So, umm, is nobody else going to call this racist?
> Every bookstore, magazine stand, and school, has a significant portion of its bookshelves packed with comic books. Why? It’s generous, and a bit dismissive, to say that Japanese folks simply love “cute” things. It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level.
> Kids in Spain are reading Kiss of the Spiderwoman , kids in America Harry Potter, and kids in Japan . . . Naruto, the adolescent ninja. What’s Japan famous for? Literature? Movies? Music? Web design? Please. Comic books. Anime. Illustrations everywhere.
Right, I'm guessing they haven't read Tales of Genji or Saikaku or watched many of the films out of Japan in the Criterion collection. But let's dismiss an entire culture and history because of the popularity of anime (which, by the way, is not just for kids, but that's a different topic).
> Japanese people themselves are aware of this; if not individually, then at least as a group. In recent years a flood of new words has entered the language, and guess what, they’re all written with the Japanese phonetic alphabet, katakana.
And that's because they can't read it? WTF. Katakana is pretty. It's marketing. Sometimes Japanese poetry (yes it exists) uses katakana for style and emphasis. I don't claim to know how Japanese marketing works but you, author, don't either.
> Nobody bothers to make kanji for stuff anymore, because half the time, no one can read it.
What? Even if you're being hyperbolic, that's still too much. Yes, there's a lot of difficult kanji even for native speakers. For foreigners like me, it's the biggest barrier to learning it. But to claim that native born speakers can't recognize half the words in common use...
> Ever wonder why Japanese people have such trouble learning English? Just look at how well they speak their own language.
Again, even if you move past the reductive reasoning and general racist stereotyping, it's just plainly wrong. Even in a logical level. Do you really think a nation of people who speak a language can't do it well? Why do they choose that language then?
Seriously, I get "skepticism", but wtf HN. If it looks racist and smells racist, let's not just skid past it and just inquiry about "supporting data".
The author has lived in Japan and studied Japanese for a long time. If you read some of his other posts for context you will see that he deeply admires and loves the Japanese people and their culture.
This article appears to me to be a cathartic rant about Japanese being so difficult to learn that even many Japanese don't master their own language. I lived in Japan for about 3 years and I can corroborate that Japanese people struggle with their own language. For example, the development of word processing has made the problem even worse. When Japanese people consistently use computers for writing they call themselves "Wa-pu-ro baka" (translation "word processing idiot") because they quickly forget how to write kanji by hand.
Actually it is two rants in one. The first rant is about how college level educational standards are very different in the U.S. and Japan. Although I never attended university in Japan, I've met many Japanese college students and their stories corroborate the author's claims of ridiculously easy grading standards.
This would be a fascinating article if it had more data to back it up. As it is, it seems like some far stretching intentionally inflammatory hyperbole that explores some interesting concepts.
There might be something else at play. When I see western scholars trying to interpret Sanskrit scriptures I see the similar mistakes as the author is making here.
I am from India and I have basic familiarity with Japanese and Sanskrit. Both languages rely heavily on context. Since knowledge was mostly passed from master through disciple the information is compressed into smaller sentences easy to memorize. The full meaning was always conveyed through the human interaction. English on other hand seems to have grown during industrial revolution where mass producing information and passing it to people who may no have human being to explain it around was very important. Over years English has evolved to describe all possible information even without the context.
I see western scholars translating Sanskrit word "Namaste" as "Hello" but in reality it is "I bow to you" something that Indians might have well forgotten but they are surely to know the context and a elderly person will not do a "Namaste" to a child. We bow to elders not younger ones.
Similarly Japanse phrase of Itadakemas might be translated merely as "I take" but the English translation does not do justice to it. As an Indian I think I total understand the sentiments behind the phrase.
So I think it would be a mistake to call Japanese people retarded without fully understanding their culture.
In the sense that the author uses the word "retarded" to mean that it takes Japanese longer to learn their language than other cultures then yes, the author is correct. Japanese students take until 6th grade to learn the 2,000 most common kanji characters. Most middle schoolers cannot read a newspaper. Heck even most high schoolers shy away from newspapers in Japan.
Manga (comics) are the way most Japanese learn their language. One of the reasons that manga are so helpful is their usage of furigana which are small hiragana (phonetic alphabet) characters printed next to the more difficult kanji characters (pictograms).
Japanese people come in a wide range of IQs just like any other culture. In my experience they are not any more stupid nor any more intelligent than the average U.S. citizen. They do often forget kanji characters, just like you would. It is common for Japanese to ask someone to jog their memory on how a character is written. In this case, people often respond by drawing the character on their palm or saying something like, "anshin no an" meaning it is the same "an" character as in the word "anshin". Language is very different when there are literally tens of thousands of characters to learn.
I lived in Japan for nearly 3 years. I speak, or at least used to speak with fair fluency and I can confirm that this is somewhat accurate. I would add that many Japanese high schools are highly selective and very demanding of students. Graduates of these high schools often perform well in academic subjects and often overachieve in U.S. universities, but only the best students get into those high schools and many students are forced to choose from much less competitive schools.
In short, education through high school is often very demanding, but Japanese colleges are quite easy for liberal arts students. Much less so for STEM subjects.
My high school Japanese teacher mentioned the college- before college dichotomy from the article. That is, that Japanese students are pushed very hard before college and then not at all during college.
similar scenario. the society and its insitutions pressure people into participating in academic life regardless of whether or not they have an aptitude for it. inevitably many of them basically fail and do so in ways that are shocking and appalling to their instructors. however, the institution itself (for a variety of reasons) will accommodate these people regardless of their poor state of educational attainment.
Reminds of me Kipling's poem whose meaning goes something like this:
> The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized) [1]
The author is either writing some kind of bad sarcasm or simple falling prey to the above kind of complex.
I don't want to assign motives but western civilization should learn that just because you don't understand other cultures that does not mean they are stupid, retarded or some how disadvantaged. Provide some data or it is just the prejudice. Japanese people have achieved a lot in short time in fact lot more than almost all their Asian peers. They have achieved this while using their language.
Author should have spent some time learning the Japanese culture and being one of them instead of being judgemental. Consider this line about Manga
> Young adults here read comic books for the same reason children do elsewhere: because they’re fun, funny, and not too hard. Sure, a few deal with “real” issues, but it’s not like we’re talking To Kill a Mockingbird. Who doesn’t like ninjas and pirates? No one in Japan, apparently.
Clearly the author is not familiar with manga culture and has not bothered to read one. I am from India, I have read Harry Potter, Song of Ice and Fire, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Death Note or Naruto. Japanese Manga and Anime both have significant depth, characters which have shades of gray and as an Asian I can relate with Manga characters and story themes lot better than Harry potter which I find too superficial.
[+] [-] yifanlu|9 years ago|reply
> Every bookstore, magazine stand, and school, has a significant portion of its bookshelves packed with comic books. Why? It’s generous, and a bit dismissive, to say that Japanese folks simply love “cute” things. It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level.
> Kids in Spain are reading Kiss of the Spiderwoman , kids in America Harry Potter, and kids in Japan . . . Naruto, the adolescent ninja. What’s Japan famous for? Literature? Movies? Music? Web design? Please. Comic books. Anime. Illustrations everywhere.
Right, I'm guessing they haven't read Tales of Genji or Saikaku or watched many of the films out of Japan in the Criterion collection. But let's dismiss an entire culture and history because of the popularity of anime (which, by the way, is not just for kids, but that's a different topic).
> Japanese people themselves are aware of this; if not individually, then at least as a group. In recent years a flood of new words has entered the language, and guess what, they’re all written with the Japanese phonetic alphabet, katakana.
And that's because they can't read it? WTF. Katakana is pretty. It's marketing. Sometimes Japanese poetry (yes it exists) uses katakana for style and emphasis. I don't claim to know how Japanese marketing works but you, author, don't either.
> Nobody bothers to make kanji for stuff anymore, because half the time, no one can read it.
What? Even if you're being hyperbolic, that's still too much. Yes, there's a lot of difficult kanji even for native speakers. For foreigners like me, it's the biggest barrier to learning it. But to claim that native born speakers can't recognize half the words in common use...
> Ever wonder why Japanese people have such trouble learning English? Just look at how well they speak their own language.
Again, even if you move past the reductive reasoning and general racist stereotyping, it's just plainly wrong. Even in a logical level. Do you really think a nation of people who speak a language can't do it well? Why do they choose that language then?
Seriously, I get "skepticism", but wtf HN. If it looks racist and smells racist, let's not just skid past it and just inquiry about "supporting data".
[+] [-] bokumo|9 years ago|reply
The author has lived in Japan and studied Japanese for a long time. If you read some of his other posts for context you will see that he deeply admires and loves the Japanese people and their culture.
This article appears to me to be a cathartic rant about Japanese being so difficult to learn that even many Japanese don't master their own language. I lived in Japan for about 3 years and I can corroborate that Japanese people struggle with their own language. For example, the development of word processing has made the problem even worse. When Japanese people consistently use computers for writing they call themselves "Wa-pu-ro baka" (translation "word processing idiot") because they quickly forget how to write kanji by hand.
Actually it is two rants in one. The first rant is about how college level educational standards are very different in the U.S. and Japan. Although I never attended university in Japan, I've met many Japanese college students and their stories corroborate the author's claims of ridiculously easy grading standards.
[+] [-] throwaway7658|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] milkywayz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|9 years ago|reply
I am from India and I have basic familiarity with Japanese and Sanskrit. Both languages rely heavily on context. Since knowledge was mostly passed from master through disciple the information is compressed into smaller sentences easy to memorize. The full meaning was always conveyed through the human interaction. English on other hand seems to have grown during industrial revolution where mass producing information and passing it to people who may no have human being to explain it around was very important. Over years English has evolved to describe all possible information even without the context.
I see western scholars translating Sanskrit word "Namaste" as "Hello" but in reality it is "I bow to you" something that Indians might have well forgotten but they are surely to know the context and a elderly person will not do a "Namaste" to a child. We bow to elders not younger ones.
Similarly Japanse phrase of Itadakemas might be translated merely as "I take" but the English translation does not do justice to it. As an Indian I think I total understand the sentiments behind the phrase.
So I think it would be a mistake to call Japanese people retarded without fully understanding their culture.
[+] [-] em3rgent0rdr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bokumo|9 years ago|reply
Manga (comics) are the way most Japanese learn their language. One of the reasons that manga are so helpful is their usage of furigana which are small hiragana (phonetic alphabet) characters printed next to the more difficult kanji characters (pictograms).
Japanese people come in a wide range of IQs just like any other culture. In my experience they are not any more stupid nor any more intelligent than the average U.S. citizen. They do often forget kanji characters, just like you would. It is common for Japanese to ask someone to jog their memory on how a character is written. In this case, people often respond by drawing the character on their palm or saying something like, "anshin no an" meaning it is the same "an" character as in the word "anshin". Language is very different when there are literally tens of thousands of characters to learn.
[+] [-] bokumo|9 years ago|reply
In short, education through high school is often very demanding, but Japanese colleges are quite easy for liberal arts students. Much less so for STEM subjects.
[+] [-] akud|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaphorm|9 years ago|reply
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/in-the-b...
similar scenario. the society and its insitutions pressure people into participating in academic life regardless of whether or not they have an aptitude for it. inevitably many of them basically fail and do so in ways that are shocking and appalling to their instructors. however, the institution itself (for a variety of reasons) will accommodate these people regardless of their poor state of educational attainment.
[+] [-] tn13|9 years ago|reply
> The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized) [1]
The author is either writing some kind of bad sarcasm or simple falling prey to the above kind of complex.
I don't want to assign motives but western civilization should learn that just because you don't understand other cultures that does not mean they are stupid, retarded or some how disadvantaged. Provide some data or it is just the prejudice. Japanese people have achieved a lot in short time in fact lot more than almost all their Asian peers. They have achieved this while using their language.
Author should have spent some time learning the Japanese culture and being one of them instead of being judgemental. Consider this line about Manga
> Young adults here read comic books for the same reason children do elsewhere: because they’re fun, funny, and not too hard. Sure, a few deal with “real” issues, but it’s not like we’re talking To Kill a Mockingbird. Who doesn’t like ninjas and pirates? No one in Japan, apparently.
Clearly the author is not familiar with manga culture and has not bothered to read one. I am from India, I have read Harry Potter, Song of Ice and Fire, Mahabharata, Ramayana and Death Note or Naruto. Japanese Manga and Anime both have significant depth, characters which have shades of gray and as an Asian I can relate with Manga characters and story themes lot better than Harry potter which I find too superficial.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
[+] [-] bokumo|9 years ago|reply