I have spent 25 years religiously chewing brown sushi rice, eating seaweed and drinking twig tea and miso soup. I have spent years of my life saying how wonderful Japan and Japanese people are. I have even spent months of my life attempting to assuage furious Korean nationalists covering the internet with their propaganda, and am happy to spend hours arguing the toss with idiots who spew their WWII boy’s comic book racism all over Japan.
And then this …
GO TO HELL MOTHERFUCK-FOREIGNERS AND PROTESTANTS. YOU BETRAY GOD.
WARNING MOTHERFUCK-FOREIGNERS. THIS IS JAPAN. THIS IS NOT A WHITE COUNTRY.
Now, first of all, I am sorry to say but it should be “motherfucking foreigners”. Fuck … fucked … fucking. If you are going to speak English, please speak it properly. Whatever you do, don’t speak it like a dumb American.
And, secondly, Kami-sama help us all, who are these guys anyway!?! Japanese radical right-wing … Catholics!!!
What has poor old Martin Luther and the Reformation, or my mother, got to do with this one … 1517 is a long time ago and the last time I spoke to mum, she still loved fish’n'chips!?! Hey, it was the Catholics who enslaved 500,000 Japanese women back in the 16th Century, not the Protestants. And just because one is white does not mean one is automatically Protestant anyway.
This is going to take some sorting out. You do mean Protestants and not protesters, don’t you?
So who are these guys? These are the Shuken Kaifuku Wo Mezasukai (The Society to Seek Restoration of Sovereignty), a conservative anti-communist outfit in Japan who have just entered the fray surrounding promoting of The Cove movie.
They are not the notorious so-called right wing Uyoku Dantai, well known for quasi-protection rackets with the emphasis on “racket” … that is to say the volume of noise they can produce from their sonic attack war gaisensha bus’s loudspeakers. Nor are they Yakuza, who for the most part are above all this nonsense and quietly getting on with their own respectable and disrespectful businesses.
The Shuken Kaifuku are somewhere along the lines of patriots or historical revisionist and, to be honesty, I actually agree with many of their arguments … although not blasting homes and neighbourhoods of their victims with rock concert levels or noise pollution and general immature silliness like “knock-door-and-run” games.
They are concerned about the erosion of the Japanese consciousness, mainly by Chinese propagandists, and the infiltration of Japanese society by backdoor immigration, money scamming North Koreans (think Patchinko) and tourists who drop litter. They ask for self-sovereignty for Japan and wish to throw off the yoke of America … and they are sick of all the false history, forced re-education and negative attitudes stuck down Japan’s throat by the world’s media. Those are all fair enough in my book.
I love to see the end of all those brain sucking, neon lit pinball arcades and the Yankee army bases.
But then … they go right over the top and have decided that there is a conspiracy between China and Hollywood to destroy Japan and the anti-dolphin hunting campaign is part of it!
Oh, dear … these guys are like the Asian David Ickes or Alex Jones but with really, really, really LOUD loudspeakers! “There is a White Conspiracy out to get Japan”, and they are going to make sure everyone thinks it by making them not be able to hear their own thoughts. Shaming any self-hating Japanese enemy collaborator into submission.
The logic goes something like this …
They seem to think there is a collusion between Hollywood and China to represent Japan in a poor or negative light. Hollywood, or Hollywood money, is funding the whale and dolphin campaigns … Hollywood is White … therefore all Whites are against Japan and are the enemy. Whew.
Except all “Whites” know Hollywood is run by Jews … but let’s not mention that right now.
The real thing:Uyoku Dantai
To be honest, I do not know about any ‘collusion between Hollywood and China’. As a white, please allow me to apologize for them hiring Ziyi Zhang for the role of a Geisha. I know. It was disgusting and inaccurate. And I think it is fair to say that Western portrayals of Japan have been highly colored by ignorance and racism. The connection is a fair reflection of the international geo-politics being played between the USA, Japan and China and these guys are conscious of it. The Shuken Kaifuku do have many academics amongst their ranks but, surely, is the logic not being exaggerated just a little?
The Shuken Kaifuku then go on to rely on another huge factual error and logical fallacy based on the Faroe Islands whale slaughter. The Faroe Islanders are white and The Cove people are not campaigning against them. Taiji are Japanese and The Cove people are campaigning against them … therefore The Cove people are anti-Japanese White racists.
Except that “White” people have been campaigning against the Faroe Islander slaughter ever year since the 1980s … Since November 2008, the chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that the whales are no longer considered fit for human consumption because of the levels of toxins in their bodies … just like the dolphins at Taiji.
Other persistent accusations which they are attempting to drive home as memes, include; “the activists are only doing it for the money” … being funded is being seen more as the shame of “living off other people’s money” … and the “White people eat cows, we eat dolphin, so sod off” argument.
Well, excuse me but not all White people do eat cows. Of course, as vegans, we are equally against eating cows and whales, and pretty much agree with their latter statement. there is no point Hollywood rolling out to stop a few dolphins die and then tuck into steak, caviar and salmon at their next Oscar award. However, the former comment is a huge misunderstand about the nature of charitable giving and the political role of NPOs as single issue campaigns which are widely supported by the public.
Vegans hold the moral trump card on this one.
The Vegan argument is not about food choice. It is about anti-oppression in its widest sense … it is counter specism. Specism, or speciesism, is the act of assigning different values or rights to living beings on the basis of their biological species. It equates to such terms as sexism or racism.
Let’s face, for most Japanese eating whale meat from the Antarctic has no cultural relevance at all. It is no longer an essential need and they don’t even like the taste. Increasingly, dolphin meat is being found to be inedibly poisonous. Thanks to man’s pollution, Ric O’Barry now describes the dolphins as “swimming toxic waste dumps”.
The whole debate has launched itself into deeply irrational waters and is tugging at huge, unresolved nationalistic psychological issues.
Yet, despite that, I have to say, the war against dolphins is another Nanjing. The Taiji Cove, which is in a national park at Wakayama, is another Buchenwald or Auschwitz in humankind’s war against other species. Japan as a nation is losing far more than it could ever gain from the financially inspired actions of a tiny few.
Here is what Hollywood has to say on the matter. They are only actors but I tend to think this is not an act. It kicks off with Woody Harrelson who is a vegan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k62kc07m1Dc
Dolphins love human beings … dolphins save human lives … please save theirs now. Please stop dolphin hunting … stop aquarium abuses … boycott dolpin shows.
Or, on the other hand, enjoy the Shuken Kaifuku wo Mezasu Kai.
mac