I lived and worked in Taiwan and China for seven years, and had business contacts and meetings in Japan and elsewhere in SE Asia. I am quite familiar with institutionalized racism in these countries. Every other colleague who was based in Japan also described instances similar to the one I related as an example.
What’s sorry and sad is that you feel a need to annotate every comment on this topic, and insist that everything is fine based on your experience and historical reasons. It’s not as if Japan is unlivable for non-Japanese, but it is also true that the disdain that most Japanese have for other races prevents them from accepting or treating them as equals. Xenophobia and discrimination are bad, m’kay?
Well at least you deescalated from “all Japanese are racist” to “most”. If it bugs you that I repeatedly call out false claims then that’s fine too. Have a great day!
From my post above: “As a gaijin, you may do your best to conform, be impeccably polite, and show respect for the culture, but you will never be more than a species of particularly tractable ape to the majority of Japanese.”
Emphasis added.
But keep crusading against “false claims.”
Have a great day yourself, remembering that in Japan, some minorities are more equal than others. Western privilege extends beyond borders, and many members of other minorities in Japan have a much more difficult time than you experience.
Slightly off topic, but some of European ancestry have their hair change colors the first few decades of life. As in my hair shading from very light blonde to dark brown with varying amounts of red added also between birth and twenty. Heck, the type of light could change it from brown to red with brown or brown with red. So I see this obsession with managing children’s hair color, beyond the obvious “I want purple hair” or a new shade every week is silly perhaps, maybe even insulting to the children as well as making a joke of the dress code.
I am told I am getting redder (from mostly brown, little bit of red and blonde) as I get older. Odd.
I was told this by a Chinese mainlander back in 2001. I showed them an article depicting a gay Chinese couple, discussing the gay scene there, and the response was, “They’re from Hong Kong.”
