were “like a boy of twelve as compared with our development of forty-five years.”  The ‘our’ apparently meant ‘American,’ suggesting a too common assumption among stereotypers that their listeners/readers share and approve the stereotype--in this case that Japanese people couldn't measure up to American maturity.  Even if MacArthur meant to apply his view only to the political situation in Japan, he was still ignoring a history of sophisticated and complex political structuration and struggle in the country.  MacA's personal history, however, suggests he was applying the ! put-down more broadly.

(MacA’s comment is from the “Hearing to Conduct an Inquiry into the Military Situation in the Far East,” 82nd Congress, 1st session, 1951.  Quoted in Takamae Eiji’s “Inside GHQ,” p. 7.)

 

Joanne Izbicki

 

		
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